How to write a cold email that gets replies

A cold email has one job: get a reply. Not to sell, not to explain everything you do, not to impress. Once you write with that one job in mind, most of the rules follow on their own.

The four-part structure

Almost every cold email that works for me has the same four short parts.

1. A first line about them. Something specific you noticed: a hire, a new product, a post they wrote, the market they sell to. Not a compliment, and not about you.
2. The problem you think they have. One sentence, in their words. "Most agencies your size lose a day a week to reporting" lands better than any description of your product.
3. What you do about it. One or two sentences, ideally with a result for a company like theirs.
4. One easy question. Something they can answer in a line: "Worth a look?" or "Who handles this at {{company}}?"

That's usually under 80 words. Read it on your phone before you send it; if you have to scroll, it's too long.

An example

Hi Sara, saw that Northwind just opened a second office in Austin. Usually that's when outbound starts eating the team's mornings. We set up and run cold email for agencies your size, and the last one went from 4 to 19 booked calls a month. Worth a quick look?

It's about them, it names a likely problem, it says what we do with one result, and it asks one easy question.

Personalise the part that matters

Personalisation doesn't mean a different email for every person. It means a first line that could only have been written to them, and the rest of the email written for their type of company. Merge tags handle names and companies; the first line is where the effort goes.

Write first lines by hand for your best leads. For the rest, AI can write a first line from each lead's company and role, which you then read before sending. Check your merge tags with the merge tag preview, so nobody receives "Hi {{first_name}}".

Subject lines: short and plain

Two to five words, often lowercase, with nothing that sounds like marketing. "quick question", "idea for northwind", "sara's austin office". Test yours with the subject line tester, which also shows how much of it fits on a phone.

What to leave out

• Paragraphs about your company's history and achievements.
• More than one link, and in a first email ideally none.
• Images, logos, colours and buttons. A cold email should look like a note from a person.
• Requests for 30 minutes of a stranger's time.
• Sales words like "free", "guaranteed" and "act now". The spam word checker catches them.

Follow-ups people answer

Many replies come from follow-ups, not the first email. Three or four steps over two to three weeks is plenty. Each follow-up should be shorter than the one before and add something new: a different angle, a short example, a useful resource. "Just bumping this up" adds nothing. And stop the moment someone replies, whatever they say.

Grade it before you send

Paste your draft into the cold email grader. It checks length, reading level, how much the email talks about them rather than you, and whether there's one clear question. Then send yourself a test and read it on your phone.

In mailzy, the AI writer can rewrite an email, write versions to test against each other, and fill a personal first line for every lead, all inside the campaign editor, and you see every word before it's sent. See the AI writer.