The complete guide to cold emails: What works, what doesn’t, and how to win in 2025

B2B cold email subject lines

Cold email isn’t new, but the way we do it has changed.

Today, inboxes (and their owners) are smarter, meaning the cold email strategies that worked five years ago are not background noise. 

Luckily for you, we’re a B2B email marketing agency that knows a thing or three about sending cold emails that get replies and generate leads. After sending millions of cold emails for thousands of B2B brands, we’ve seen firsthand what gets results and what gets ignored. 

This guide distils everything we’ve learned into one place: strategy, timing, tools…you name it. So, whether you’re getting started with cold email or looking to sharpen existing outreach approaches, you’ll find the expert insights needed to launch cold outreach campaigns that deliver. 

Cold email best practices: A snapshot

Hungry for results but short on time? We’ve got you covered. Here’s our list of things you can do to start winning with cold email outreach now.

1. Do your homework before pressing send → Know who you’re targeting, what they care about, and why your message matters.
2. Keep messaging clear and concise → Skip the filler. Get to the point quickly, and make every word earn its place.
3. Respect the rules and regulations → Cold emails aren’t illegal, but stay compliant with GDPR, PECR, and CAN-SPAM – your deliverability (and reputation) depends on it.
4. Lead with value above all else → Focus on the problem you solve for the recipient, not your company bio. Credentials mean nothing without relevance to their pain points.
5. Personalise or prepare to fail → Generic emails get generic results. Tailor your message to the person, not just the persona.
6. Don’t disregard the importance of follow-ups → Most replies don’t come from the first email. A smart, well-timed sequence is what drives engagement.
7. Test, track, and optimise → Cold email isn’t a set-and-forget channel. The best results come from ongoing tweaks and insights.

What is cold email marketing?

Cold email marketing is the practice of sending personalised, one-to-one messages to people who haven’t engaged with your business before, typically to introduce your service, start a conversation, or generate leads.

It’s a core tactic in B2B sales outreach. Unlike warm emails (which follow prior contact or opt-in), cold emails are unsolicited, but that doesn’t mean they’re unwelcome. The best cold emails feel timely, relevant, and useful to the recipient, even if they’re coming out of the blue.

Done right, cold email prospecting gives you a scalable, low-cost way to:

• Reach decision-makers in your ideal customer profile (ICP)
• Test different value propositions or angles quickly
• Build a predictable outbound pipeline without relying as much on ad spend

But success depends on precision. 

Good cold email outreach is never a numbers game; it’s a strategy. It relies on clean, permission-friendly data, tailored messaging, and clear intent. Whether you’re booking demos, setting up intro calls, or nurturing long sales cycles, the cold email should act as a smart first step, not a scattergun sales pitch.

That’s why cold emails that get responses are rarely flashy or salesy. They’re focused, respectful, and built around what the recipient actually cares about.

Cold email vs spam

Cold emails get a bad rap, and it’s not hard to see why. Inboxes are full of lazy, irrelevant, mass-sent messages that waste everyone’s time.

But here’s the thing: not all unsolicited emails are spam. And in B2B, cold email done properly is one of the most effective ways to generate leads and book meetings.

So what’s the difference?

A cold email is a personalised, targeted message sent to someone who hasn’t previously engaged with your business. Provided you provide clear value, relevance to the recipient, and clear opt-outs, it’s entirely legal.

Spam, on the other hand, is bulk, untargeted messaging sent without consent, often with misleading or deceptive content. It typically violates anti-spam laws like GDPR, PECR, or CAN-SPAM and risks penalties, domain blacklisting, and long-term deliverability damage.

Here’s what separates a complaint cold email from spam:

	Cold email	Spam
Targeting	Sent to a specific person in a relevant role	Sent to anyone with a working email address
Content	Personalised, value-led, relevant	Generic, pushy, and often misleading
Legality within B2B	Legal in the UK, EU, and US with clear opt-out	Often breaches GDPR, PECR*, or CAN-SPAM
Opt-out	Always includes unsubscribe or reply-to-remove	Often hidden or missing
Goal	Start a genuine, professional conversation	Push sales aggressively or deceptively

*A note on legality! In the UK and much of the EU, B2B cold email is legal under PECR, provided you’re emailing a business contact, the content is relevant to their role, and they’re given a clear way to opt out.

