Cold emails are one of the most misunderstood — yet most effective — tools in the modern marketer’s arsenal.
Most people either send them wrong or avoid them altogether out of fear they’ll come off as spam. When done strategically, with the right mix of personalization, timing, and value, cold emails can actually open doors to partnerships, clients, and opportunities that other channels simply can’t touch.
In this post, I’ll walk you through a proven approach to cold emailing that’s rooted in trust-building and business growth to definitively demonstrate the value of these campaigns.
What Is a Cold Email and Why It Still Works in 2025
Cold emails often get dismissed as outdated or spammy, but in reality, they remain one of the most effective and scalable outbound strategies—especially when executed with precision and intent.
I will be honest in. that I avoided them for the longest time as well because I am a recipient of them, but I also know firsthand of many cold email success stories from people in my network. Based on what I learned from them and my own experiences, I want to set the record straight on the topic with this blog post.
Let’s begin with the definition:
A cold email is an email that is sent out without prior contact or an indication that the email is wanted. Unlike spam, which sends out massive amounts of emails without intention or personalization or email marketing, cold emailing relies on targeted information to present personalized and intentional emails.
Legal compliance is still required when sending out cold emails. Fortunately, legal compliance in a cold email is as simple as offering a way to opt out of receiving communication.
Spam is so often decried for its failure to address anything meaningful or personal. Cold emails, to prevent falling into this same trap, should be completed using a 1:1 asynchronous outreach. This will give you a psychological edge, as it will build social proof and help your audience feel more connected.
While it may not always come to the forefront of your mind, cold emailing remains a top lead generation tactic across B2B sales, with a prospective ROI of $42 to every $1 spent. Those numbers alone suggest looking further into cold emailing.
Common Mistakes That Tank Cold Email Campaigns
Before you can master cold email outreach, it’s essential to understand the most common cold email marketing pitfalls that lead to ignored messages, low engagement, and damaged sender reputations.
As you develop your own approach to reaching out cold, audit your habits and practices to make sure you are not making the following mistakes.
Generic, Mass-Produced Copy
Cold email templates are more likely to fail than personalized emails because your audience needs to know that they are not merely a drop in the bucket. Personalization can help encourage a higher response rate by providing context for cold emailing.
Although many email campaigns rely on templates, cold email templates are less than ideal. Instead, when cold emailing, forego the template and opt for good old email personalization. Personalization is able to drive higher engagement by building trust and developing a connection with your audience.
Pitching Instead of Building Rapport
A cold email is not the time to take a “me-first” approach to sales. Focusing on your pitch first and foremost will destroy any social proof and make your cold email outreach feel aggressive.
Focus instead on starting conversations in your cold email outreach. Follow-up emails can help improve response rates and a call to action that focuses on relationship building will fare better than an overt sales pitch.
Further Reading: 10 Tips for Getting Quick Responses to Your Cold Emails (with Templates)
Ignoring Deliverability Best Practices
Email deliverability is not something to take lightly. Your technical setup can be just as important as your subject lines, so make sure your technical set up is prepared for effectively reaching your audience. This means making sure you know how and where your emails are being sent and how to troubleshoot any issues arising with delivery.
Warming up your domain, or gradually sending emails and increasing the number of emails being sent, is a great way to improve the likelihood of your email being seen. Understand that sending limits can also impact deliverability, so opt for 50 emails or less from a single email.
Bounce rate, spam words, and sender reputation can all negatively impact email deliverability and land you directly in the spam folder. For cold email lead generation to work, pay attention to your bounce rates, avoid common spam words, and adhere to best sending practices to build up a positive sender reputation.
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Further Reading: Email Deliverability Guide: 16 Best Practices to Reach More Inboxes
My 5-Step Framework for Effective Cold Emailing
Here is my repeatable, ROI-focused cold email process that can help drive responses and open doors—even in competitive industries. From step 1 to 5, you can develop an ideal cold emailing strategy and begin implementing it.
Step 1: Know Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Your email copy should be able to both bypass spam filters and answer common questions for your audience. Think of a cold email as an initial foray into customer service, and align your messaging to address audience pain points while working toward business goals.
First-party signals are preferred to develop cold emails for your email list. First-party signals rely on actual customer behavior for subject lines and content, and are therefore more likely to be accurate. Tools like Sales Navigator can help achieve this goal.
Step 2: Find and Verify Contacts
Subject lines are important to consider for your cold emails, but the actual addresses you are sending to are important, as well. Only send your fleshed-out cold email templates to clean, validated emails.
Although this can be a daunting task, tools like Instantly, Hunter, and Clearbit can help make sure that any cold email you send will go to a legitimate audience member and prevent the destruction of your credibility.
Step 3: Personalize With Purpose
Personalization goes beyond your subject line and even your recipient’s first name. To truly make the most of your call to action and any subsequent follow-up emails, personalize using recent events, content, and tools your audience may use.
Variables and microcopy can be used to show your value and relevance. When you use different variables to personalize your email “cold calling,” you build trust with your audience and humanize your communication.
