Write personalized, under-100-word cold emails that earn replies.
# Cold Outreach Email Writer You write cold outreach emails for sales, recruiting, partnerships, and professional networking. Given information about the prospect and the sender's offering, write a short, personalized cold email that gets replies. ## Guidelines - Keep the entire email under 100 words (subject line excluded) - Write a subject line of 6 words or fewer - Personalize the opening line to something specific about the prospect - Get to the point within the first two sentences - Include exactly one clear call-to-action - Do not mention attachments - Do not use "I hope this email finds you well" or similar filler openings - Write in a conversational, peer-to-peer tone - Sign off with just the sender's first name ## Output Format Subject: [subject line] [email body] [sender first name]
Sender: Maya Chen, co-founder of DataPipe (ETL tool that syncs warehouse data to CRMs in real-time) Prospect: Jordan Ellis, VP of Revenue Operations at Lattice (HR tech, 800 employees) Context: Jordan recently posted on LinkedIn about spending 2 days fixing a broken Salesforce sync. DataPipe solves exactly this problem. Goal: Get a 15-minute call
Opens by referencing Jordan's LinkedIn post about the Salesforce sync issue. Positions DataPipe as relevant without a hard sell. CTA is low-commitment (quick call, not a demo). Under 100 words. Subject line under 6 words. No 'I hope this finds you well.' Feels human, not templated.
Sender: Alex Park, senior recruiter at Stripe Prospect: Priya Sharma, Staff Engineer at Datadog, known for her work on distributed tracing systems Context: Priya gave a talk at KubeCon 2025 on 'Tracing at Scale' that Alex watched. Stripe is building a new observability platform. Goal: Start a conversation about the role
References Priya's KubeCon talk with a specific detail (not just 'great talk'). Connects her expertise to what Stripe is building. CTA is exploratory ('worth a conversation?' not 'apply now'). Under 100 words. Feels like genuine interest, not a mass recruiter blast.
Sender: Tom Rivera, founder of GrowthLab (performance marketing agency specializing in DTC brands) Prospect: Sarah Kim, Head of Marketing at Olipop (the prebiotic soda brand) Context: Olipop just raised a Series C and their Meta ad library shows they are running 40+ creatives with inconsistent messaging. GrowthLab helped a similar beverage brand (Poppi) cut CAC by 35%. Goal: Offer a free creative audit
Shows homework by referencing the Series C and the creative inconsistency (without being insulting). Name-drops the Poppi result as social proof. CTA is the free audit offer (zero commitment). Under 100 words. Tone is helpful, not salesy.
Sender: Lisa Huang, BD lead at Notion Prospect: Marcus Johnson, CEO of Loom (async video platform) Context: Both companies share a user base of remote-first teams. Notion is exploring native video embeds and wants to discuss an integration partnership. Goal: Explore a potential integration
Frames the partnership as mutually beneficial, not a favor. References the shared remote-work user base. CTA is an exploratory chat, not a formal proposal. Under 100 words. Tone is peer-to-peer (both are well-known companies), not deferential.
Sender: Dev Patel, founder of an AI code review startup called ReviewBot Prospect: Nina Chen, Engineering Director at Shopify Context: Dev and Nina briefly chatted at the GitHub Universe afterparty about Shopify's code review bottleneck. Nina mentioned her team spends 30% of their time on reviews. Goal: Continue the conversation and schedule a deeper chat
References the specific conversation at GitHub Universe (the 30% stat). Does NOT re-explain the entire product. CTA builds on the existing rapport ('pick up where we left off'). Under 100 words. Warm but not overly familiar.
Sender: Rachel Torres, founder of BrandVoice (AI tool that maintains brand consistency across channels) Prospect: James Liu, CMO at Calm (meditation app) Context: James tweeted a thread about how Calm's brand voice gets diluted across 12 different content channels and 4 agencies. BrandVoice directly addresses multi-channel brand consistency. Goal: Get James to try the product
Opens with the tweet thread as the hook (quotes or paraphrases a specific point). Shows how BrandVoice maps to the exact problem he described publicly. CTA is low-friction (free trial, quick look, not a sales call). Under 100 words. Feels like a genuine response to his problem, not an opportunistic pitch.
# Optimization Program: Cold Outreach Email ## Core Objective Optimize the system prompt to produce cold emails that get replies by being genuinely personalized, respectfully brief, and easy to say yes to. ## Strategic Direction ### The Psychology of Cold Email Cold email lives or dies on three things: 1. **The open** — Subject line must earn a click without being clickbait 2. **The first sentence** — Must prove you did your homework (or get deleted) 3. **The ask** — Must be small enough that saying yes costs nothing Guide the optimizer to nail all three consistently. ### Key Principles to Optimize Toward - **Specificity is personalization.** "I saw your LinkedIn post" is not personalized. "Your post about spending 2 days fixing a broken Salesforce sync" is. The prompt should demand specific references. - **Brevity is respect.** Under 100 words is not a suggestion, it is a constraint. Every word must earn its place. The optimizer should ruthlessly cut filler. - **Low-commitment CTAs convert.** "Worth a quick look?" beats "Schedule a 30-minute demo" every time. The CTA should feel like the next natural step, not a sales process milestone. - **Peer-to-peer tone.** The sender is not begging for time. They are offering something potentially valuable. The tone should be confident but not arrogant, helpful but not desperate. ### Subject Line Rules - 6 words or fewer, always - Specific enough to be relevant, vague enough to create curiosity - No ALL CAPS, no exclamation marks, no emoji - Good: "That Salesforce sync problem" / "Quick question about Loom" - Bad: "REVOLUTIONIZE Your Revenue Operations!" / "Partnership Opportunity for Loom Inc." ### Common Failure Modes to Watch For 1. **The filler opening** — "I hope this email finds you well" / "My name is X and I work at Y" / "I wanted to reach out because..." These waste the most valuable real estate in the email. 2. **Feature vomiting** — Listing product features instead of connecting to the prospect's specific situation. 3. **The multi-CTA** — "Would love to chat, but also feel free to check out our website, and here is a case study..." Pick one ask. 4. **The humble brag** — "We have helped 500+ companies including Google, Meta, and Amazon..." Social proof should be surgical (one relevant example), not a brag list. 5. **The essay** — Anything over 100 words. The reader decided to delete or reply within 8 seconds. Respect that. 6. **Template smell** — If you swap the prospect's name and the email still works, it is not personalized. ### Iteration Guidance - **Early iterations (1-8):** Lock in the structure: specific hook, bridge to value, single CTA. Get the word count under control. Kill all filler phrases. - **Mid iterations (9-16):** Sharpen personalization. The prompt should teach the model to extract the most compelling detail from the prospect context and lead with it. Also refine subject lines. - **Late iterations (17-25):** Polish tone across different scenarios (sales vs. recruiting vs. partnerships). A recruiter email should feel different from a SaaS pitch, but both should follow the same structural principles. ### What Good Looks Like For a SaaS founder reaching out after seeing a LinkedIn post: **Bad:** > Subject: DataPipe - Real-time Data Sync Solution > > Hi Jordan, I hope this email finds you well. My name is Maya and I am the co-founder of DataPipe. We help companies like yours sync their warehouse data to CRMs in real-time. I noticed you work in Revenue Operations and thought our solution might be relevant... **Good:** > Subject: That Salesforce sync nightmare > > Jordan -- your LinkedIn post about burning 2 days on a broken Salesforce sync hit close to home. We built DataPipe specifically for that problem: real-time warehouse-to-CRM sync that does not break. > > Worth 15 minutes to see if it fits your stack? > > Maya The optimizer should push every output toward the second example.