Best practice for differentiating cold email and spam

Even when cold emails are legal, buyer expectations might mean they land like spam. Cold outreach is only effective when it’s respectful, specific, and adds genuine value to the recipient’s professional life.

Our advice is this: if your cold email looks and feels like spam, it’s going to perform like spam. So double down on intent, relevance, and targeting to make sure your efforts don’t go to waste.

→ Read our in-depth guide for more information on how to avoid spam filters when sending emails.

How effective are cold emails?

Cold emails still work…and when done properly, they work brilliantly.

Cold outreach is one of the most direct, scalable ways to reach decision-makers, especially in industries where deals don’t always start with search. For B2B sales and lead generation, cold outreach consistently outperforms many higher-cost channels in ROI, pipeline generation, and speed to conversation.

But here’s the caveat: cold email performance lives and dies on execution. Poor data, lazy copy, and generic messaging will drag your numbers down. Targeted, personalised, well-timed emails are where the results come from.

It’s not left to chance. Cold emails work because they:

• Reach people who aren’t actively looking, but are a great fit
• Cut through noise with personalised, 1:1 communication
• Start conversations faster than most other marketing channels
• Work at scale without huge media budgets

They’re also easy to test and optimise, which means you can refine your messaging based on real buyer signals and scale what works.

BUT…and this is a big ‘but’…they only work if you get the fundamentals right.

Cold email isn’t like waving a magic wand and crossing your fingers. It doesn’t deliver without:

• Clean, accurate data
• Clear targeting and segmentation by role, company, and need
• Messages that feel authentic and tailored
• Strong follow-up sequences that are timed to perfection

On that note, Sopro’s approach to email outreach using AI-messaging is revolutionising the game. Unlike entry-level attempts that see an overreliance on large language models (LLMs) to draft band-average copy, we use a proprietary, multi-layered AI engine trained on over 97 million emails (and counting). Our system draws on over a decade of email prospecting experience to achieve truly personalised emails for every recipient. Not bad, right?

Cold email marketing strategies that work

Forget cheap hacks and silver bullets. In 2025, the best cold email strategies are built around clarity, value, and real audience relevance.

That means knowing who you’re targeting, understanding what they care about, and writing in a way that cuts through without trying too hard. It’s less about clever gimmicks, more about thoughtful messaging and smart sequencing that aligns with what your ideal customer persona (ICP) needs.

Based on over a decade of experience, here’s what we’ve learned about what separates effective B2B cold email outreach from the rest of the noise.

1. You have to start with the right audience

This isn’t up for discussion. No outreach strategy (whether it’s email, direct mail, social media, or otherwise) works without rock-solid targeting, meaning your cold emails are only as good as the list behind them.

The tighter the targeting, the easier it is to write something that actually lands, so start by narrowing your scope to what’s going to have an impact:

• Focus on one persona per campaign or sequence, and make sure it’s specific  – don’t write down something woolly like “marketing teams” if you really mean “CMOs” or “Heads of Demand Generation”. Defining your targeting parameters is the key to success.
• Filter your audience by firmographics like company size, sector, or tech stack to separate the high-quality prospects from those who will never realistically convert.
• Where possible, use buying triggers (e.g. news of funding rounds, recent hires, product launches, etc.) to validate and fine-tune your outreach.

2. Lead with value, not vanity

Sorry to break it to you, but at the end of the day, your recipient doesn’t care that you’re a market leader or that you “specialise in innovative solutions.” They care about what you can help them fix, so put them centre stage.

Get straight to the value you can add for them by:

• Highlighting a relevant pain point or opportunity (make sure you have well-built buyer personas to help identify these effectively).
• Show you understand their niche, ideally with success stories from previous partnerships to provide ROI proof.
• Offer something useful for free: a resource, insight, observation, or specific recommendation that they can apply to their business now. Research published in Psychologist World supports this tactic, referencing how, as humans, the “norm of reciprocity” means we feel obligated to return the favour when someone does something for us.

3. Keep it short and easy to digest

Research tells us that over three-quarters (79%) of users scan content they read on the web, and your emails are no exception.

Most people won’t read every word – they’ll skim for relevant information. And, if finding that feels too much like hard work, they’ll give up.

