How to Write a Cold Email: The Exact 6-Line Structure We Use on Every Campaign

To write a cold email that gets replies: keep it to 6 lines and under 120 words, open with the prospect's first name inline in the first sentence, make one offer framed as a value question, and never mention a call, a time, or a link. Plain text only, one idea per email, and a lowercase "ps:" line carrying your proof. That is the entire structure we use on every campaign we run.

We write cold email for a living, sending up to 50,000 emails a month per client, and every campaign follows the same house style. At that volume you learn fast which habits earn replies and which get deleted on sight. This guide codifies the style line by line, with worked examples.

What makes a cold email work?

A cold email works when the offer is strong, the structure lets the offer land fast, and the execution reads like a human. Three separate layers, in that order: the offer decides whether the campaign works at all, the structure decides what gets read first, and the writing decides whether it feels like a note or a pitch.

Most guides obsess over the writing layer. That is backwards. No sentence-level polish saves an email offering nothing: the prospect did not ask to hear from you, so the email has to put something genuinely valuable in front of them, not a description of your services. Building the offer is covered in our copywriting and offers playbook. Everything below assumes you have one worth writing about.

What are the rules every cold email follows?

Every cold email we send obeys the same non-negotiable rules, whatever the client, industry, or offer. The house style:

• 6 lines, 120 words maximum. Shorter wins. One sentence per line, a line break after every sentence, no walls of text.
• First name inline, not a greeting line. The prospect's name sits inside the first sentence. No "Hey Sarah," line at the top.
• One idea per email. One offer, one thread of logic, one question. Two ideas means two emails.
• The CTA is a value question, not a meeting request. Never mention calls, meetings, or time anywhere in the email.
• No links, no URLs, no domains. Nothing with a dot and a TLD, ever. It renders as a link and reads as spam. Write dotted names with a dash instead.
• Plain text. No HTML formatting, no images, no logo signatures.
• The ps line is lowercase: "ps:". Used for a proof point, not a second pitch.
• Subject lines are 2 to 4 words, plain, lowercase preferred. They should look like a colleague sent them.

Two more bans. Never open the offer with "happy to" or "we'd love to", because favour-framing gives away power; frame it so the prospect evaluates value instead. And never close with "worth a chat?" or any "worth a [noun]?" construction. Those are on every template the prospect has already deleted.

How do you structure a cold email line by line?

A cold email has five possible parts: an opener, a relevance line, the offer, the CTA, and a ps. Not every email uses all five. Our shortest variants are just offer plus CTA, and they are often the strongest, because a self-evidently valuable offer converts best with nothing in the way.

The opener: name inline, straight into substance

The first sentence carries the prospect's first name inline and opens directly into the point. No greeting line, no "hope you're well", no introducing yourself. Two openers we rotate constantly: a poke-the-bear question that makes them picture a better state, or a hook statement that names an uncomfortable truth.

Suppose you sell an onboarding tool to SaaS companies. A poke opener: "Sarah, if new customers hit their first win in 2 days instead of 2 weeks, would that move retention?" A hook opener: "Sarah, most onboarding flows lose the customer before the product ever gets a chance." Both earn the next line. If the honest answer to your question is "no" or "who cares", the email dies right there, so write questions where leaning forward is the natural response.

The relevance line: why them, at scale

The relevance line connects the opener to the offer, and it must be true for everyone on the list. We send at volume, so the copy can never depend on bespoke per-prospect research. The reliable pattern is a mission plus credibility sentence: "We've helped [number] [specific persona] achieve [outcome] without [the pain they'd expect]." The "without" clause is what turns a bare stat into proof. Name the persona precisely, not "companies", and the outcome in their language, not "results".

The offer: the reason the email exists

The offer line puts something concrete and valuable on the table: a built asset, a sample deliverable, free work, a guarantee. Two shapes cover most of our campaigns. The first is the conditional value question: "If I put together a sample onboarding teardown for {COMPANY}, would that be useful?" The offer is teased, and you produce it after they reply. The second is Built-For-You: "We just built {COMPANY} a sample onboarding flow for your trial signups." The asset exists, so the email leads with the fact of it, then the payoff, then the ask. Both shapes put the decision on the prospect to evaluate value, never on you to offer a favour.

