Yeah, to me some evidence that the person has attempted to understand what I do and why this product would actually help me (considered honestly) is what distinguishes interesting contacts from spam. I'm in academia rather than industry, but I think some at least vaguely similar principles apply.
I get some cold emails that, while slightly disguised, boil down to: "a paper you wrote came up in a Google scholar search for 'Prolog', and we also have a logic and/or rule system that's great, pls see this website and let me know if you want any details on licensing". Those are not usually that interesting, since of course I know there are such systems out there, and can Google for them myself...
On the other hand, if you read in the Future Work section of a paper I wrote something along the lines of, "it'd be great if X existed, but it doesn't seem to", and you think you really have built something meeting the description of X, then emailing me saying so is usually quite interesting and non-generic.
Exactly! This is how I differentiate SPAM from legit e-mails too. I don't mind if somebody is offering me some service or something, why should I? If I have a problem to be solved, I would be happy to get the offer.
I get some cold emails that, while slightly disguised, boil down to: "a paper you wrote came up in a Google scholar search for 'Prolog', and we also have a logic and/or rule system that's great, pls see this website and let me know if you want any details on licensing". Those are not usually that interesting, since of course I know there are such systems out there, and can Google for them myself...
On the other hand, if you read in the Future Work section of a paper I wrote something along the lines of, "it'd be great if X existed, but it doesn't seem to", and you think you really have built something meeting the description of X, then emailing me saying so is usually quite interesting and non-generic.