I'm surprised by the other comments here that I'm in the minority thinking that the sales approach was pretty terrible. You're trying to sell something you don't understand to a company you don't understand. Why? If you actually want to "help" a company (by selling them your product... not really sure how that's "helping", but...) then at least do some research into the company and provide something that looks useful rather than some crappy "Hi, I like you, let's chat!"
In this specific case, someone somewhere is lying about services being provided. If that's sales then that's not great. If that's accounts/billing then that's probably worse. In any case it's a pretty terrible look for the company concerned, and understandably results in an erosion of trust.
Counterpoint is that Mailgun likely had flagged the account (80% deliverability is bad) and wanted to open a line of communication without coming across as hostile. It wasn't a sales opportunity, it was a "you need to improve" email wrapped in a friendly opening.
Evan then replied taking a hostile footing, which resulted in the sale rep backing up his opening with a list of agenda items (list cleaning, dedicated IP address, etc).
At this point it became a purely defensive line-by-line encounter because egos got involved once the Mailgun rep listed the real reasons he was writing.
IMO this is a massive overreaction and not a good look for the blog author.
If someone from a company is lying to you then is this really an overreaction?
(*Was 80% cherry-picked from a particular domain and so used in a purposefully misleading way? Should a sales rep have access to that sort of data anyway?)
I would disagree with this read based on the opening email from Mailgun. Especially for an "out of the blue" email, without further context I would personally just delete such an email and forget about it as I really have trouble giving a good faith reading to such a vague email.
The Subject and the content really lack actual content, and the points that I find ineffective are:
- Unclear/seemingly random subject; the goal I suppose is to evoke a response based on curiosity, but looking at my spam folder on gmail, I lump such a subject line in with emails like "what're you doing tonight?" "I'm lonely, can you save me?" (I'm cleaning up the titles a bit...) I read it as just fishing for some response and hoping that someone bites
- The email itself hints at a concern by citing a specific number, but then says "or more"; this strikes me as odd that they'd land on specific number but then add some open ended qualifier. To me, I read this as again a way to try to catch my attention and either misdirect me to the fact that the person hasn't really researched anything in my profile for us to talk about and instead just wants to get me on a call. It's "specifically vague", and I get the goal is to provoke a conversation, but I feel that this is very transparently a frustrating sales tactic, and another reason I would have just binned the email in the first place
- "See how Mailgun can help you succeed" to me this says that they have no specific strategy in mind and just want to propose some new offers/features. This in and of itself is fine, but like the author, I actually would just prefer they be upfront about this and mention what features they're interested in upselling. Maybe I do want one, but I don't want to learn about it from a meeting I can't prepare for.
- The "let's meet on Wednesday" part without offering up any of their available times is more of a personal pet peeve as I don't like going back and forth like that; if you want to meet with me, please just tell me when you're available and if it doesn't work __and__ I'm interested, I'll tell you.
The first email really does read just like a spam email in every way, and sure, it probably works.
The author's response is mostly fine in my opinion, though I must admit the last line reads more like someone's fantasy on what they wish they wrote to people, but for convenience I'll assume the author actually wrote that.
The next email from Mailgun though really surprises me if it's true:
> First, you're right, it is a low effort sales template. It does work.
I actually don't understand why they even include the "It does work" part or why they admit it's a low effort template. I feel like the sales person maybe thought they were building rapport and that a small 'mea culpa' would be a common ground to discuss, but personally I find this a very wrong read of the author's initial response, and a fairly low effort attempt to get the conversation going.
The rest of the email and subsequent ones I'm not going to break down point by point, but I have the same problem I had with the first "specifically vague" points; I actually share the author's concern about why the employee would have this knowledge and access (I don't deal with email at all for my company like this, so I have no idea if such access for the mail providers is normal; I assume likely it is for troubleshooting purposes, but if that's the case, I'd expect that such concerns are explained more clearly and why it's an issue, and that there are better answers to the inevitable follow up questions.
Basically, I see a failed attempt at a Sales person that basically raised suspicion in the part of a customer. The author I think had an absolute right to be a bit angry that the sales person basically said "oh looks like we've been charging you for a service that you didn't actually get to use" and then completely ignore the issue. If it was another rouse to get a conversation, I think it's a really offensive way to do so personally, implying that the company was billing me for a service I wasn't getting and not acknowledging "Oh wait, that's really wrong of us as a company" or at least looking into this further.
"It's their job" only goes so far; for me, the Mailgun rep really created a huge amount of discomfort and distrust to the point that they basically said the customer was being charged for a service not being applied to their account, and the sales rep did not even seem to care.
I absolutely would have driven far further and I too would share the same distrust. I'm not sure I'd write such a call to action like the customer, but I definitely would know that I would be looking to talk to anyone else at Mailgun about the entire incident.
The situation got heated as did the author, and frankly I have trouble blaming them. I don't see the author's responses as hostile or abusive; I do see the author as suddenly very concerned while considering that this might just be a bad sales person creating concern/worry for no reason, which I would personally be pretty angry about.
I guess it's all about your perspective on how to interact with strangers via email. For me, I think it's best to keep an open mind and have empathy with someone reaching out instead of demeaning them for a strategy that they personally didn't craft. The rep saying "You're right, it's a low effort sales template" was his way of saying that it's not his preferred choice either, but he has his hands tied and this is how he puts food on the table.
It just seems really weird to take all of that and then jump to a massive conclusion that everyone should stop using Mailgun as a mail provider. The author took an innocuous email, created a battle which he won, and then decided to start a war.
I'm less taking issue with the absolute specifics of the email and more with the decision to turn this into something I'm reading about on the front page of HN.
In this specific case, someone somewhere is lying about services being provided. If that's sales then that's not great. If that's accounts/billing then that's probably worse. In any case it's a pretty terrible look for the company concerned, and understandably results in an erosion of trust.