The CTA: a value question, never a meeting

The CTA is a pure interest check. Two formats, rotated across variants: the value question ("Would that be useful?", "Would that be valuable?") and the reply trigger ("Reply yes and I'll send it over."). That is the complete list of moves. No calendar links, no "do you have 15 minutes Tuesday", no next steps. A cold prospect will say yes to something valuable long before they give a stranger their time, and the meeting conversation belongs in the reply thread, after they raise their hand. We map the escalation from interest check to booked call in the cold email CTA and offer ladder post.

The ps: proof in the most-read line

The ps is often the most-read line in the email, the natural home for a proof point that would clutter the body. Lowercase, after the sign-off: "ps: we've helped [number] [persona] get [outcome] without [pain]." Not every email needs one, and no two variants in a set should carry the same proof in the same position.

A full Built-For-You example:

Six lines of substance, one idea, no links, no meeting ask. The bracketed proof is where your real number goes; if you do not have one, cut the ps rather than invent one.

What should the subject line be?

The subject line has one job: get the open while looking like normal work email. It is not an ad headline. Keep it to 2 to 4 words, lowercase preferred, no punctuation tricks, no emojis. The most reliable subject we test is the company name on its own, because it is impossible to ignore and looks like someone talking about their business. Plain baselines like "quick question" and "intro" are mocked online and still perform, so always test your creative subject against one of them. The baseline wins more often than people expect.

What are the biggest cold email writing mistakes?

The biggest mistakes are structural, not stylistic: asking for a meeting, including links, and writing marketing copy instead of a note. This is the do and don't list we QA every campaign against:

The links rule is the one people fight us on. Every URL, calendar link, and email address in cold copy hurts deliverability, and no exception is worth it; the full reasoning is in why links kill cold email. The "free" ban surprises people too: it is one of the strongest spam-filter triggers, so we write the no-cost lever as "on us" or "no charge", and re-scan the copy after every edit, including edits a client hands back.

We learned the fake-personalisation lesson the hard way. Early copy drafts claimed specific findings about each prospect's setup, the kind of line that only works if someone actually did the research. At volume, nobody did, and the claim reads as false the moment a prospect asks a follow-up question. The rule that came out of it: the first email's claim must be true for the entire list, or framed as an offer to do the work. Tease the deliverable, produce it after they reply.

One last calibration point. A single well-written email is not a campaign. We run every offer through multiple structural variants, hold the offer constant, and let the data pick the winner, because which structure converts is a test result, not a house preference. Every variant still obeys the rules above.

FAQ

What is the ideal length for a cold email?

A cold email should be at most 6 lines and 120 words, and shorter usually wins. Our strongest variants range from around 30 words to about 100. One sentence per line, a line break after every sentence, and one idea for the whole email. Cut every word that is not working.

What is the best CTA for a cold email?

A value question or a reply trigger, never a meeting request. Ask "would that be useful?" or "reply yes and I will send it over". Never mention a call, a meeting, or a time, and never use "worth a chat?" constructions. The CTA is a pure interest check.

Should you put links in a cold email?

No. Never put URLs, email addresses, or domain-like patterns in cold email copy. Anything with a dot and a TLD renders as a link, and links in cold email read as spam to filters. If a name normally carries a dot, write it with a dash instead.

Should a cold email start with Hey plus the name?

No. We put the prospect's first name inline in the first sentence instead of a greeting line, so the email opens straight into substance. It reads like a quick note from a peer rather than a formatted letter, and it saves one of your six lines.

What makes a good cold email subject line?

Two to four words, plain, lowercase preferred, and it should look like something a colleague would send. The company name on its own is the most reliable subject we test. Always test a creative subject against "quick question" or "intro" as a baseline; the baseline wins more often than people expect.

Do cold emails work better in plain text or HTML?

Plain text, always. HTML templates, logos, images, and banners read as marketing email to both filters and prospects. A cold email should look like a short note a real person typed, because that is the only format cold prospects reliably read and reply to.