Outbound cold email

Purpose

Write cold email that a named person could only receive from you, that has a real reason to arrive this week, and that asks for one small thing. Every draft is staged for a human to approve. Nothing is sent from this skill.

When to use

• Writing a first-touch email or a full sequence for an account, contact, list, or signal.
• Reviewing an existing draft before it is approved.
• Setting the cadence or copy standards for a segment.

Route elsewhere when:

• The contact has replied. Use reply-handling.
• The request is for a social message or a phone script. Use linkedin-outreach or cold-call-outreach.
• The request is about inbox setup or domain health alone. Use email-deliverability.

Inputs

• The target: company, contact role or name, and whether the contact is senior (VP and above) or practitioner (manager and below).
• The hook: a trigger event, a relationship, the contact's own published content, a company initiative, or a persona pain.
• The org's voice: approved past sends, any stated voice rules, and the offer's one-line value proposition.
• The cadence recorded for this motion. If none is recorded, use the defaults below and say so.
• Any existing unsent sequence to this contact. Edit it. Do not duplicate it.

If there is no hook, push back before drafting. A message with no reason to arrive now is a blast.

Procedure

Step 1: Choose the hook

Use the strongest hook you have, in this order:

1. A trigger event (a funding round, a leadership change, a product launch, a hiring spree).
2. A relationship (a shared contact, a prior conversation, an event you both attended).
3. The contact's own published content (a post, an article, a talk).
4. A company initiative visible in public sources.
5. A persona pain. Usable, but say so in the reasoning, because it is the weakest hook.

Never invent a signal. Tracking-type data (website visits, intent scores, profile views) never appears in the message, whatever the hook.

The hook shapes the angle. It rarely appears in the copy. Open with what the hook means for the reader, not with the news itself. An email that opens by congratulating someone on a funding round or a new hire is the clearest sign that a machine wrote it.

Step 2: Match the voice

• Approved past sends are style examples. Imitate their tone and rhythm.
• The skill's strategy rules outrank the examples. If an example breaks a rule, follow the rule.
• Never copy wording from another organization's material.
• If there are no examples yet, draft plainly from the ICP pains, the value proposition, and the persona. Tell the user the voice is provisional.
• Draft in the language the prospect buys in. A wrong-language sequence is an error.

Step 3: Write the email

• Opener: one sentence on the hook's implication, in the contact's frame. The event itself never opens the message.
• Body: one researched detail at most, referenced rather than displayed. One proof point at most, attributed and sized to the company. No feature list. No invented customer, statistic, or quote. A proof point that is only "helps teams like yours" does not count.
• Call to action: one ask, the smallest real thing that could happen this week. A short list to review, one account to check, or a sample to look at. Offering concrete work beats asking for someone's time.
• Altitude: pitch to the reader's level. Senior readers hear risk and strategy. Directors hear operational pain. Practitioners hear the day-to-day problem.
• Shape: choose one of three shapes per email.
  • Signal, then proof, then ask (for a fresh trigger).
  • Problem, then cost, then fix (only when the pain is documented in the ICP).
  • Before, then after, then bridge (for a change that is easy to picture).
• Plain text: no HTML, no images, no tracked links where avoidable. Link instead of attaching.

Step 4: Set the sequence and cadence

Use the cadence recorded for this motion. Otherwise use these defaults:

Rules for the sequence:

• Each follow-up is shorter than the one before. Each one stands on its own and brings something new: new proof, a sharper insight, a useful asset, or a peer story. A follow-up with nothing new is skipped.
• Change the value proposition between emails. A useful default: step 1 on saving money, step 2 on making money, step 3 on saving time.
• The break-up asks a timing question, such as "Is this not a priority right now?" Once it is sent, honor it. No further messages.
• One channel per sequence unless the motion says otherwise. Do not reference one channel from another.
• Multi-thread only for large accounts (around 200 or more employees), committee signals, or when asked. Use a different angle for each contact. Never send the same email twice into one company.

Step 5: Set length limits

These are starting defaults. Calibrate them to the client's own results.

• Practitioners (managers and below): up to 90 words, 3 to 4 sentences.
• Senior readers (VP and above): up to 60 words, 2 to 3 sentences.
• Follow-ups: shorter than the first email, in every case.
• Subject line: 2 to 5 words, lower case, looks internal.

Step 6: Run the final gate

Run all seven checks on every message before it is staged. A failed check means rewrite, not tweak.

1. Delete the opener. Does the email still make sense? If not, the personalization is decoration. Rebuild it around the hook.
2. Check the close for "worth". "Worth 15 minutes", "worth a quick look", and "worth a conversation" are common enough that they reduce replies. Ask for the thing itself.
3. Check sentence one. If it names a funding round, a launch, a hire, or any other event, rewrite it. Open with what it means for the reader.
4. Check uniqueness. Could this email go to anyone else this week? If so, it is a blast in disguise.
5. Check the ask and the length. One call to action. Within the per-seniority word caps in Step 5, and shorter for follow-ups. Subject line 2 to 5 words, lower case. More "you" than "I" or "we".
6. Check the proof. For an email, the proof must be a named or measured result. "Helps teams like yours" is not proof.
7. Read as the recipient with a full inbox. Is there any reason to reply beyond politeness?

