What is wrong with my cold email?

To find out what is wrong with a cold email, check it against the things that make a recipient stop reading: an opener that flatters instead of saying why you are writing, a claim of a conversation that never happened, more than one ask, no specific dated reason for the message, and the stock phrases everybody recognises. This tool checks all of those and highlights each one in your text, with what to do instead. It runs the same rules this product applies to its own drafts before a human sees them.

No signup. The result is yours before we ask for anything.

Run it on your own email

How this works

1We run the same quality gate this product runs on every message it drafts. Identical rules, not a simplified version.
2We check the opener for flattery, and for claims of a prior conversation that a first message cannot have had.
3We count the asks. More than one is the most common reason a cold email gets no reply: the recipient has to decide which thing you want.
4We look for a specific dated reason you are writing now, because a message that could have been sent any week reads as a mailshot.
5We check length, links and the stock phrases, and highlight each hit exactly where it sits in your text.

What it cannot tell you

We cannot tell you whether the email is right for that person. Rules catch what is wrong with a message; only you know whether the reason for sending it is real.
Passing every check does not mean it will get a reply. It means nothing in it will make somebody stop reading before the point.
We suggest a rewrite only where the rule implies one. Where it does not, we name the problem and stop, because a confident bad rewrite is worse than none.
This is deterministic. No model reads your email, and nothing you paste is used to train anything.

Questions people ask

What makes a cold email bad?

Most often, three things at once: it opens by praising the recipient, it gives no specific reason it is being sent now, and it asks for more than one thing. Any of those alone is survivable. Together they read as a template, and the recipient is right.

How long should a cold email be?

Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling twice. Three or four sentences is normal. Length is not the real problem though: a long email with a specific reason for existing outperforms a short one with none.

Should a cold email include a link?

At most one, and not in the first line. A first-line link reads as a broadcast, and more than one gives the recipient a decision to make instead of an answer to give.

Why do my cold emails get no reply?

Assuming they arrive at all, usually because there is no answer to "why me, why now". A message that names something specific and dated about that company gets read. A message that could have gone to four hundred people gets deleted, correctly.

The short version, if you would rather not run it

Cold email fails silently, which is why it is so hard to get better at. Nobody replies to tell you the opener was insulting or that they could not work out what you wanted. You send a hundred, get two replies, and learn nothing about the ninety-eight.

The single most common defect is the flattering opener. It is meant to be warm and reads as a script, because the recipient has had the same sentence from four other people this month. The alternative is not a cleverer compliment. It is saying, immediately, why you are writing to them specifically.

The second is more than one ask. Every additional request is a decision the recipient has to make before they can reply, and the cost of not replying is zero. One ask, phrased so that yes is easier than thinking about it.

The third is the absence of a dated reason. If nothing in your message says why this week rather than any other, it reads as a mailshot regardless of how well it is written, and the recipient is reading it correctly.

None of this is about writing well. It is about the message having a real reason to exist, and then not spoiling it with the stock phrases that mark it as bulk.