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How to write a cold email

How to write a cold email for B2B: who to send it to, when, what to give first, subject lines, follow-ups, sending setup and the UK rules.

A cold email is a message sent to a person with no existing relationship with the sender, written to open a business conversation. In B2B sales it usually goes from a founder or a salesperson to a decision-maker at a company that fits what the seller offers.

Whether it gets answered depends mainly on what the sender knows about the reader's business before writing, which is where the question of how to write a cold email has to start.

What is a cold email, and how is it different from spam?

A cold email is one message written to one chosen person about something relevant to their job. Spam is the same message sent to a list nobody chose. The difference sits in three places: the recipient was selected for a stated reason, the sender is identified, and saying no takes one reply.

Mailbox providers enforce that line. Google's email sender guidelines, in force since February 2024, require every sender to authenticate with SPF or DKIM and keep the spam complaint rate below 0.3%, and require senders of 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail to publish DMARC and offer one-click unsubscribe. Each spam report feeds into where later messages from the same domain land.

Does cold email still work for B2B sales?

Cold email works for B2B sales when the list is narrow and every message carries something specific to its recipient. Three changes have made the volume version harder. Complaint thresholds mean a careless campaign damages the sending domain. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection loads remote images in the background for users who switch it on, so open counts no longer show whether anyone read anything. And decision-makers at small companies receive sequenced pitches from every category of software they might buy. A small team writing a few dozen researched emails is barely affected.

When is cold email the right channel?

Cold email suits any first contact where no referral exists and the sender has something specific to say. The same method that opens a sales conversation covers partnership approaches, recruiting, press pitches and investor outreach, with two things changed: what gets handed over, and what is asked for. A recruiter hands over the reason a person's published work matches the role; a press pitch hands over the story with its data attached.

Where a mutual contact exists, an introduction from them beats any cold email, so check for one first.

Who should receive a cold email, and when should it arrive?

A cold email should go to the person who owns the problem it describes, at a company that resembles the seller's best customers, at a moment when something has changed to make that problem current.

A message to an info or sales inbox is read by whoever triages it. At a company of twenty people, the owner of a sales problem is often the founder or the first head of sales, and asking "who handles this?" shows the sender never looked at the team page. The company match should come from the attributes shared by deals that closed and absent from deals that did not, which is the method behind building an ICP scorecard from closed-won deals.

Advice about the best weekday or hour to send rests on open data, which stopped being reliable once mail clients began loading images automatically. The sharper question is whether the recipient has a reason to be in market now.

Which events put a B2B company in market?

The strongest buying events at small B2B companies are changes to how the company sells:

  1. A first salesperson starting, so someone now has to prioritise a list nobody wrote down.
  2. A CRM migration or a renewal quote for a higher tier, which puts the sales stack up for review.
  3. A tool the team relied on being shut down or acquired, which forces a comparison of alternatives.
  4. A founder handing sales to someone who inherits accounts and no method.
  5. Several sales or marketing roles posted together, which says more than one role.
  6. Funding raised for a stated purpose, judged on what the money is for rather than the amount.

Two events on the same account say more than either alone. The wider set of buyer intent signals that predict purchase readiness behaves the same way, and the practical difficulty is usually that those signals sit in separate systems, which is the problem of tracking buying signals across tools.

Use the event to decide who and when, never as the opening line. A company that has just raised money receives a stack of congratulation emails, and naming the raise puts the sender in that stack, so open on what the event implies. Never write that someone visited a page on the sender's site, which reads as surveillance. And act while the event is live: onboarding help offered after a new salesperson has built their own system is noise.

What has to be decided before writing?

Three decisions come before the first sentence: the outcome the email exists for, the facts about the recipient it will rest on, and the item it will hand over.

The outcome of a first email is a reply. A meeting or a demo comes later, once the reader has something worth discussing.

Five questions locate the facts:

  1. Who exactly is this for, by name and role?
  2. What problem does the seller solve for someone in that role?
  3. What is this company doing about that problem now?
  4. What is wrong or missing in how they do it now?
  5. What would change if it were done differently?

Questions three and four produce the email's content. Research stops at one fact that is specific to this company, checkable from a public source and relevant to the problem. The company's website, case studies and careers page usually supply it, with public DNS records, Companies House filings and the recipient's own posts as backup.

How far should personalisation go?

Personalisation means a fact that could only appear in an email to this recipient; a first name dropped into a template is mail merge.

In falling order of value: something the recipient wrote or said in public, quoted exactly; a fact about the company, such as the tools its site loads or the roles it is hiring for; and what the recipient's role is measured on. Schools and hobbies read as flattery, and a line such as "noticed the team is focused on growth" is weaker than none, since any automated tool can generate it.

At scale, the shared parts are written once per segment and one line per recipient carries the specific fact. If a list is too long for one researched line per person, cut the list rather than the line.

What does it mean to give before asking?