So make your cold emails effortless:

• Stick to 3-5 sentences (this shows you’re respecting people’s time by not overwhelming them with information)
• Use clear line breaks and avoid dense blocks of text
• Make your CTAs stand out like your life depends on it

4. Layer your outreach

One email won’t do the job when it comes to cold outreach. The average B2B buyer is busy, distracted, and managing an already full inbox, which is why well-timed follow-ups are essential. 

Make sure your cold email strategy includes:

• Well-planned sequences that nurture leads through your sales funnel
• A mixture of nudges and value-led messaging to keep things feeling dynamic
• LinkedIn follow-ups to add familiarity across channels

Ultimately, it’s about getting buy-in with a story. You’re not blasting out the same message time and again – you’re curating a narrative that gets a specific audience interested and ready to learn more from your team about how you can help them.’

5. Test and adapt

As cliche as it sounds, the best marketers are the ones who treat everything as a learning opportunity to evolve with their audiences. So, to be up there with the cold email greats, you need to split test:

• Subject lines
• Subdomain delivery
• CTAs
• Email length 
• Plain text vs HTML
• Media usage and placement
• Opening lines
• The impact of multi-channel reinforcement
• And more…

You also need to track reply quality, not just quantity, making sure you’re getting interest from the right people (you’d rather have 5 high-value responses than 50 dead-end ones, right?).

→ Hey, you! Do you want to know more about how to step your cold emails up a notch or 10? Read our guide on the best subject lines for sales emails to make an impact fast.

Building a cold email list that actually delivers

If you’re worried about open rates, replies, and subject line effectiveness, you’re not on your own…but a bulletproof email list is where you need to start.

Your cold email list is the fuel behind your entire outreach programme. If the contacts are a bad fit, outdated, or scraped from dodgy sources, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve written your message – it won’t land

Looking for tips? You’re in the right place. Here’s how Sopro approaches email lists to ensure top-tier results every time.

1. Focus on quality, not quantity → A spray-and-pray approach might be tempting, but resist. Smaller and more accurate lists of high-fit prospects will always outperform massive, messy databases.
2. Enrich your lead gen data before you send → Layer in job titles, tech stack, recent funding, or firmographics to make your messaging more relevant from the first line.
3. Use verified data providers → Work with providers who specialise in B2B outreach and offer compliance-backed, segmented contact data you can trust.
4. Validate your email addresses → Use a tool to clean your list before every send. High bounce rates tank deliverability and signal spammy behaviour to inbox providers.
5. Success depends on segmentation → Build separate lists for different industries, roles, or company sizes so your emails can be tightly targeted and specific.
6. Monitor and refine your list → B2B contacts may move roles, so regularly refresh your lists to avoid wasting sends on dead data. Also, track which segments generate the most replies, then prioritise and refine those groups to improve efficiency and ROI.

A word on bought email lists…

Buying email lists might seem like a quick win, but it’s a false economy. You’re essentially paying for poor-quality data, high bounce rates, and sub-par deliverability – none of which you want, right? 

The vast majority of purchased lists are:

• Outdated or inaccurate
• Poorly targeted and not segmented effectively for your business
• Non-compliant with GDPR and PECR
• Overused by other businesses

Sending to these lists can:

• Get your domain flagged or blacklisted
• Hurt your sender reputation
• Destroy your chances of hitting inboxes, even with future campaigns

If it’s not opted in or verifiably sourced for B2B communication, don’t touch it. Use credible, organic methods instead to craft a list you’re confident in, or engage the B2B email marketing experts to help instead.

Cold email cadence: How many should you send, and how often?

You’ve written a solid cold email. Great, but one message alone won’t cut it. The real results come from your cadence: the sequence, timing, and follow-up structure that turns a cold contact into a warm lead.

In B2B, buyers rarely respond to the first email. They’re busy, distracted, or just need a little more context. And this much is proven by Sopro’s own analysis, which shows that the first and second follow-up emails generate 28% and 27% of all leads, respectively!

What’s clear, then, is that a well-structured cold email sequence keeps you on your audience’s radar without becoming annoying and gives you multiple chances to start the conversation.

What does a good cold email cadence look like?

There’s no universally accepted ideal for cold email cadence, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t best practices we can apply as a starting point.

In our experience, the sweet spot is typically 4-5 emails over 2-3 weeks. This lands right in the middle of aggressive and forgettable, making sure you have enough touchpoints to stay visible without overwhelming their inbox.

