My canned response to recruiter spam has been very useful to collect insights into the competitive world of hiring Engineers, but it didn’t make any money.
Introducing my new spam auto-reply.
Hi,
Thank you for your e-mail.
I get about 50 cold e-mails a day from great companies like yours trying to compete for our business. I totally understand! We’ve ourselves become the leading marketplace for fine art online and the most read art publication on the Internet through hard work and never taking “no” for an answer. But unfortunately it’s not realistic for me to spend my entire day paying attention to these and do all the rest of the work I must do.
So, I’ve decided to prioritize and use this as an opportunity. I am running the New York marathon in 2018 for the first time and raising money for the Team for Kids charity. You can earn my attention for $20 donated directly by clicking here.
In exchange for $20 (or more) I promise you to make a genuine effort with the following.
- Reading your entire email.
- Carefully reviewing the materials that you may have sent.
- Providing a thoughtful reply of at least a couple of sentences.
Please do understand that I won’t have the bandwidth to take a phone call or meet in-person.
I hope you will take me up on my offer and contribute this small amount of money in exchange of my attention, unless of course you don’t care about the children :)
cheers
dB.
Does it work for me? $440 donated to Team for Kids by a dozen people from approximately 75 replies in 60 days say definitely yes.
Does it work for them? Absolutely.
I’d like to offer you a $100 donation to have a 10 minute call with me and my colleague.
I took it. It was a very useful and insightful conversation and I have bookmarked to talk to the company, again, in six months.
Love this idea and just donated $20. As a competitive runner in high school, college, and even now after graduating, I entirely agree with the transformative power of running. Running has given me lifelong friends, confidence, a sense of purpose, and so much more.
I ended up making an introduction to another person on my team who just happened to be looking into something related, and they are competing for our business with an edge - we prefer to work with people who care about the children.
Thank you for the opportunity you gave me to donate to this important charity you are involved in and for your time to read my email regarding our upcoming event.
I sent the event info to a more appropriate attendee on my team.
I have gone to Haiti the past 2 years to help at an orphanage. I like what you have done here - taken an annoyance (all of the email that we get) and turned in to something positive. Keep up the good work. I sent $50 yesterday.
I signed up and watched a webinar.
Questions?
Sponsor me via GitHub and send me an e-mail!