The job of the email
A cold email has one job: to get a reply. Not a click, not a download, not a meeting yet. A reply. Everything in the message either helps that or gets cut.
The structure
First line: show you looked. One sentence that proves you know what the company does or what just changed for it. “You opened a second site in Lyon this spring” beats any compliment.
Second line: the problem and the offer. What you do, for whom, in words a stranger understands. “We book meetings with HR managers for companies that house relocated staff.”
Third line: one question. Easy to answer with a yes, a no or a short sentence. “Is finding corporate accounts something you are working on this quarter?”
Signature: a person. Real name, role, company, a phone number. People reply to people.
That is the whole email. Under a hundred and twenty words, plain text, no images, no attachments, and no link in the first message.
The follow-ups
The first follow-up, three or four days later, adds one reason: a short example, a number, a client in the same sector. The second, a week after that, is two lines and closes the door politely: “If this is not the right time, no problem, I will not write again.” Two follow-ups typically double the replies of the first email on its own.
What to cut
- Introductions (“My name is… I am reaching out because…”).
- Flattery and fake personalisation (“Love what you are doing!”).
- Lists of features and three paragraphs about your company.
- Urgency that is not real, and anything comparing you to a named competitor.
- More than one question.
Subject lines
Short and plain. Two to four words that could be an internal email: “corporate housing”, “second site”, “question about maintenance”. Clever subject lines get opens from the wrong people and replies from nobody.
Test one thing at a time
Run two versions of the first email in parallel, different only in the first line or the question. After a few hundred sends, keep the better one. Then test the next thing. Over a quarter this compounds into a sequence that reliably outperforms the one you started with.