A sales email that works has four parts: why this person, what you noticed, what you do about it, and one easy question. Everything else is padding, and padding is what loses the two seconds the email actually gets.
Most sales emails fail at the first line, which is usually about the sender.
The four parts
Why this person. One line that could not be sent to anyone else on your list. A role, a change, a detail you actually saw. This is the hardest line to write and it is the one that decides whether the next three are read.
What you noticed. The reason you think the problem might be theirs. Not a claim about them, which is presumptuous and usually wrong, but an observation with the inference left to them. "You have hired three reps since July" is an observation. "You are probably struggling to onboard them" is a guess you are asking them to accept from a stranger.
What you do about it. One sentence, plain. Not the category, not the positioning, what the thing does. If this sentence needs a comma splice and two adjectives, it is not ready.
One easy question. Easy means answerable in a word, from a phone, without a calendar. "Is this something you own, or is it someone else?" is easy. "Do you have 30 minutes on Thursday?" asks for a commitment before the value is established.
What to cut
| Cut this | Why |
|---|---|
| "I hope this email finds you well" | Spends the first line saying nothing |
| "I wanted to reach out" | Describes the email rather than the reason for it |
| A paragraph about your company | Nobody has agreed to care yet |
| Three bullet points of features | A list is a request for study |
| "Let me know if this resonates" | Vague, so it is easy not to answer |
| A second question | Two questions is a form |
The rule underneath all of these is the same: every line has to earn the next one. A line that is doing politeness rather than work is a line that spends attention without buying any.
Subject lines
Short, specific, lowercase, boring. "pipeline coverage" beats "Quick question" and both beat anything with a curiosity gap.
Curiosity-gap subject lines do raise open rates, which is why they persist, and they lower reply rates, because an open that happens for the wrong reason starts the email in deficit. Opens are a measure you can move without moving anything that matters, and since Apple Mail Privacy Protection began pre-loading images, the open number is not reliable enough to optimise for anyway.
The follow-ups
Three or four, over two to three weeks, each adding something: a different angle on the problem, a relevant example, a piece of information useful even if they never reply.
The follow-up to avoid is the one that only bumps. It asks for attention a second time without offering anything new, and it is the message most likely to produce an unsubscribe rather than a reply.
Stop when you have run out of things to add. A sequence that keeps going because the sequence has slots left is one that is being written for the tool rather than the person.
Before you send at volume
Business to business cold email is permitted in Australia under the Spam Act 2003 in specific circumstances, and it comes with real obligations: consent of the right kind, accurate identification of who is sending, and an unsubscribe that works. The rules differ from the United States and the European Union, so a template picked up from an American playbook is not a safe default.
Worth getting right before volume rather than after, because the fix afterwards is a domain reputation problem rather than a wording one.
The thing that beats the writing
Who you send it to. A good email to a bad list underperforms a mediocre email to a list of people with the problem, a reason to act now, and the authority to do something about it. If reply rates are the complaint, the targeting is worth checking before the copy is rewritten for the third time.
Empiraa Signal is a CRM and more. It is also the B2B prospect database, the enrichment, the email sequences, the booking link and the proposal tool, in one system with unlimited users on every plan, so the list, the sequence and the record of what came back are not three separate subscriptions.
Related reading: how to build a sales pipeline from scratch, and a CRM migration checklist.
For the legal detail, read is cold email legal in Australia.
