Cold Email Templates

These are first-touch templates for founders and early GTM teams who need a simple way to test messaging. The goal is not to sound clever. It is to sound relevant, specific, and easy to reply to.

When to use it

• You have a defined ICP and one clear pain worth solving.
• You need a starting point before writing your own sequence.
• You want to test three outreach angles quickly.

3 cold email starting points

Template 1: Pain-led
Subject: Quick question about [pain]
Hi [Name] — noticed [relevant signal].
We are talking with [role] teams that are trying to fix [specific pain].
Is that something on your plate this quarter?

Template 2: Outcome-led
Subject: Reducing [painful metric]
Hi [Name] — we help [type of team] improve [outcome] without [common tradeoff].
Happy to send a one-page summary if useful.

Template 3: Proof-led
Subject: Saw this with two similar teams
Two teams in [industry] told us [pain] was slowing [outcome].
We helped them change that in [timeframe].
Worth sending the short version?

How to customize it

• Use one strong relevance signal, not five weak personalization tokens.
• Replace vague outcomes with measurable outcomes.
• Keep the CTA binary and low friction.

Common mistakes

• Leading with your company story instead of the buyer problem.
• Stacking multiple asks into one email.
• Writing a paragraph that requires scrolling on mobile.

Next steps

1. Pick one template and send it to 25 contacts in the same segment.
2. Track replies by angle, not just total reply rate.
3. Rewrite only the opening two lines before testing again.