What is cold email? Not spam. Not dead. Just badly done most of the time.

The three question test

Before any email goes out, it should pass three questions.

1. Did you pick this person for a reason you could say out loud?
2. Is the message about their problem, not your product?
3. Can they say no in one line and be left alone?

If one answer is no, you are sending spam with better formatting. If all three are yes, you are sending cold email, and the rest of this page is about doing it well.

What a good one looks like

Here is an example of the shape. It was written for this page, it is not a client email, and it is not a template to copy.

Look at what is missing. No attachment, no logo banner, no five paragraph pitch, no list of features. It is short, it is about them, and it gives them an easy way out. That last part matters more than it looks, because people reply to messages that respect them.

Why it still works

An email lands in the one place a stranger cannot be hidden from by an algorithm. There is no feed deciding whether your buyer sees you. You can write to the 400 people who could actually buy, instead of paying to reach 40,000 who could not. And a cold email costs time and attention, not ad spend.

The channel is not the problem. The average email is. Most of what lands in a founder's inbox is generic, long, and about the sender. Do the opposite and you stand out by default.

Why most of it fails

Three reasons, in this order.

• Wrong person. A bad list means a perfect email read by someone who can't buy.
• Wrong message. Copy that talks about the sender's company instead of the reader's problem.
• Wrong folder. A badly set up sending domain lands in spam before a human sees a word. We cover this in cold email deliverability.

Is it legal?

In most places, yes, with rules. In the United States the FTC's CAN-SPAM rules apply to business email too, and the FTC says plainly that the law makes no exception for business to business messages. Other countries are stricter. Read the compliance guide before you send anything.

When cold email is the wrong tool

Cold email is a poor fit when you sell to consumers, when a customer is worth very little, or when you have no clear offer yet. It takes weeks of setup and steady volume before it pays back, so it works best when a single new customer is worth a few thousand dollars or more. That is why we do not take on companies selling under $3k a deal.

Questions people ask