Here’s what that cadence could look like in practice for your sequence:

• Email 1 → Day 1 → Introduce yourself and lead with clear audience-centric value
• Email 2 → Day 3 or 4 → Follow-up, adding social proof to validate the value offered
• Email 3 → Day 8 or 9 → Handle common objections or reframe the offer
• Email 4 → Day 14 or 15 → Share a useful resource or insight that’s relevant to the recipient
• Email 5 → Day 20 or 21 → Close off the sequence with a light, low-pressure invitation for them to get back in touch with you at their convenience

Now, even though breaking up is never easy to do, the final step is more important than most people realise. Sending a clear “I’ll leave you alone now” message shows you respect the recipient’s time without ghosting them. It lets you end the sequence on a high note and positions you as someone who’s genuinely interested and invested in their organisation’s success without being too pushy.

Regardless of your exact cadence, throughout your series of email touchpoints, there are several things to remember:

1. Quality always beats volume

If people aren’t replying, you might be tempted to ramp up the volume and just flood their inbox with messages. But, more often than not, higher volumes just mean noise, and that’s the last thing you want to become.

Technically, you could send hundreds of outreach emails every day, but ONLY consider doing this if you’ve properly warmed up your domain, nailed your email delivery setup (e.g. DMARC, DKIM, SPF, etc.), and you’re not sacrificing quality or personalisation for scale. 

Our advice is to start small, refine your messaging (based on results), monitor replies, and then scale what’s working.

2. Follow-ups are opportunities, not just reminders

If you see follow-up emails as nothing but a chance to bump your messages to the top of someone’s inbox, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities for refinement.

Too many basic follow-up emails just serve as annoying reminders, not value-led engagements that encourage people to take action. Use each email in your sequence to:

• Change the angle or value proposition
• Share a new relevant statistic, case study, or resource that will be of use to the recipient
• Ask different questions
• Use prospect-specific triggers that spark time-sensitive conversations (e.g. a company update or industry news)

3. Don’t forget to provide a clear ending

Stories all need a happy ending, and so do your cold email sequences. We know that zero engagement might not be the ‘happily ever after’ you were hoping for, but the ball is still in your court in terms of how things are left between you and the recipient.

To create a natural endpoint, let whoever’s on the other side of your outreach know that you’ll cease contacting them after your series of 4-5 emails. Pushing further risks damaging your brand and domain health.

To preserve your relationship with the prospect, send a polite “no worries” or “maybe next time” breakup email that clearly lets them know the door is still open if their priorities shift. You can also consider nurturing them elsewhere, like on LinkedIn or via IP address engagement.

The best days and times to send cold emails

When it comes to cold email success, timing matters. You can have the best message in the world, but if it lands in the middle of a team meeting or just after someone’s logged off for the weekend, it’s not getting read. Sorry.

The good news? We’ve analysed enough B2B email campaigns (over 97 million of them, to be exact) to know what works and when. Based on our experience, we’ve compiled the best days and times to send emails, cross–referencing it with data from heavyweights like HubSpot and Mailchimp.

The best days to send cold emails

Based on Sopro campaign data and wider industry benchmarks, the strongest-performing days are:

• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday

Midweek typically delivers the highest open and reply rates, as prospects are past Monday’s backlog but haven’t yet checked out for the weekend. 

Oh, and the worst day to send cold emails in B2B? Sunday. Do we really need to explain why?

The best times to send cold emails

Unfortunately, there isn’t a 5-minute window where all cold emails land exactly how you want them to, but certain times of the day see more consistent success than others.

Time of day	Why it works
08:00-10:00	Be at the top of their messages for the first inbox check of the day. Plus, getting in at the start of the day means you’ll likely be competing with fewer internal emails and reducing the risk of landing mid-meeting.
11:30-13:00	Take advantage of the pre-lunch scroll and inbox catch-up after the morning’s meetings.
15:00-16:30	The infamous afternoon lull, suffered by most and sponsored by caffeine. Sending emails during this period can catch people when they’re not deep in a task, meaning they might be more likely to engage.

From these opportunity windows, we can see that it’s best to avoid sending cold emails late in the day or outside of business hours. Of course, if you’re prospecting internationally and sending cold emails to a database of contacts in different time zones, you’ll need to adapt your strategy to suit.

