Most cold emails are terrible. You know this because you get them. "I hope this email finds you well." It doesn't. Delete.

The average professional gets 120 emails a day. You have about three seconds to earn the next three seconds. If your subject line is boring, you're done. If your first sentence is about you, you're done. If your email is longer than four sentences, you're done.

Here's what a cold email that works looks like:

Subject: [specific thing about their company]

Body: I noticed [specific observation about their business — something that shows you actually looked]. [One sentence about the problem this implies]. I helped [similar company] [specific result]. Worth a conversation?

That's it. Four sentences. No "I hope this finds you well." No "My name is X and I work at Y." No three-paragraph company history. No attachments. No calendar link in the first email.

The key is the first sentence. It has to prove you did your homework. Not "I love what your company is doing" — that's generic flattery and everyone sees through it. Something specific. "I noticed your checkout page doesn't offer Apple Pay, and your audience skews mobile." "I saw you're hiring three SDRs, which usually means outbound is working but not scaling." "Your blog post about X was wrong about Y, and here's why that matters."

That specificity accomplishes two things. It proves you're not blasting a thousand people. And it establishes that you understand their situation. (This is the same reason copy is strategy — specific words do more work than clever ones.)

The result should be a number. "I helped Acme Corp increase their email conversion by 35%." Not "I helped Acme Corp improve their marketing." Numbers are specific. Specific is credible. Credible gets replies.

The ask should be small. "Worth a conversation?" is better than "Would you be available for a 30-minute call next Tuesday?" The first is easy to say yes to. The second requires checking a calendar and making a commitment. You want them to reply, not commit.

Follow up exactly twice. The first follow-up, three days later: "Bumping this up — any thoughts?" The second, a week later: "Last note from me — just want to make sure this didn't get buried." After that, stop. Three emails is persistent. Four is annoying. Five is spam.

The math of cold email is simple. Send 100 good emails, get 10-15 replies, have 5-7 conversations, close 1-2 deals. That's the baseline if your emails are specific and your offer is real. If you're getting fewer than 5 replies per 100, your emails are bad. If you're getting replies but not conversations, your offer is bad.

Cold email works. Bad cold email doesn't. The difference is specificity — knowing who your customer actually is.