The Most Clever Cold Email… Ever?

Last night around 11PM, I was laying in bed reviewing any missed emails. To my suprise/dismay/confusion, I received the most ridiculous cold outreach I’ve ever seen. I felt the need to share it with the world.

The email was crafted in a way that social engineers its way into your human emotions. It makes you believe you were sent this by a friend, to another friend, with “you in mind”.

I’m going to start by showing you the message, then breaking it down piece by piece. It’s almost like they took EVERY piece of cold outreach advice and put it into one.

Without further adieu -

Let’s begin at the top.

This is a tactic most people use. It makes me think they know me and maybe I know them. This is how MOST intro emails go, whether customer, investor, or friend, so I’ll open it.

The sending address isn’t that weird besides the fact I don’t know who it is, so we’ll skip that.

In that list of addresses, she’s introducing me to Donna at theinstantdeck.com. Obviously, this is the company behind everything I’m about to show you. The goal of this email was to get me to chat with Donna.

You’re I’m greeted with the main message.

This is where it gets tricky. They’re trying to make it sound like they know me well enough to know what my company needs. They tailored the message to include my first name(not hard) and to include that maybe I might need fundraising help(oddly well timed). It’s at this point I realize this is probably spam — but how did she think of me? Do I not remember this person? Maybe I’m just forgetting who this is?

Which is EXACTLY what they want you to think. They wanted me to dig. So I did!

And then it gets hilarious.

Who IS Jessica and what the hell is Project Greenworks?

Well… click the link and you get this:

Not that weird. But wait. It’s really generic. Like… REALLY generic.

“Greenworks took a refreshingly realistic approach to our proposed project, providing expert advice every step of the way. Greenworks works.”

So generic that the content of the page is actually saying NOTHING AT ALL. Which, if you’re used to startups isn’t that odd, but in this case is just too terrible to be real.

Just to make sure, let’s check Jessica’s LinkedIn:

That’s… remarkably generic.

Okay, let’s check the LinkedIn company page for Project Greenworks.

It’s fake. It’s completely F’ing fake. The whole thing is fake. Fake company, fake person, fake connection, fake website, fake LinkedIn.

The company went so out of their way to get my attention(and many others I’m sure), that they created LAYERS of fake crap! This is unbelievable. I’m blown away. I love it and hate it so much.

I almost feel like this isn’t a cold email but a social engineering attack.

Speaking of…

NoHack agrees something fishy is going on.

What is your take? Good effort or just… creepy?

In the end, theinstantdeck.com was trying REALLY hard to get me to use their service via this fake warm intro. They did a great(and tedious) job of trying to grab me. It worked… but not in a positive way.

Update:

I emailed them to let them know I wrote a blog about their effort and the fake recipient went on maternity leave and forgot to come back to work.