Best practices are great, but if you’re serious about getting reliable results, you need to base your approach on your audience.  Every role, sector, and region behaves differently (sometimes, nuances can be tracked down to the organisation itself, such as those with 4-day working weeks). A CFO in fintech might be cleaning up their inbox before 8am, while a marketing lead in SaaS might reply fastest after lunch. So do your research and use sends to test things like: Time blocks (early morning vs mid-morning)Day of the week (Tuesday vs Thursday)Audience type (seniority, department, etc.) Use averages as a guide, but never trust them entirely. Always build your own understanding of what works best for your audience and then double down on that. Victoria Heyward, Director of Marketing

Cold email outreach by audience segment: How to adapt your strategies

Let’s put the spotlight on you for a second. Within your own line of work, do you respond to emails exactly the same as the people sitting next to you in the office? Do you have the same priorities as everyone else on your team? 

Sure, there’s likely overlap, but you’re an individual, so nothing is ever identical. 

The same goes for other decision-makers, too, as not all respond to the same message, and this is where most cold email campaigns fall flat.

If you want better open rates, higher reply rates, and conversations that actually go somewhere, you need to tailor your cold outreach by market segment. That means thinking beyond job titles and writing for the real person behind the inbox.

Here’s how to adapt your strategy for different types of B2B contacts based on what matters to them and get your messages working harder.

C-Suite and founders

What matters:

• High-level outcomes
• Strategic priorities (e.g. revenue growth, efficiency, minimising risk)
• Quick clarity on ROI

Your approach:

• Keep messaging tight and cut to the chase – waffle has no place here
• Lead with big-picture benefits, such as revenue potential or market share gains
• Don’t bury the CTA – make it easy for them to act on what you’re asking, or send it to someone else if needed

Heads of departments

What matters:

• Solving known problems or unlocking performance
• Practical results with proof points to share with the board
• Tools or services that save time or make their team look good

Your approach:

• Reference challenges you know they’re facing
• Mention other companies like theirs (with numbers, if possible)
• Offer useful content or a relevant resource in follow-up emails

Buying committees

What matters:

• Internal alignment
• Risk mitigation
• Clear value, sometimes across multiple business functions

Your approach:

• Use layered messaging across a sequence to engage different stakeholders
• Make it easy for your main champion to build an internal business case by sharing useful, application-specific information
• Have a clear map of the decision-making unit to know who you’re speaking to
• Remember that emails may get shared internally, so don’t ignore or isolate any committee member

Channel specialists

What matters:

• Role-specific features or capabilities
• Day-to-day relevance for their challenges
• How does your offer make their life easier?

Your approach:

• Be empathetic to their challenges and obstacles – if they have a lot of responsibilities on their plate, stress could be a useful emotion to tap into
• Offer something they can use (a template, insight, or practical workaround)
• Focus on clarity and value-led use cases

Cold email marketing tips by industry

Just as your messaging needs to adapt to the audience segment, it needs to do the same depending on the industry you’re prospecting to. 

Why? Because one-size-fits-all outreach doesn’t seal deals in B2B.

Different industries have different challenges, sales cycles, and decision-making dynamics. If your emails aren’t tuned into the sector-specific pain points and priorities of your audience, they’ll miss the mark.

Here’s how to sharpen your cold email approach for when generating B2B leads across four key industries:

SaaS: Cut the fluff and show fast value

If you work in SaaS, launching cold outreach campaigns needs careful thought. 

SaaS buyers are overloaded with tools and short on time. So, whether you’re selling into product, sales, or ops, they want to know one thing: how does this improve what I’m already doing, and what will it cost me?

What works:

• Lead with product value: time savings, integrations, automation, cost-cutting
• Offer a demo or trial – something they can see or test
• Mention relevant integrations or workflows to show you’ve done your homework on their current tech setup

Tip: If they’re already using one of your competitors, don’t shy away! Use it as a way to highlight what you do differently. The software industry is fast-moving and competitive, so play to win if you want to see results.

→ Learn more about our B2B SaaS lead generation services.

Marketing: Make your pitch about them, not you

If you’re a marketing agency doing cold outreach, your prospects are already flooded with messages from “award-winning” firms. To stand out, you need to be sharper, faster, and more relevant than the competition.

To get replies:

• Show you understand their business (campaign gaps, audience fit, industry trends)
• Show tangible results rather than templated processes – marketers smell these a mile off
• Keep it punchy – you’re writing to people who spot bad copy for a living

Tip: Marketing and buzzwords are like two peas in a pod. The industry is saturated with firms claiming to “leverage data-driven insights to move the needle”, so think about what makes your offering different if you want to stand out.

