Prompt · Cold outreach
Cold follow-up after no reply
Get a reply either way. A no closes the loop and frees the slot.
- Email type
- Cold outreach
- Business
- Agency
- Tone
- Spartan
- Length
- 60-90 words
The cold outreach email prompt
Write a second cold email to [WHO THEY ARE]. The first one, about [THE ORIGINAL POINT], got no reply. Plain text only. This email is allowed to exist because of [THE NEW THING]. Without that it is a nudge, and nudges do not deserve inbox space. Rules: - 60 to 90 words. Shorter than the first email. Always shorter. - Never write "just following up", "bumping this", "did you see my last email", or "circling back". Every one of those says the email has nothing new in it. - Lead with [THE NEW THING]. Reference the original point in half a sentence at most, as context rather than as a recap. - Close by making a no easy and specific. Something like "if this is not a thing you are thinking about, say so and I will leave it" — one line, no self-deprecation, no apology for emailing. - Do not add a second ask, a calendar link or an attachment. - Never invent a number, statistic, result or client name. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX]. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line of four words or fewer. Do not reuse the first email's subject and do not prefix it with "Re:". Return subject, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[WHO THEY ARE]- Name and company. Same person as the first email.
[THE ORIGINAL POINT]- What the first email said, in one clause. You are reminding, not repeating.
[THE NEW THING]- Something they did not have last time. An example, a link, a thought. This is the price of a second email.
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
Four to seven days after the first, and only if you have something new. A follow-up whose entire content is that time has passed teaches the reader that your emails can be ignored without cost, which is a worse outcome than never sending it.
What to change first
[THE NEW THING]. It is the admission price. If you cannot fill it, the honest move is to close the
loop with a one-line note rather than send a nudge — and that note gets more replies than the nudge
would have, because it asks for nothing.
What good output looks like
Subject: One more thing
We rebuilt the receipt email for a shop about your size last month. Same problem, and the fix took a day. Here is what it looks like now.
That is really all I had to add to the note I sent last week.
If order emails are not something you are thinking about this quarter, say so and I will leave you alone.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.