How To Write A Cold Email In 2024

In this article, I show you how I wrote a cold email that received a 30%+ positive response rate.

This isn’t hypothetical; this is a real campaign I launched that achieved significant results.

I will cover the following:

- What you need to understand before writing your cold email
- My template (30%+ positive response rate)
- Best practices
- Final thoughts

What you need to understand before writing your cold email

Before I show you the cold email that I wrote (30%+ positive response rate), I want you to understand something extremely important:

You must write your cold email around your lead list.

You cannot write a cold email without first having your lead list.

Your lead list is everything.

You need to build a list of people that show some kind of evidence that they either already use some version of your product or service, or are in need of your product or service.

If you send cold emails to random people, you will not get results.

To be clear, when I say “build a list of people that show some kind of evidence that they either already use some version of your product or service, or are in need of your product or service”, this does NOT mean building a list of people based on generic attributes like {industry}, {job_title}, {location} etc.

What I mean specifically is the following:

Your lead list must contain highly relevant decision makers that already need what you are offering; some examples include:

• If I’m launching a cold email campaign to get users for Emailchaser, then I need to build a list of people that already use a cold email sending tool. Contacting random business owners or salespeople isn’t going to be effective because most people don’t even know what a cold email sending tool is, and aren’t in the market for such tools.

• If I’m launching a cold email campaign to get new clients for my SEO agency, then I need to build a list of people that either already pay for SEO services or show signs of needing these services immediately (i.e. are hiring for SEO roles, already run Google ads etc).

• If I’m launching a cold email campaign to get users for a tour reservation software, then I need to build a list of tour companies that already use tour reservation software.

Building a highly relevant lead list is the most difficult part of cold email.

There is a reason why database tools like Apollo are so popular: most people are lazy and cheap, and don’t want to put in the effort that is required to build a great lead list.

Often, there will be no tools available that can automate the list building for you.

You must think where your potential customers are, and do whatever it takes to make a list of these people.

Sometimes, that means doing something that is manual and time consuming. Fortunately, you can hire virtual assistants from websites like onlinejobs.ph at a low cost to do time consuming tasks.

If you are expecting to build an amazing lead list for under $100, then you are in for a rude awakening. There might be some situations where you can build a list at a relatively low cost, but if you’re serious about getting results, you can’t be cheap on your list.

You might need to hire someone from Upwork to build a custom scraper, or maybe hire someone from onlinejobs.ph to manually sort through 2,000 people.

I cannot tell you exactly what is best for you, since the answer varies for each business. If it was easy and obvious, then everyone would have successful cold email campaigns, but the reality is that 95%+ of people completely fail at cold email because they never even understand how to build a great lead list.

In the following section, I will show you how I built the lead list that I used in my cold email campaign that received a 30%+ positive response rate.

My template (30%+ positive response rate)

Below is the email that I wrote that received a 30%+ positive response rate:

Subject:
Instantly review on G2

Body:
Hi Victoria,

I built a tool that is similar to Instantly, but instead of using spintax, we use GPT-4 Turbo to slightly rewrite each email so that no two leads receive the exact same email copy.

Interested in joining our beta testers?

You get to use Emailchaser for half a year, just looking for your honest feedback in return.

Let me know if you want to try Emailchaser without any obligations.

Cheers,
George

P.s. Your review on Instantly's G2 page caught my eye, prompting me to contact you.

You can see that I wrote this email around my lead list.

I built a list of people that gave our competitor (Instantly) a review on their G2 page. The reason why I did this is because I knew that if someone gave a review to Instantly’s G2 page, then they are already a user of Instantly, and thus are already in the market for cold email software.

This is not a list of random business owners, this is a list of people that already use cold email software, my ideal customer type.

I’m not saying that everyone should build the exact same lead list I described above, I’m simply using it as an example for what a relevant lead list looks like, where your leads already show signs of needing or using your product/service (not just generic business owners).

Below is the framework that I used when writing this cold email around my lead list:

Subject line:
Mention where you found the prospect

Body:
Hi {first_name},

Say what you do and why it's 10x better than whatever the prospect is currently doing.

Mention a case study or something impressive to build credibility i.e. 2,000+ companies already use Emailchaser.

Make an offer that is so good they can’t say no which has no risk for the prospect + a Call-To-Action that can be answered with a simple yes or no (doesn’t require prospect’s time).

Best,
George

P.s. Mention where you found the prospect so they think you’re actually sending a one-to-one email (this is tied to your subject line), and not mass spam + ask the prospect to forward your email to the right person if this isn’t their area (only include this if you have space as your email should be under 100 words).

Important: You will notice that I didn’t insert any AI personalized first lines, since these AI personalization tools decrease your response rate, as they make your emails look AI generated and insincere. It’s much better to get straight to the point. What matters is relevancy, not gimmicky “personalization” based on random data you scraped from their LinkedIn profile or website. Relevancy comes from your lead list, not cheap AI tools.

Best practices

Below are some best practices that you should follow when writing your cold emails:

Follow ups
You should only include two follow-up emails max in your sequence.

I often only include one follow-up email, since too many follow-up emails results in a high spam complaint rate, which negatively impacts your deliverability.

If you want to learn how to write a great follow-up email, then check out my article How To Write A Follow-Up Email.

Plain text
You should send your cold emails as plain text (not html).

Plain text emails have much better deliverability, meaning that you are more likely to land in the primary inbox (not spam).

If you send your cold emails through Emailchaser, then your emails will be sent as plain text by default. You can learn more about why plain text emails are great in my article Plain Text vs HTML: Which Is Better For Email Deliverability?

Length
You should keep your cold email under 100-words.

If your email is too long, then your response rate will be significantly lower, since no one has time to read an essay.

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Signature
You should include a signature in your cold emails, as it helps your leads understand quickly who you are, thus increasing the likelihood that they will respond.

Emailchaser allows you to add a plain text signature to your emails. You can learn how to add a signature to your cold emails in Emailchaser in my article How To Write A Professional Email Signature.

Structure
I recommend that you follow the structure that I share in the below LinkedIn post:

Final thoughts

The best way to write a cold email is to start with your lead list.

You need to build your lead list first, then write your cold email.

Once you’ve built your lead list, you can use the framework described above.

If you need help building your lead list, then I recommend that you read my article How To Build A Lead List For Cold Email.

Additionally, if you need inspiration, then check out my other article 5 Best Cold Email Templates.

Finally, if you want to launch a campaign that generates new leads for your business each week on autopilot, then read my article How To Create An Evergreen Cold Email Campaign.