→ Learn more about B2B marketing and advertising lead generation services.

Cold emails to recruitment and staffing companies

Cold email works in recruitment when it solves a hiring pain the recipient already knows about, fast. Your email should prove you understand their urgency and have the candidates or network to back it up.

See success by:

• Leading with your talent pool, industry specialism, or speed-to-hire
• Referencing relevant roles you’ve filled recently or talent you’re actively representing
• Keep it short and sharp – they don’t have time for fluff

Tip: Follow up with useful market insights (e.g. salary benchmarks, sectors with the most openings, etc.) to stay relevant without being pushy. 

→ Check out our B2B lead generation services for recruitment companies.

Consulting: Build credibility and trust 

If you’re a management consultancy, your outreach needs to feel considered and senior from the first sentence. These are high-value conversations, and your email should reflect the level of thinking you bring to the table for founders and C-suite executives.

Lead with:

• The strategic impact you can have (e.g. growth, cost reduction, market entry, product launch, etc.)
• Demonstrations of sector fluency by referring to relevant challenges in their industry
• A low-commitment but valuable offer (e.g. a 15-minute, no-strings-attached consultation call)

Tip: Avoid anything that feels overly salesy or junior. Tone is half the battle if you want to be taken seriously.

→ See our lead generation services for B2B management consultants in action.

AI for B2B cold emails

Regardless of audience segment or sector, AI has changed the game for cold outreach. But it hasn’t replaced the fundamentals altogether. 

Used well, AI tools can help you scale faster, test smarter, and write more efficiently. Used badly, they flood inboxes with templated nonsense that gets ignored or flagged as spam. The difference is in how you use it.

At Sopro, we see AI as an amplifier, not a replacement. It speeds up what works, but it still needs strategy, oversight, and a human understanding of what makes a message land. We’re a team, not a tool, after all. 

Here are some of the regulars in our AI tech stack:

• Clari → Revenue forecasting and pipeline management powered by AI insights.
• ChatGPT → AI writing, researching, and brainstorming for fast messaging generation.
• Crystal Knows → Personality insights to help tailor tone and communication according to the recipient.
• Sybill → AI call analysis and sales coaching based on conversation intelligence.
• Lavender → Real-time email feedback and optimisation to boost cold outreach performance.
• AI tools within platforms like Pipedrive, Salesforce, and HubSpot.

See a full rundown of the best B2B sales tool, or check out how Sopro campaigns use AI to supercharge results.

What you should be using AI for

Prospect research → AI tools can scrape and summarise public info from websites or LinkedIn to help personalise your messages at scale – we’re talking job changes, recent press, product launches, hiring signals, etc.

Brainstorming cold email copy → AI can help brainstorm subject lines, first lines, follow-up variations, and CTAs in seconds. Just don’t copy and paste entire messages; use it to get unstuck or explore different directions.

A/B testing at speed → Want to test three CTAs across four subject lines? Let AI create those variants so you can focus on what’s converting.

Predicting send time and engagement → Some tools use machine learning to recommend the best times to send based on previous open rates and recipient behaviour. It’s not perfect, but a useful guide.

What you shouldn’t be relying on AI for

Writing → Okay, so this one isn’t totally clear cut. You can use AI tools like ChatGPT to help write cold emails, but just copying and pasting them won’t cut it as recipients get increasingly tech-savvy and are able to spot ‘classic’ AI phrasings. 

Our advice is to use it as a starting point, then edit with human insight…or get the support of a B2B email marketing agency that knows exactly what it’s doing.

Personalisation → Again, AI can help with personalisation, but don’t rely on it 100%. AIs aren’t sentient beings (yet), so they might miss crucial context about the recipient, such as whether they have already used a solution like yours or have presented objections in the past.

Strategy → AIs won’t tell you who to contact or whether they’re a good fit for your business. Cold email outreach lists should be built by experts who understand your ICP inside and out and can pinpoint the right people to reach out to.

Expert Q&A about cold email marketing

Sopro’s outreach experts weigh in on some of your cold email questions and share insights on what it takes to win replies in 2025.

Is cold email or LinkedIn messaging right for my outreach strategy?