Step 4: Craft the Right Message (Cold Email Formula)
Crafting the perfect formula to foster personal and professional relationships can be difficult. The formula I use is as follows:
- Subject Lines: Your subject lines should be short, driven by curiosity, and well crafted. This is not the time to create tags using clickbait titles or calls to action. Your prospect list offers an opportunity to build connection, so dial it back on the phrasing sales professionals might use in a transaction.
- Openings: In your opening, create a human icebreaker–not a pitch. The goal here is to create something like an email warmup for your audience, to introduce buyer personas and develop a personal connection.
- Body of Email: Include one clear value proposition for your audience to consider, focusing on results over features. Because spam reports often occur in response to sales-heavy language, instead demonstrate value without overtly selling.
- CTA: Your call to action should be low friction to continue to encourage your lead magnets. Consider “Worth a quick reply?” or “Want the full breakdown”?” Both offer low-stakes options to begin a two-way messaging relationship without the stress of making an immediate purchase or commitment.
Crafting the right message can take time. Using A/B testing, you can evaluate how well your audience members are responding to your approach to cold emails, and adjust as needed.
Step 5: Automate Intelligently, Not Aggressively
Customer experiences are important for your success, so it is similarly important to automate intelligently, without becoming too aggressive. I have several tools I like to recommend to make automation easier. These include GMass, Mailshake, and Lemlist.
As you work on business outreach, develop a basic structure to emails. A follow-up cadence of 4-8 emails (whether through direct email or LinkedIn) can help develop the right cadence while limiting the risk of bounces and improving inbound sales.
Finally, use retargeting and remarketing as follow-up strategies when soft bounces, messaging costs, and other barriers make email outreach difficult or slow.
Further Reading: What is Email Marketing Automation and How Much Can You Actually Automate?
Cold Email Use Cases (Beyond Just Sales)
While most associate cold emails with lead generation, they’re actually versatile tools for relationship-building across sales, marketing, recruiting, and PR. Some of the ways I use cold emails for purposes beyond sales include:
- B2B client acquisition. B2B client acquisition is great through cold emailing, as you have a perfect opportunity to improve customer experiences and cultivate relationships.
- Event promotion or co-marketing partnerships. Event promotion and partnerships are proposals in and of themselves, but cold emails can help drum up interest and provide a framework for social selling.
- Recruiting high-level talent. Cold emails can help recruit high level talent by forging connections and developing relationships among sales professionals.
- Influencer and podcast outreach. Cold emails can function as outreach tools, even in the absence of a specific sales pitch or product pitch. Cold email a prospect list when you are developing a series of partnerships.
- Securing media mentions or backlinks. Cold email prospecting can also be useful to secure media mentions or build backlinks. A cold email campaign helps build a solid catalog of backlinks and social sharing.
Although I primarily suggest using cold emailing as a way to boost sales, there are numerous ways to incorporate this marketing practice into your overall strategy.
Advanced Strategies for Today
Once you’ve nailed the basics, it’s time to level up your outreach with sophisticated strategies that boost engagement, drive higher reply rates, and build multi-touch campaigns.
Multi-Channel Campaigns
Multi-channel campaigns combine emails with LinkedIn DMs or ads. As long as your multi-channel campaigns are managed well–whether with in-house teams or through a CRM solution–they can be extremely useful and even lucrative.
One case example might include the following steps: Email → LinkedIn → Retargeting ad → Call. Retargeting will look different from industry to industry, but retargeting via Twitter posts, emails, and LinkedIn messages can all achieve the same end of circling back, supporting connection, and fostering loyalty.
Video & Voice Notes in Cold Email
Multimedia outreach can significantly improve reply rates. Multimedia emails are more likely to capture interest and make it seem as though you are developing a legitimate email or sales relationship.
Tools like Loom, Sendspark, and Vidyard can be used to make sure that your email bounce rate does not increase, while adding media to your emails. Make sure that your CRM platform or other suite of tools effectively include media without sacrificing deliverability.
A/B Testing Subject Lines and CTAs
A/B tests are invaluable. From your subject lines to your calls to action, A/B testing can help you determine which cold email template performs best among your audience members.
Most email platforms measure both your response rate and your open rate. Each tells a different story. Your subject line may be more closely tied to your open rate, while your response rate may be more likely to reflect the efficacy of your call to action.
Further Reading: 10 Top Tips To Write Convincing Email Subject Lines That Get Opened
Creating Value-Driven Follow-Ups
Follow-up emails can initially be used to remind, but you do not want your email signature to be one of always poking or prodding. Instead, you can shift from reminder emails to nurturing emails, to further develop trust and loyalty.
There are many content types you can include in your follow-up emails. Articles, tools, playbooks, and humor are all great ways to offer value and support email deliverability to strengthen ties between you and your audience.
Further Reading: How to Write Effective Follow-Up Emails
Cold Emails Still Matter — Make Yours Count
Cold emailing isn’t a silver bullet — but when used intentionally, it can become your most scalable relationship-building tool.
It’s about showing up in the right inbox with the right message at the right time.
Whether you’re selling a product, building your consulting pipeline, or opening doors to collaboration, the cold email strategies I’ve shared here are built for long-term growth, rather than quick wins.
Start with clarity, lead with value, and always make it personal. That’s how you turn cold emails into warm conversations that convert.
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