How many emails a day?

Start at 10–20 per mailbox per day during warm-up and stay under 50 per mailbox; add mailboxes rather than volume per mailbox.

What reply rate is good?

5–10% replies on a well-targeted list is good; under 2% means the list or the message is wrong, not the volume.

Two or three, spaced 3–5 days apart, each adding one new reason; then stop.

Saturday, 5 September 2026Playbooks: The exact steps, in order.Reviewed through 5 Sept 2026

29 playbooks, 180 steps. Every fee, date and pass mark is sourced, and each playbook says when it was last checked.

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Launch & marketing · Global · medium

Run a cold email campaign that gets replies (and stays out of spam)

Warm a separate sending domain, verify the list, write a four-line email that asks one question, send small volumes daily, and track replies rather than opens.

Time: 2–3 weeks of domain warm-up · then ongoing
Cost: $10–$30 for a secondary domain · $30–$100/month for sending and verification tools
Reviewed: 5 Sept 2026; 7 steps · 19 checks

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Cold email works when three things are true at once: the mail arrives in the inbox, it is sent to the right person, and it asks for something small. Most campaigns fail on the first — deliverability — before the message is ever read, which is why this playbook spends its first two weeks on infrastructure.

Set up a separate sending domain

Register a variant of your domain (yourcompany-hq.com, tryyourcompany.com) for outreach only.
Create 1–3 mailboxes on it with a real name and a professional signature with your physical address.
Redirect the domain to your main site so the link resolves.

Authenticate: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Publish an SPF record for the sending provider; publish the DKIM key; add a DMARC record (start with p=none and a reporting address).
Verify all three with a checker; Gmail and Yahoo junk unauthenticated bulk mail.
Add a one-click unsubscribe (List-Unsubscribe header) via your sending tool.

Warm up for two to three weeks

Use a warm-up service or a manual routine: 10–20 emails a day between real mailboxes with replies.
Increase volume gradually; keep bounce rate under 2% and spam complaints near zero.

Build and verify the list

Define the segment precisely (role, company size, trigger event). Fewer, better-fit contacts.
Verify every email with a verification tool; remove catch-all and invalid addresses.
Record one personal detail per contact (a recent post, a product, a hiring page) for the first line.

Write the four-line email

Line 1: the personal detail. Line 2: the problem you solve for people like them, in their words. Line 3: proof (a number, a customer). Line 4: one small question.
No links in the first email, no attachments, no images; plain text.
Subject: 3–5 words, lowercase, specific.

Send small and daily

20–50 per mailbox per day, spread across working hours in the recipient's time zone.
Follow-up 1 after 3–4 days (reply in the same thread, add a new reason); follow-up 2 a week later; then stop.
Honour every opt-out immediately.

Measure replies, not opens

Track replies per 100 sent, positive replies, and meetings booked per segment.
Rewrite the email if replies are under 2% after 200 sends; change the segment if they are negative.

Questions

How many emails a day?: Start at 10–20 per mailbox per day during warm-up and stay under 50 per mailbox; add mailboxes rather than volume per mailbox.
What reply rate is good?: 5–10% replies on a well-targeted list is good; under 2% means the list or the message is wrong, not the volume.
How many follow-ups?: Two or three, spaced 3–5 days apart, each adding one new reason; then stop.

Sources

The numbers above come from these pages. If a fee or date here disagrees with the source, the source wins.

Report an outdated step

Where people get this wrong

Sending from the main domain. One bad campaign can land your company mail in spam for months; outreach always goes from a secondary domain.
Skipping SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Since 2024 Gmail and Yahoo require authentication for bulk senders and reject or junk unauthenticated mail.
Buying a list and sending to it unverified. Bounces above 2–3% trigger reputation damage; verify every address first.
Tracking opens. Open tracking is unreliable since mail privacy features and it adds a tracking pixel that hurts deliverability; measure replies.
Ignoring the law. Cold B2B email is legal in most places with an opt-out and a physical address (CAN-SPAM in the US); consumer outreach is restricted under GDPR and similar laws.

Tools used

MXToolbox — Checks SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX and blacklists for a domain.
Google email sender guidelines (official) — The rules Gmail applies to bulk senders — authentication, unsubscribe, spam rate.
Instantly — Cold-email sending with mailbox warm-up and rotation.
NeverBounce — Email list verification to keep bounces under control.

More, by task, on find.do.

Run a cold email campaign that gets replies (and stays out of spam)

Set up a separate sending domain

Authenticate: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Warm up for two to three weeks

Build and verify the list

Write the four-line email

Send small and daily

Measure replies, not opens

Questions

Sources

See also

Build a landing page that converts

Launch a product on social media (SMO)

1Set up a separate sending domain

2Authenticate: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

3Warm up for two to three weeks

4Build and verify the list

5Write the four-line email

6Send small and daily

7Measure replies, not opens

Questions

Sources

See also

Build a landing page that converts

Launch a product on social media (SMO)

Set up a separate sending domain

Authenticate: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Warm up for two to three weeks

Build and verify the list

Write the four-line email

Send small and daily

Measure replies, not opens