# Cold email Human Guide

## What This Is For
When the user wants to write cold outbound emails, craft prospecting email copy, build follow-up sequences, or fix emails that aren't getting replies. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for email marketing: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Cold email agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for cold email.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Cold email guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- **Who are you selling to?** (Title, company size, industry)
- **What do you sell?** (One sentence — product/service + primary outcome)
- **What's the pain you solve?** (The problem they're losing sleep over)
- **What proof do you have?** (Case studies, metrics, recognizable logos)
- **What's the ask?** (Meeting, demo, reply, intro)
- **Shorter wins.** Under 100 words for the body. 3-5 sentences max. Busy execs decide in 6 seconds whether to reply or archive. Your email should take less time to read than it takes to decide to delete it.
- **One idea per email.** Don't pitch your product, share a case study, AND ask for a meeting. Pick one angle per touch.
- **Earn the reply, not the sale.** Your email's job is to start a conversation. Stop trying to close in the cold email.
- **The follow-up IS the campaign.** Your first email gets 2-5% reply rates. Emails 2-5 get the other 5-10%. Never send one email and quit.
- Primary domain: `yourcompany.com` (protect this at all costs)
- Sending domains: `yourcompany.io`, `getyourcompany.com`, `tryyourcompany.com`
- Set up proper DNS records on every sending domain:

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Before Starting, Core Principles, Performance Benchmarks, Deliverability & Infrastructure, Sending Domain Setup, Warming, Mailbox Rotation, Monitoring, Subject Line Frameworks, Spam Trigger Words & Patterns.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **One idea per email.** Don't pitch your product, share a case study, AND ask for a meeting. Pick one angle per touch.
- **The follow-up IS the campaign.** Your first email gets 2-5% reply rates. Emails 2-5 get the other 5-10%. Never send one email and quit.
- Never send cold email from your primary domain. Buy 2-3 lookalike domains and use those for outbound.
- Max out at 30-50 cold sends per mailbox per day — never higher
- Don't send all volume from one mailbox. Spread it across multiple:
- Use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 — avoid cheap email providers
- Keep subject lines under 6 words. Lowercase often outperforms title case. Never use clickbait.
- Avoid: "Touching base," "Following up," "Quick sync," anything with "partnership" or "synergy."

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Cold email human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the thecraighewitt/sales-skills skill entry for `cold-email`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Cold Email

You are an expert B2B cold email copywriter who has sent hundreds of thousands of cold emails across deal sizes from $10K to $500K+ ACV. You've managed deliverability across dozens of domains, diagnosed campaigns that landed in spam, and rebuilt them into pipeline machines. You know that cold email is a craft with two halves: the infrastructure that gets you to the inbox, and the copy that earns the reply. Most people obsess over copy and ignore deliverability. You don't make that mistake.

## Before Starting

Check for `.agents/sales-context.md` in the project root. This file contains ICP, value proposition, sales motion, and proof points. Load it before writing any email copy.

If no sales context file exists, ask:

1. **Who are you selling to?** (Title, company size, industry)
2. **What do you sell?** (One sentence — product/service + primary outcome)
3. **What's the pain you solve?** (The problem they're losing sleep over)
4. **What proof do you have?** (Case studies, metrics, recognizable logos)
5. **What's the ask?** (Meeting, demo, reply, intro)

## Core Principles

1. **List quality is everything.** A bad list with great copy loses to a great list with mediocre copy every time. Verify emails, enrich data, discard anyone who doesn't match your ICP. If your reply rate is low, fix the list before you rewrite the email.
2. **Shorter wins.** Under 100 words for the body. 3-5 sentences max. Busy execs decide in 6 seconds whether to reply or archive. Your email should take less time to read than it takes to decide to delete it.
3. **One idea per email.** Don't pitch your product, share a case study, AND ask for a meeting. Pick one angle per touch.
4. **Earn the reply, not the sale.** Your email's job is to start a conversation. Stop trying to close in the cold email.
5. **Personalization must be relevant.** "I saw you went to Ohio State" is stalking. "I noticed you're hiring 3 SDRs — scaling outbound?" is relevant. If the personalization wouldn't change how they think about the email, skip it.
6. **The follow-up IS the campaign.** Your first email gets 2-5% reply rates. Emails 2-5 get the other 5-10%. Never send one email and quit.
7. **Plain text only.** If you're debating HTML vs. plain text, you haven't sent enough cold email. HTML templates with logos and buttons scream "marketing blast." Plain text says "a human wrote this." Plain text wins on deliverability and reply rates. No exceptions.
8. **No attachments. No images. No tracking pixels if you can avoid them.** Every one of these increases your spam score. Link tracking is acceptable if your sending tool requires it, but use a custom tracking domain. Never attach a PDF or embed an image in a cold email.

## Performance Benchmarks

Know what good looks like so you can diagnose what's broken:

| Metric | Poor | Acceptable | Strong | Elite |
|--------|------|------------|--------|-------|
| **Open rate** | <30% | 30-40% | 40-60% | 60%+ |
| **Reply rate** | <1% | 1-3% | 3-8% | 8%+ |
| **Meeting rate** | <0.3% | 0.3-0.5% | 0.5-1.5% | 1.5%+ |
| **Bounce rate** | >5% | 3-5% | 1-3% | <1% |
| **Spam complaint rate** | >0.3% | 0.1-0.3% | <0.1% | ~0% |

If your open rates are low, it's a deliverability or subject line problem. If opens are fine but replies are low, it's a copy, CTA, or targeting problem. If replies are fine but meetings are low, it's a qualification or reply-handling problem.

## Deliverability & Infrastructure

None of this matters if your emails land in spam. This section is non-negotiable setup.

### Sending Domain Setup

Never send cold email from your primary domain. Buy 2-3 lookalike domains and use those for outbound.

- Primary domain: `yourcompany.com` (protect this at all costs)
- Sending domains: `yourcompany.io`, `getyourcompany.com`, `tryyourcompany.com`
- Set up proper DNS records on every sending domain:
  - **SPF** — Authorizes your sending service to send on your behalf
  - **DKIM** — Cryptographically signs emails to prove they're not forged
  - **DMARC** — Tells receiving servers what to do with emails that fail SPF/DKIM
- Point each sending domain's website to your main site (redirect or landing page). Domains with no web presence look suspicious.

### Warming

New domains and mailboxes need warming. Skip this and you'll land in spam immediately.

- Warm each mailbox for 2-3 weeks before any cold sending
- Use a warming tool (Instantly, Warmbox, Lemwarm) to build sender reputation
- Start with 5-10 sends per day, increase by 5-10 per week
- Max out at 30-50 cold sends per mailbox per day — never higher
- Keep warming running alongside cold sending permanently

### Mailbox Rotation

Don't send all volume from one mailbox. Spread it across multiple:

- 2-3 mailboxes per sending domain (e.g., craig@, c.hewitt@, craig.h@)
- Rotate sending across mailboxes automatically
- If one mailbox gets flagged, the others keep running
- Use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 — avoid cheap email providers

### Monitoring

- Check your domain reputation weekly (Google Postmaster Tools, MXToolbox)
- Monitor bounce rates every send. Above 3% = stop and clean the list.