In a modern, multi-channel outbound strategy, it’s not either/or. You can email first, then follow up with a connection, or connect on LinkedIn, then drop a cold email once there’s baseline familiarity. Used together, they help build trust and give you more chances to get noticed by (and responses from) the right people.

How do I stop cold emails from seeming spammy?

Most cold emails feel spammy because they’re too long, too salesy, sent to the wrong person, or built based on bad data. To fix these common issues, you need to:

• Be specific → This goes for what you write and who you send it to. Show clear value to the recipient…not generic fluff to anyone with a pulse.
• Keep it short → Respect their time and limit your messages to 3-5 high-impact sentences.
• Write like a human → Don’t overuse buzzwords or try and make it too salesy. Just write from one person to another, and it’ll land better. Trust us.
• Include an easy opt-out → Seriously, give people the option of telling you to remove them from your list; otherwise, it breeds frustration and compromises the credibility of your brand. 

What do I do with cold leads who don’t reply?

Don’t panic; silence doesn’t always mean no…but you need a solid plan for responding. 

Once you’ve finished your planned sequence, our advice is to move any leads who engaged but didn’t respond to a nurture program via more general email marketing. This can be spread out across a far longer period, and you can share quarterly thought-leadership resources or other useful content in a newsletter to keep your brand on their radar. 

Of course, you can always respect their position by sending a breakup email after your cold outreach sequence ends.

I have a low reply rate but a high open rate – what should I do next?

Typically, this means your subject lines are working (kudos to you), but your messaging or CTAs aren’t. Revisit the content inside the emails themselves and look at:

• How can you simplify what you’re asking (make it as easy as possible for them to respond)
• Make the offer less about you and more about them
• Add proof in the format of case studies, testimonials, credible data, etc.
• Test multiple CTA variations and monitor response rates

How do I personalise at scale without spending hours on each email?

The million-dollar question. Scaled personalisation is the holy grail, but few businesses manage to get it right…simply because it can be tricky to execute well.

Smart segmentation and building modular message templates are your best friends here. Start by segmenting your audience by job role, industry, or company size. Then build a flexible framework: an opening line that shows relevance, a clear value proposition, and a CTA that fits the individual’s world.

Ultimately, though, doing personalisation well at scale takes time, data, and constant refinement. That’s why many businesses partner with teams like Sopro, where expert copywriters, outreach strategists, and compliance-backed prospecting come built in. We handle the targeting, personalisation, and delivery, so you get the results you need without the manual slog.

Get a demo to see what we can achieve for your business.

What common mistakes should I know about to improve my cold email success rates?

There are several common errors people make that you need to be aware of when planning a cold email campaign to maximise results. In no particular order, these are:

1. Seeing personalisation as a nice-to-have rather than a necessity – if you’re speaking to everyone, you’re essentially speaking to no one.
2. Using weak or generic subject lines – you need to get someone’s attention straight away.
3. Making your emails too long or overly complicated – people don’t have time, so don’t make them like War and Peace.
4. Using an overly salesy tone – hard sells are guaranteed to kill engagement rates. 
5. Not having the right deliverability and tech setup – cold email is both an art and a science, so you need to have the correct infrastructure behind you to let your well-crafted messages shine.

How often should I clean my email list?

Our advice is to clean your email list once every 30 days, and always before launching a new campaign or cold email sequence.

Bad data ruins deliverability, and if your emails bounce, land in spam folders, or go to people who have left their roles, your whole campaign will suffer. 

To keep things clean and tidy, you need to:

• Use email validation tools (the likes of ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, EmailListVerify…there are loads to choose from) before every send.
• Remove hard bounces and unsubscribes from your CRM.
• Monitor engagement proactively – if someone hasn’t opened a single email in a couple of months, remove them from long-term nurture lists after sending them a breakup email.

Cold email lead generation with Sopro

If cold email feels like a lot to juggle, that’s because it is.

Data, targeting, compliance, copy, cadence, deliverability, follow-ups, testing, reporting, cleaning, and so on. 

At Sopro, we take care of it all for you. We build compliant, data-backed outreach campaigns that start real conversations and scale with your business objectives. 

If your goal is to book demos, drive leads, open doors to new markets, or secure appointments with key decision-makers, our expert team knows how to deliver. 

Ready to get in front of the right people, at the right time, and with the right message? Great, let’s talk. Book a demo to see Sopro cold email in action.