The first time I tried Shotgun Skyscraper technique, it was a failiure. I hardly got any links from a couple of hundred emails that I sent.
But this time I used it again for a client in a different niche(meditation niche) and it worked great.
First of all I made sure that the piece I was promoting was the best one. And it was. Way more comprehensive and detailed than the rest.
Secondly, I incentivized to link to us by saying that we gonna share their piece with our decent social following.
From the 300 odd recipients, we got 15 links and 3 guest post opportunities.
The number of links would have been higher if the mailing tool that I used did not fuck up. It sent the follow up as a separate email instead of replying to the original email so people were asking me what I was following up for
So yeah the tactic works in noncommercial niches. Not so much in commercial niches!