Someone asked me at a workshop last week: “What’s your cold outreach strategy?”

I said, “I don’t do cold outreach.”

You should’ve seen their face. Like I’d just admitted I sacrifice small animals under a full moon or something equally unhinged.

But here’s the truth: cold outreach feels spammy to me. And I’m not doing it.

You know what I hate? People showing up at my door trying to sell me things. So much so, I recently bought a “No Soliciting” sticker for my doorbell because I’m done with strangers asking if I want my lawn mowed, my house painted, or my soul saved.

I don’t want it in real life. I don’t want it in my inbox.

And honestly? The ‘bros’ ruined it. They turned cold outreach into a numbers game. Scrape 10,000 emails. Send the same generic pitch. Hope 2% respond.

Now my inbox is full of: “Hey Erica, I noticed you write about marketing. I’d love to contribute a guest post / offer my SEO services / insert generic pitch here.” Zero value for me. Zero explanation of why this helps my audience. Just what they want. I report them as spam and block them.

Here’s what doesn’t work:

• “Personalized” templates — Adding someone’s name doesn’t make it personal.
• “I loved your post about X” — No you didn’t. You scraped my site and picked a random headline.
• “Quick question” — It’s not a question. It’s a sales pitch disguised as curiosity.
• “Just following up” — You can’t follow up on something I never agreed to in the first place.

All of these fail because they’re about you, not the person you’re emailing.

If I absolutely had to do cold outreach, here’s what I’d do: I wouldn’t. I’d run an ad instead. I’d offer something genuinely useful, get them on my email list, then show up consistently and build trust before I ever asked for anything. It’s slower. But it’s not gross.

The goal isn’t to trick someone into a conversation. The goal is to get them to raise their hand and say, “Yeah, I want to hear from you.”

Cold outreach might work for some people. But for me, it’s the fastest way to damage trust before you’ve even built it.