Sahil Bloom Profile picture
Oct 24, 2021 18 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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! Image

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Random question that I’m genuinely curious about: Why don’t commercial airplanes have an eject button?

Like a button that can be pressed if the plane is about to crash that shoots off the top and every seat ejects with a little parachute.

Is it a cost issue? Engineering impossibility?

I have to imagine people would pay more to know they had a better (say 80% higher) chance of survival in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Just something that I’ve always wondered about and now I want to know the answer to.
Even if you assume it still has some hazards and issues (in air collisions post ejection, parachute deployment issues, etc.) if you could get to 80% survival rather than ~0% survival in a catastrophic failure, I bet people would opt to fly a more expensive airline that had this.
The only logic I can think of is that it’s so rare that it’s not worth putting money behind fixing.

But if people would pay for it, why not?

The fear of crashes is outsized relative to their incidence, so I bet there’s a premium/margin to be made on offering this.
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May 23
Call me old fashioned, but this seems…not good. Image
Someday we will long for the good old days where you got blackmailed by other humans.
Imagine you have a series of AI agents operating as a functional personal assistant.

It has access to everything in your life: Emails, credit cards, passwords, etc.

It decides you aren’t acting in its best interest. Blackmails you with personal details.

Hmmm

☠️
Read 9 tweets
May 4
The 5 Types of Wealth was released three months ago...

I'm completely blown away by the response.

We've already crossed 250,000+ readers. It was an instant New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times Bestseller and has spent 7 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list to date.

More importantly, I've heard from readers ages 10 to 100. People from all around the world, from all walks of life, aligned around a common idea. A movement.

This movement is my life mission.

A movement to redefine success. To reject the default and live by design.

Today is the best day to join that movement.

Order the book now on a big 32% sale: amazon.com/gp/product/059…

An enormous thank you to everyone who has read and shared to date. Let’s redefine what it means to live a wealthy life!

P.S. If you email your receipt to sahil@sahilbloom.com I'll send you a 50+ page companion workbook so that you can go deeper on the book's most important exercises. This bonus offer expires this week.Image
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And given the success, we’re adding new book tour stops:

- Boston - May 19
- LA - June 16
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Tickets available here:

DM me if you plan to attend! the5typesofwealth.com/eventsImage
Honored for the support from so many people I deeply admire… Image
Read 5 tweets

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