YourOutreachSUCKS
    The record

    Why this
    site exists

    Cold outreach is broken in a specific, repeatable way. The same mistakes appear in case after case. This site is a forensic record of the pattern.

    // Origin

    The same message, from a different sender, every week

    It started with an inbox. Not one inbox - everyone's inbox. The same broken merge tag, the same generic compliment, the same premature calendar request. Sent by different SDRs at different companies in different industries, arriving with the same structural failure underneath every one of them.

    The problem isn't that salespeople are lazy. Most of them aren't. The problem is that the training is wrong. Cargo-cult AIDA. Templates passed down without explanation. Sequences built by copying sequences. The structure gets inherited but the reasoning behind it doesn't.

    YourOutreachSUCKS exists to make the pattern visible. Not to shame individual senders - they're always redacted - but to show the anatomy of the failure clearly enough that it becomes recognizable before it gets sent.

    "The critique is structural, never personal. The sender is redacted. The pattern is the point."

    // Editorial standards

    How we decide what counts as an offense

    Every offense in the taxonomy was added only after appearing in multiple cases. Nothing is included on aesthetic grounds alone. The standard is: does this pattern meaningfully reduce the probability that the message achieves its intended goal?

    Who submits cases?
    Recipients of bad outreach, submitted voluntarily and marked as Verified submission. Some cases are Sourced from public posts where senders shared their own messages. Every case displays its provenance badge.
    How are senders protected?
    All identifying information is removed. Company names, sender names, URLs, job titles that would identify an individual. The message anatomy survives. The person doesn't.
    Who decides the score?
    Scores are computed from the offense taxonomy using fixed weights. Critical offenses deduct 1.5-3.0 points. Major offenses deduct 0.5-1.5. Auto-fail offenses cap the score at 2.0 regardless of other content.
    Can I appeal a verdict?
    The verdicts aren't personal. If you recognize your own message and disagree with the analysis, the methodology is fully documented in the scoring section of every case page.
    What makes a good case?
    A message that fails in an interesting or instructive way. Rare edge cases and unusual patterns get prioritized over obvious failures we've already documented.
    // What this is not

    Three things we are explicitly not doing

    —Not a platform for revenge. If you submit something because you're angry at a specific person, we'll still redact them completely. The case will be published or rejected on its merits, not your feelings about the sender.
    —Not a sales tool. This site has no commercial motive. No sponsored placements, no affiliate links, no upsell to a course or coaching service. The critique stands on its own.
    —Not a complete picture. Every case here is a failure. The archive is not representative of all outreach - good outreach doesn't get submitted. The Good Outreach section addresses this directly.
    // The taxonomy

    How the offense canon was built

    The taxonomy started with four offense types that appeared in the first five cases. It now has 30. New offense types are added only when a pattern appears independently in three or more cases - not because it's annoying or stylistically weak, but because there's evidence it reliably reduces effectiveness.

    Every offense type has a canonical definition, a severity weight, and a documented example. The taxonomy is the spine of the site - it's what makes the scoring system defensible and what separates this from editorial opinion.

    JG
    Jack Gierlich
    Founder · YourOutreachSUCKS

    Growth operator and four-time founder. Currently running IndexThread (Reddit-native SEO infrastructure), Leal Health (oncology patient engagement), Actually Health (direct-pay telehealth), and DiffLens (AI writing artifact detector).

    Previously led growth at early-stage B2B SaaS companies across healthcare, fintech, and developer tools. Has spent 10+ years on the receiving end of cold outreach, across four companies, hundreds of inbound pitches per month, every channel. Built YourOutreachSUCKS after noticing the same structural failures repeating across senders, industries, and years.

    The perspective here isn't academic, it's operational. Every offense in the taxonomy is something that has landed in a real inbox, been evaluated against a real buying process, and failed in a specific, documentable way.

    ↗ jackgierlich.com↗ LinkedIn
    Site statistics
    Cases filed151
    Offenses tagged673
    Offense types30
    Auto-fails on record10
    Channels documented3
    Lowest score ever0.1 / 10
    Case history
    Apr 2026
    AI self-audit tool launched at /analyze
    Apr 2026
    State of Cold Outreach 2026 published
    Mar 2026
    Case #0042 filed · 12 cases total
    Mar 2026
    PAIN-ASSUMPTION + AI-WRITING added to taxonomy
    Feb 2026
    Site launched · 4 cases published