Giving before asking means the email hands the recipient something useful about their own business, which they keep whether or not they reply. It replaces the usual paragraph of seller benefits with a finding about the reader.

To find it, work out what a paying customer walks away with and produce a small version for this one prospect.

What counts as a give?

A give is a short piece of work, built from public information, that shows the recipient something about their business they had not looked at:

Each finding names its source in the sentence that reports it: "going by the job listing markup, the careers page runs on a hosted applicant tracking system". If the finding is wrong, the source was wrong, and the sender looks careful.

Why does a give work where proof is missing?

Cold email advice usually calls for social proof: a named customer, a result, a number. A new company or a seller entering a new market has none, and inventing any loses a technical reader the moment they check.

A finding about the recipient's business does the work proof was meant to do. It shows competence, anyone can verify it, and its subject is the reader. The rule that keeps it honest: report what was found, never what would be found, and build the give before writing the email.

How should a cold email be structured?

A cold email holds up best when it follows a finding, cost, yes structure: one observed fact about the recipient's business, what that fact costs them, and an offer they can accept with a one-word reply.

How should the opening line read?

The opening line should state the finding. Mail clients show the subject line and the first words of the body together in the inbox, so both are read as one thought before the message is opened, and a greeting spends that space on nothing.

Weak, as sample copy:

Hi Ruth, I hope this email finds you well. My name is Sam and I run a security consultancy for logistics firms.

Stronger:

Ran a public DNS lookup on ashgrovelogistics.co.uk. There is no DMARC record.

What goes in the body?

The body says what the finding costs, in the recipient's terms, and stops. The cost should follow from something observed rather than a pain the sender assumes: "the invoices on the contact page go out from that domain" is observed, while "logistics firms are struggling with fraud" is a guess. Product features belong nowhere in a first email, and the sender gets one line at most, as the reason the finding exists.

What makes a call to action easy to answer?

A call to action is easy to answer when "yes" is the whole reply. "Want me to send it over?" costs nothing to accept. A request for a call, or a calendar link, costs the reader time and gives them nothing to evaluate first. Framing that makes refusal easy also lowers the cost of replying, as in "would it be odd to send the write-up?". One ask per email.

How long should it be, and does it need a signature or P.S.?

Keep the body under 125 words, and nearer 80 for a founder reading on a phone. Use one or two sentences per paragraph, plain text, no images and no logo banner.

The signature carries name, role and company, plus a postal address and a plain opt-out such as "Reply 'no thanks' and I will not write again." A P.S. gets read, which is why it tends to become a second pitch; leave it out unless it carries something short and separate, such as where to check the finding's source.

How do AIDA, PAS and BAB compare with this structure?

AIDA moves from attention to interest, desire and action. PAS states a problem, agitates it and offers a solution. BAB describes the situation before, the situation after and the bridge between them.

All three ask the sender to describe something the reader cannot check, such as how bad the problem feels or how good the future would be, and from a stranger that reads as presumption. The finding, cost, yes structure swaps each unverifiable part for an observation. The older frameworks suit later emails, once a conversation exists.

How are cold email subject lines written?

Cold email subject lines work best as two to four lowercase words naming what the body is about, the way a colleague labels an internal note. Examples, as sample copy:

Write the subject line after the body, so it names the finding the body contains, and check it alongside the opening line. Leave out promotional words such as free, guarantee and limited time, and any number the sender has not measured.

Why do bait subject lines and fake replies fail?

Bait subject lines trade trust for an open, and the open was never the goal. "Do not open this" earns a glance and a sense of having been played. A first message beginning "Re:" claims a conversation that never happened, and a recipient who searches the inbox and finds nothing has good reason to mark it as spam. That complaint counts against the sending domain, and in the United States the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits subject lines likely to mislead the recipient about the content of the message.

How to write a cold email, shown in two examples

Every company and person in the two examples below is invented for illustration. Before sending, each specific would be replaced with something actually found.

Example: a give built from public information

The sender runs an invented IT security consultancy. The recipient is the operations director at Ashgrove Logistics, an invented company.

The body runs to 72 words, opens on the finding, names its source twice and asks for a yes.

Example: an email timed to a buying event

The sender runs an invented sales consultancy. The recipient is the founder of Brackenlea Studio, an invented 20-person design agency that has just posted its first sales role. The email never mentions the advert.

The hiring event decided the timing and the give; the email discusses only the agency's own work.

Reuse a template's structure and write each sentence fresh, since reused wording produces the mail-merge effect readers watch for. At a few dozen emails, a mailbox and a CRM to log replies are enough tooling; a sequencing tool earns its cost only when volume outgrows what one person can research.

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How many follow-ups should a cold email get?

A cold email should get two follow-ups, three touches in total, and then stop:

  1. Day 0: the finding, the cost and the offer of the give.
  2. Day 3, in the same thread: a second finding from the same piece of work, such as "Also noticed the SPF record still lists a mail service the site no longer uses. Same write-up covers it."
  3. Day 14, under a new subject line: a different angle on the same problem, ending with an exit, such as "Assuming this is not a priority right now, which is fair. I will leave it there, and the write-up is yours if it is ever useful."

