A cold email has two jobs. First it has to arrive in the inbox, and then it has to earn a reply from someone who has never heard of you. Most teams work hard on the second job and ignore the first, then wonder why nothing lands. This playbook covers both. You get the technical setup in plain English, a structure for writing emails people answer, and 45 templates grouped by situation. As with all our playbooks, we do not quote open or reply rates. Your list, your market and your offer decide those. We show you how to measure your own.
Deliverability first: get to the inbox
Mailbox providers decide where your email goes based on who you are (authentication), how people react to your mail (complaints, replies, deletes) and how you send (volume and patterns). If any of these look wrong, your best email will sit in spam.
Gmail's sender rules require bulk senders, defined as those sending 5,000 or more messages a day to personal Gmail accounts, to authenticate with SPF and DKIM, publish a DMARC policy, offer one click unsubscribe on marketing mail and keep user reported spam rates low. Google's guidance is to stay below 0.1 percent and never reach 0.3 percent. Most SDR teams send far less than 5,000 a day, but following the same rules protects every sender.
- Use a separate sending domain, such as a variation of your main brand domain, so your main domain's reputation is protected.
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on that domain. Your email provider's help pages show the exact records.
- Start slow. Send a small number of emails a day from a new mailbox and increase gradually over several weeks.
- Send plain text or very light formatting. Avoid images, attachments and many links in a first email.
- Clean your list. Verify addresses before sending, and remove bounces immediately.
- Include a simple way to opt out, and honour it straight away.
The structure of an email people answer
Keep first emails short enough to read on a phone without scrolling: roughly 50 to 120 words. Use this shape.
- Subject line: two to five words, lower case is fine, specific to them. Example: 'lead routing at [Company]'.
- First line: about them, not you. A trigger, an observation or a question.
- Second part: the problem you think they have and why you think so.
- Proof: one line about a similar company or a result, described honestly.
- Ask: one small question. Not a 30 minute meeting.
- Signature: name, role, company, one link. No banners.
Subject lines that get opened for the right reasons
A subject line should make the email feel relevant, not tricky. Avoid 'Re:' on a first email, fake urgency and all caps. Those can win an open and then lose trust.
- [Company] + [topic]: 'Acme hiring plan'
- A question: 'question about your demo flow'
- A mutual name: '[Mutual] suggested I write'
- A trigger: 'your Pune office'
- A specific idea: 'idea for [product] onboarding'
Cadence: how many emails and when
A common structure is four to six emails over three to four weeks, each adding something new. Mix in LinkedIn and phone where it fits. Send on weekdays at a time that suits the buyer's time zone. Stop the sequence the moment someone replies, even with a no.
What to measure
Open tracking has become unreliable because many mail apps load images automatically or block them, so do not judge emails by opens. Measure bounces (list quality), replies and positive replies (message quality) and meetings booked (offer and ask). Review weekly and test one change at a time.
Rules and respect
Laws on commercial email differ by country, and if you email people in the US, UK, EU or India, check the rules that apply, such as identifying yourself clearly and honouring opt outs. Under India's DPDP Act, keep only the personal data you need and use it for the purpose you collected it for. When someone asks you to stop, stop and remove them.
The 45 templates
Replace everything in [brackets] with real details. Read each one aloud before sending, and change the words until it sounds like you.