<aside> 💡 You’ve got a list of highly targeted leads. Now it’s time to write a winning cold email.

In this post, we’ll focus on how to craft effective cold emails, from Eric’s own experience sending over 700k emails a month at Clay and his agency.

We'll show you examples of cold emails that have landed customers and break them down to share frameworks for success. (If you want to jump straight to writing effective personalizations, skip to the next piece in our guide).

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Quick tips for your first cold email

Here are some general principles for your first cold email:

• Your first email, by far, is the most important one you’ll send. Most positive responses to any email campaign come after the first email. We send hundreds of thousands of emails a month and rarely see an exception to this rule.
• Focus on getting a reply, not selling your product. Sales is a process, and the first step is to pique your prospect’s interest in having a conversation. Show your value by offering to provide insights or results that other people cannot, or are not, willing to provide for free. (Eric often offers to teach prospects how to use AI in their outbound campaigns—something that many people are interested in learning even before they know much about Clay.)
• Keep the email short (ideally <100 words).

Here’s a real-life example of a prospecting email that accomplishes the above:

An example of an effective first cold email

Before we break down the parts of this effective email, let’s show you a full example. In this case, we were targeting the sales leaders of Series A startups as customers of Clay.

This email campaign yielded an 8.2% positive response rate, including many that shouted out the email itself!

Breaking down an effective first cold email

Let’s break down the parts of your first cold email, step by step. Each section below will correspond to just a sentence or half a sentence of your email.

Expand the toggles to read more!

1- Give specific context for your outreach

The first line of your email describes why you’re reaching out. Did you notice an announcement about your prospect’s company? Did you just read their LinkedIn post? Show that you’ve done homework to ensure that the connection is relevant.