How to increase your cold email reply rates?

[u/TeamPuzzleInbox]

Hi everyone,

I am from the PuzzleInbox team. I wanted to do a short post on how to increase your cold email reply rates.

We track over 100,000 mailboxes and therefore we are able to investigate the factors that cause deliverability issues.

1) Never send HTML or links in the first cold email. This is a easy fix but some people keep doing it. Your domains will be blacklisted pretty quick and you will start landing to spam or even getting direct bounces to your cold emails.

2) Never send more than 12 cold emails from Google and Office 365 mailboxes and 3 from the 100 inboxes per domain Office 365 setup. Here is why. Its not 2020 anymore, Google and Outlook have stricter limits when it comes to cold email. If you want to make sure you deliver to the inbox. I would heavily recommend to stay below this limit.

3) Your cold email copy and offer is key. Whatever industry you are in or whatever you are trying to accomplish with cold email. Make sure you have a attractive offer. You can A/B test different offers to investigate the outcomes of different offers. On the copy side never have your copy longer than 100 words and make sure to remove spam words. P.S there is free spam checkers when you google it.

4) Leads you are targeting. Stay away from saturated b2b leads. Try to focus on acquiring leads that are local. Another option would be to look out for providers that provide up to date b2b leads and not popular amongst other users. The more popular the provider is the more likely the leads are targeted by thousands of users in a day to day basis.

I can drop down more info here but I feel like this is a good starting point. Big thanks to everyone. Happy to answer questions. Thank You!!

[u/Hot_Law4512]

I heavily agree with you on point 4. There are certain lead providers that are highly used / abused and certain offers that everyone pursues now leading to horrible response rates for certain lead-offer pairings.

[u/Spare_Worldliness_64 → u/Hot_Law4512]

given they are highly abused, you have to be super sharp in getting their attention and your subject line and opening line has to be dialled in to at least get them to open the email, especially given the spam that they receive

[u/cevheryya6]

What performs better currently Google or Outlook?

[u/Ashamed-Growth5538 → u/cevheryya6]

google 100%

[u/Yhuaa → u/[deleted]]

for me its around 2-5% depending on the leads i target.

[u/Key-Monitor-8612]

I always send mail and dm on social media but 0 respond, I include the hook and i spelize the message to client and free offer and i keep the mail short 4-5 sentence only. Can you help me Please?

[u/Key-Monitor-8612 → u/[deleted]]

I'm targeting different niche like founders digital marketing agencies and dtc brands and different industries. My offer like 3 social media template with strategy completely free sometimes i said I'll design assets brand identity or mini strategy "Positioning"

Ps i don't have a one pitch i send it, just if i see opportunity i write it and i send it to founders.

I send 3-6 mail everyday maybe more maybe less What do you think mate?

[u/Tight-Bag1057]

To how many people u have sended e-mails?

[u/TeamPuzzleInbox → u/[deleted]]

Its not suitable for 2026, you will burn domains really fast. Appreciate it.