This is specifically a way to email writers of (tech) blogs, craft a pitch for them, then email them in a personalized way at scale.
I'd argue that the people we're pitching want to be pitched - it's actually a part of their job. We're just doing it at scale as a way to save a lot of time.
> Is it okay to find users from Craigslist to tell them about your startup too?
I know you're joking about this, but I'm pretty sure Airbnb would have failed without doing exactly that.
At the end of the day the ethical line is one you need to draw yourself. But IMO if the people you're emailing expect to and are OK with receiving email pitches from you you're well on the "ethical" side of the scenario.
Ask (almost) any reporter: They want to be pitched.
> I'd argue they want to be pitched, and doing it at scale is just a way to save you a lot of time.
There are sites like www.helpareporter.com which do the exact same thing but the difference here is that the reporters opt-in to get the emails. I think that is a more ethical way of doing it.
>I know you're joking about this, but I'm pretty sure Airbnb would have failed without doing exactly that.
Wow, though as per AirBnB it was a rogue marketing agency which did it without telling them.
> There are sites like www.helpareporter.com which do the exact same thing but the difference here is that the reporters opt-in to get the emails. I think that is a more ethical way of doing it.
HARO has like 5 requests/day, and it's for very niche topics. If you're writing for TechCrunch you expect to be pitched. That's just the way it works.
> as per AirBnB it was a rogue marketing agency which did it without telling them.
I call bullshit on that. They funded the company selling cereal for $50/box on Craigslist. They knew how to play the Craigslist game. Craigslist is incredibly difficult to mass post on, you don't do that by accident.
I don't blame them from shying away from it when they were big enough for people to care, but I bet you if you had them in private they'd admit to it.
This is simply not true. Some do. Most already get too many pitches. And the crucial point that we're not addressing here is: Pitched about what? A lot of work has to be done to target and tailor pitches, and that can't really be done at scale. You have to pick a few and focus on them.
It's more complicated than that. You're extrapolating that because they put their email up on the site, they sent the signal that they want these spam-blast form pitches. That's a logical leap, and it happens to be incorrect.
In addition, the email addresses that reporters give on websites are not their real addresses. The publicly shown addresses lead to spam buckets, precisely because too many people are sending emails indiscriminately.
When I'm hiring I'm grateful for inbound job applicants. And I've hired some. If I had to hire four people per day I'd probably be OK with it, especially if it was from the applicant themselves instead of a hiring agency.
I'd argue that the people we're pitching want to be pitched - it's actually a part of their job. We're just doing it at scale as a way to save a lot of time.
> Is it okay to find users from Craigslist to tell them about your startup too?
I know you're joking about this, but I'm pretty sure Airbnb would have failed without doing exactly that.
At the end of the day the ethical line is one you need to draw yourself. But IMO if the people you're emailing expect to and are OK with receiving email pitches from you you're well on the "ethical" side of the scenario.
Ask (almost) any reporter: They want to be pitched.