One cold email can change your life.
Here's how to write a great one:
I’ve sent (and received) a lot of cold emails—some great, some not.
What I've learned: a cold email success is never an accident.
The features of a great cold email:
• Short & Sweet
• Personalized
• Credentials or Social Proof
• Create Value
• Clear CTA
Let's cover each:
Short & Sweet
If you're sending a cold email to someone, remember that the person receiving it probably gets a lot of these.
They don't have time (or energy) to read through long and winding notes.
Keep it short and sweet.
Space out the text to make it optically inviting.
Personalized
No one likes a generic email—it's auto-deleted 99% of the time.
Personal touches make all the difference.
A few ideas:
• Reference a book they love
• Mention a podcast they were on
• Compliment their work
Make it clear you didn't send out hundreds of the note!
Credentials or Social Proof
Infuse credentials or social proof—i.e. reasons the person should take you seriously.
Don't be humble—let it shine.
What have you done or created that is interesting or notable? Who has engaged?
Show them they would be crazy to ignore your email.
Create Value
The foundational rule (in business & life): create value, receive value.
If you create value for the person you’re emailing, they are much more likely to engage.
What can you do to save them time or reduce their stress?
It can be small—a little goes a long way.
Clear CTA
Every successful cold email has a very clear call-to-action.
It has to be specific and succinct.
Use hard enters and spacing to make sure it stands alone in the body of the email. It should be effortless to find and understand the ask.
Be bold, but don't overreach.
Now that we’ve covered the key features, let's look at a few of my favorite examples of successful cold emails.
I'll breakdown why they worked (using the key features we just covered):
Email from @niraj to @evanspiegel
✅ Short & Sweet
✅ Credentials
✅ Clear CTA
Brilliant example of effective brevity. Any high school junior who has done this much and is bold enough to make this ask deserves to be taken seriously.
Email from @david_perell to @tylercowen
✅ Personalized
✅ Social Proof
✅ Clear CTA
Amazing email (that led to some amazing things).
The personal touches at the beginning show clear effort. Tons of social proof (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Godin). Clear CTA and plan of attack.
Email from @RohunJauhar to @chamath
✅ Short & Sweet
✅ Create Value
This is probably the best example I’ve seen of creating value in a cold outreach.
They built Chamath a website for his teased CA Governor run and emailed him the landing page.
Hard to ignore that effort!
Cold emails changed my life—they can change yours too.
To summarize, the key features to leverage:
• Short & Sweet
• Personalized
• Credentials or Social Proof
• Create Value
• Clear CTA
Start infusing these and I guarantee you will improve the conversion of your efforts.
Follow me @SahilBloom for more threads on business, finance, careers, and decision-making.
I also write deep-dives on many of these topics in my newsletter. Join the 41,000+ and subscribe today! sahilbloom.substack.com
And if you are a job seeker, check out my job board, where I share unique roles in finance and tech every week.
If you are a company that is hiring, DM me for details on how you can post your roles and have them featured in my Twitter and newsletter. pallet.xyz/list/sahil/jobs
Note: The principles in this thread apply just as well to Twitter DMs.
One cold Twitter DM can change your life.
I got a lot of questions about what I meant by “space out the text to make it optically inviting”—so I pulled together an example.
Same email—one a block of text, one spaced out.
The spaced out version is more digestible and optically inviting. More likely to elicit a response.
This infographic from @sachin_ramje is exceptional.
FIRE ME UP!
DM from 17-year-old follower who used this cold email guide to land his dream job (at one of my portfolio companies)!
Let’s go!
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.