A reply ends the sequence. A "yes" gets the give straight away, complete, with a suggested time to walk through it. A "no" gets thanks and a place on the suppression list.

Each extra message to someone who has not answered adds complaint risk without adding information, and seven or eight timed touches read as automation. A later email to the same company should follow a new buying event, never the calendar.

What has to be in place before the first send?

Before the first cold email goes out, the sender needs a separate domain, authenticated and warmed, sending plain text from a mailbox in a real person's name.

A spam complaint against a cold campaign damages whatever domain sent it, and the primary domain carries the website, product login and invoices. A second domain with a similar name, redirecting to the main site, carries the outbound. The setup runs in order:

  1. Buy the domain and leave it unused for two weeks.
  2. Create one mailbox in a person's first name; role addresses such as sales@ read as bulk mail.
  3. Publish one SPF record, a DKIM key and a DMARC record starting at p=none, tightening DMARC after 30 days of clean sending.
  4. Run a warm-up service for two to four weeks, and leave it on afterwards.
  5. Send a first batch of five to ten emails, each with its give already built.

That puts four weeks between buying a domain and the first cold email. Once sending, remove hard-bounced addresses at once and read a single spam complaint as a targeting problem.

Why should cold email skip open tracking?

Open tracking places a tiny remote image in the message, which adds an image and a tracking domain that filters weigh against delivery. Mail Privacy Protection fires the image for readers who never opened anything, so the count misleads. And it records the behaviour of a stranger who never agreed to be tracked. Reply rate needs no pixel.

Is cold email legal in the UK and the EU?

Cold email to businesses is legal in the UK without prior consent when the recipient is a corporate subscriber, provided the sender is identified and the recipient can opt out. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office, treat limited companies, limited liability partnerships, Scottish partnerships and government bodies as corporate subscribers. Sole traders and other partnerships are individual subscribers, and marketing email to them needs prior consent.

UK GDPR applies separately, because a named work address is personal data. The usual lawful basis for B2B outreach is legitimate interests, backed by a short written assessment of why the outreach is reasonable for the recipient. The right to object to direct marketing is absolute, so every opt-out is honoured at once and kept on a suppression list from the first email, and recipients are entitled to know where their details came from.

What about the EU, the US and other regions?

EU member states apply the ePrivacy rules through national law. Germany is materially stricter than the UK, and B2B marketing email there generally needs prior consent, so check each country before writing to it. The US CAN-SPAM Act requires no prior consent but does require accurate sender details, a subject line that does not mislead, a valid postal address and an opt-out honoured within 10 business days. Canada's anti-spam law requires consent, which can be implied where a person publishes their business address conspicuously and the message relates to their role.

None of this is legal advice, and one conversation with a data protection lawyer before sending at volume is worth booking.

How is cold email measured and improved?

Cold email is measured by replies per email sent, split into positive and negative, with bounce rate and complaints as health checks. Opens are unusable for the reasons above, and clicks barely apply to an email with no link.

Improvement comes from reading the replies: record which give and which buying event produced each one, and which objections came back. Split testing subject lines needs far more sends than a small team makes, so change one thing at a time and judge it on replies.

Small teams win at cold email on timing

The standard playbook assumes the sender wins by sending more contacts, more steps and more variants. Authentication rules and complaint thresholds penalise that model, and a buyer receiving dozens of sequenced pitches has little reason to open the next one.

A small team's real constraint is research hours. Each finding takes work, so only a handful of companies can receive one, and choosing that handful by a reason to be in market is the most important decision in the process. The buying event decides who gets an email and when; the finding, cost, yes structure decides what it says; and three touches followed by silence keep the sending domain healthy for the next event at the same company.

What to check before the first cold email goes out

Each item below matches a common way cold email fails:

  1. The sending domain is separate, its SPF, DKIM and DMARC records verify, and warm-up has run for at least two weeks.
  2. The recipient is a named person who owns the problem, at a company resembling the best customers, with a current reason to care.
  3. The give was built first, and the opening line states its finding.
  4. Every fact names its source, and every name and figure is spelled correctly.
  5. The body is under 125 words with one ask that "yes" answers.
  6. The subject line is two to four honest words, with no "Re:" and no bait.
  7. There is no tracking image, no image of any kind and no unrequested attachment.
  8. The footer carries identity, a postal address and a plain opt-out.
  9. The email has been read aloud once, and anything that would sound odd said in person is cut.
  10. Follow-ups are set for day 3 and day 14 and stop the moment a reply arrives.

Once a reply becomes a conversation, the stages the deal moves through are set out in how to build a sales process.

See which buyers are ready, and why

MeetIQ reads a company's website to learn what it sells, finds the companies and people most likely to buy, shows which are ready now and why, and drafts the first email for approval. Every closed deal sharpens the next search.

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