The answer is simple: yes, cold email does work and they still work in 2024.

Let's be honest here: cold email has a bad reputation. Others think that cold email will work less in the future. So does it work? Yes and no, we'll prove it in this article.

Proof that cold email works with numbers and client testimonials

Cold email resuls from Devantae (he owns a lead gen agency)

Devantae is playing it smart because:

• his cold emails are highly personalized, he uses Breakcold for that.

• he doesn't send lots of cold emails, he aims for quality instead of quantity.

That's how he closed more than £3,000,000 for clients in the span of 3 years, pretty impressive right? Who said that cold emails don't work.

Cold email results from Saif (he owns an email marketing agency)

Saif was one of our first client on Breakcold. He knew nothing about cold emailing so we did a Zoom call for me to help him out.

After 2 months doing cold emails, he closed his first clients and made a ROI of +20,000% with Breakcold.

Here again, you can see that cold emails work.

You can improve your cold email skills like Saif with the Breakcold Academy.

5 situations where cold email doesn't work

They are situations where cold email is not performing, it's mostly due to the following scenarios.

Situation 1: your cold email copywriting is bad

Copywriting is the thing where people struggle the most on internet I believe!

However, having a bad copywriting will destroy your cold email results.

Few rules to follow if you want to make this work:

• aim for very short cold emails (no more than 50 words) - no one wants to read a long copy right?

• avoid pitching your company or asking for a call if you never talked to the lead before, it's too brutal, we're no longer in a 2004 world.

You can check out our article on cold email copywriting here.

Situation 2: your cold email deliverability is weak

Cold emails don't work for most people because they have a terrible email deliverability.

Basically, they haven't followed the best practices.

These practices are as follow:

• warming up your email domain (email warm up)

• sending too many emails per day

• they haven't set up custom domain tracking, SPF, DKIM and DMARC

Because of the lack of precautions on the above, cold emails are going to spam which is unfortunate.

We have written about cold email deliverability in this article.

Situation 3: you haven't work on your ICP enough

ICP means Ideal Customer Profile, it's also defined as persona.

Knowing your ICP is key to make cold emails work.

You need to adress the right message (1) to the right audience (2).

Sounds natural but most people fail at this, even ourself at Breakcold we had a hard time identifying our ICP because for a cold email software, anyone could be your client (at least we thought).

Best ways to find your ICP for cold emailing purposes:

• make a list of a 500 prospects

• get their email with Findymail

• divide this list into 5 lists of a 100 prospects

• each list will meet a potential ICP of yours

• launch cold email campaigns with each of these ICPs

• see the results and double down on the ones who are working the best

If you don't have good results, it's not because of cold email but because of your offer.

Situation 4: you haven't work on your offer enough

Having a good offer is almost everything when doing sales prospecting.

If your product or service is terrible, no one will reply to you.

After you've worked on your ICP, work hard on crafting a compelling and charming offer that your prospects will be willing to look at.

The goal of a cold email is to book a meeting. Therefore, your offer needs to be interesting enough for the prospect to jump on a zoom call with you.

If you're not a god or godess of copywriting, you can use AI tools such as Mark Copy AI to get inspired.

Situation 5: you're sending too much cold emails per day

Quantity is not quality.

If you're goal is just to import as many leads as possible, you'll loose.

People tend to not segment their leads into batches. This results into prospects lists that are not qualified enough to craft a generic but yet a personalized offer.

In the end, you will send a 1000 cold emails but might end up with not even a single call.

5 situations where cold email does work

Situation 1: prospects are well segmented

People who have stellar results with cold emails know how to build prospect lists efficiently.

They send many small cold email campaigns of maximum 50 prospects per campaign.

That way, they're able to craft a generic but personalize message for the whole list.

Situation 2: cold emails don't go to spam

Cold email deliverability is underestimated when you want to have success and great results with cold emailing.

You can have the best copy but if you go to the spam folder, what's the point?

Learn how to avoid having your cold emails going to spam here.

Situation 3: people are creative with their copywriting

Cold email copywriting is hard, but when you get it you start drowing with replies.

Quick example of a cold email that worked for me:

Situation 4: people don't sell when sending cold emails

'The best sales you make are the ones when you're not selling'.

Every top sales development representative (SDR) or Business Development Representative (BDR) knows that.

Your goal should be simple: start a conversation.

For that, do not pitch your offer straight away.

Situation 5: cold emails are personalized

These days, we're all getting smashed with tons of non-personalized cold emails.

Therefore, if yours are tailored to your prospects, you win.

You can personalize your cold email outreach with:

• cold email intro lines (manually or with Breakcold)

• PS lines where you talk about something casual like the city of your prospect for example.

You can read more about cold email personalization here.

Other questions about if cold emails really work

Does cold email work better with social media?

Yes. Cold email work the best when it's combined with social selling (aka selling on LinkedIn, Facebook or other social media like Twitter). You can also combine cold emailing with inbound methods, it works like a charm.

When cold emails work the best?

You might assume that cold emails work the best when they are sent during the morning between 8am and lunchtime. However everyone think it this way. This is why it's better to send your cold emails after lunchtime, less people perform deep work during the afternoon: this is your chance to land replies.

Conclusion: what is the future of cold email outreach?

Cold email could work less in the future

In theory, cold emails might work less in a near future.

Why?

Because more and more cold emails are being sent every single day.

As a result, more people receive both good and bad cold emails on a daily basis.

The problem with the rise of cold email is that it becomes as saturated as email marketing.

Imagine the follwing:

In 2015:

• A CEO would receive about 1 cold email a day from strangers

• 1 email is not a lot, if you have a good copywriting, you can easily land some good shots.

In 2024:

• A CEO would receive about 5 cold emails a day from strangers

• 5 cold emails a day is A LOT.

In the 2024 scenario. People are annoyed by cold emails and will not even be happy if yours are creative.

Cold emails will always work if you're smart enough

Take email marketing for example, it's been around since 2001/2002 with established softwares like Mailchimp, Sendgrind or Sendinblue and lately Klavyio in the E-commerce space.

Even though nowadays people are litterely getting smashed by email newsletter, it still work.

Along the way, niche products arised like Convertkit (email marketing for creators) and more recently Flodesk in 2019 (beautiful email newsletter).

With the above softwares, some people have terrible results and others have stellar results.

In my opinion, the same goes with cold emails. They will always work if you know how to use them wisely.

If you need to get better at cold emailing, you can check out this article we wrote.

Cold emails will work better if you embrace social selling

At Breakcold, we believe that the era of cold email automation is good but not efficient. We're pretty sure that building meaningful relationships with your prosects is key to success.