Step 7: Stage for approval

• Check for an existing unsent sequence to the same contact, and edit it rather than create a second one.
• Stage each message with its reasoning: who it is for, why now, which hook, which shape, and which cadence.
• Never send without explicit approval in the current conversation. Never attach files. Link instead.
• A channel with missing contact data is fixed or dropped. Do not guess an address.
• If the org has a sending tool, stage the sequence there as unsent. Do not start it.

Messaging frameworks

Choose one of these eight frameworks for each email, and name it in the output. Use only one per email.

1. Before and after: show the move from the current state to the desired one.
2. Pattern interrupt: break the expected pattern of an inbox to earn a read.
3. Ask before pitch: lead with a question and earn the right to pitch.
4. Upfront value: give something useful before asking for anything.
5. Do the math: calculate the likely impact using the buyer's own numbers, shown as working.
6. Challenge of similar companies: point to a pattern seen across companies of the same type, without naming a customer you cannot reference.
7. Neutral insight: share a third-party resource or finding that the reader would value.
8. Typical problems by role: address a pain that is specific to the reader's role.

Match the framework to the reader's altitude and the trigger. A pattern interrupt on a warm trigger wastes the trigger. Ask-before-pitch on a cold list with no trigger is usually the safer choice.

Deliverability limits

These cap volume, whatever the copy quality. They apply to the sending domains and mailboxes the client uses.

• Cold email goes from outreach domains only, never the primary company domain. Plan for 3 to 5 outreach domains.
• Cap each mailbox at about 30 emails a day.
• Warm new domains for 4 to 8 weeks before the first cold send.
• Verify 100% of addresses before a campaign starts.
• Keep the bounce rate below 2%. Stop and investigate above 5%.
• Keep the spam-complaint rate below 0.1%, and the unsubscribe rate below 0.5%.
• Keep sustained reply rates above 5%. Below 2% for a campaign is a diagnosis trigger, not a reason to add volume.
• Set SPF, DKIM, and DMARC correctly on every sending domain before the first send.

Benchmarks

Reply-rate baselines by outreach type. Use them to set expectations and to spot problems. Replace them with the client's own results as they come in.

Diagnose by symptom:

Give-first rule

The reply must cost the prospect nothing. A first email earns a reply in one of two ways: it delivers value up front, or the offer is so good that saying yes is the only thing left to do. Anything that asks the prospect to work first, such as imagining the value, choosing a time or acting before receiving, lowers the reply rate.

Pick the goal first. For awareness, send the value and end, with no ask. For a call, send the value before the call, so the call is a walkthrough rather than a pitch.

If the real offer is high-ticket, sell the free step, not the engagement. Naming a large price in a first email puts it in the prospect's head before any value has landed. The outcome to sell is what the free step delivers, such as a finding, a mini tool or a finished artifact.

The calls to action this rules out include a bare request for a quick call, an offer of a custom document nobody has seen value from, and any call to action that needs more than a yes.

Email structure option: R.E.P.L.Y.

Use R.E.P.L.Y. as a structure for a first email, alongside the messaging frameworks above. Name the structure in the output, as with the frameworks.

• R, relevance: open with why this reaches the person today. A real signal, such as a hire, funding, a launch or content they posted, beats a general opener.
• E, empathy: name the specific pain in the words the persona would use. Take the words from voice-of-customer answers.
• P, payoff: deliver something useful inside the email, such as an insight, a benchmark, a resource or a small audit. This is the heart of the email.
• L, low-friction ask: one small, reversible next step. Usually one call to action.
• Y, you-focused: count sentences about the reader against sentences about the sender. If "we" and "our" outweigh "you" and "your", rewrite.

Diagnose in order: list, offer, copy

When replies are low, diagnose in this order: list, then offer, then copy. As a default weighting, the list carries about 40 percent of reply performance, the offer about 40 percent, and the copy about 20 percent. These weights are defaults, to calibrate with the team's own results.

Copy is the lever writers control, so it is the one most often over-worked. A good list and a specific, believable offer carry more weight than clever wording. Confirm the sending infrastructure before judging the copy, because mail that lands in spam gets no replies however well it is written.

Output

For each sequence, staged for approval:

• The target, the hook used, and the reason it is timely now.
• Each email: subject line, body, word count, and the seniority cap it was checked against.
• The cadence and the angle of each step.
• Any gate check that failed on the first pass, and what was changed.
• Placeholders for any proof point or figure the approved material does not provide. Do not fill them with estimates.

Quality bar

A strong email has a hook that fits almost no one else that week, substance that traces back to the ICP and the value proposition, and nothing that reads like a template. Watch for the proof point growing into a feature list, the call to action shrinking to a calendar link, a segment blast presented as personalization, and feedback that is given but never written into the org's voice notes.