There is a recognisable aesthetic to bad cold email copy. It starts with "I hope this email finds you well" or some variation. It describes the sender's company in flattering terms using words like "innovative," "leading," and "cutting-edge." It claims to help "companies like yours" without specifying what companies or what help. It ends with a request for 15-30 minutes of the recipient's time. It is deleted without reply.
This pattern is so prevalent that it has become its own signal: seeing it in the first two sentences tells the recipient everything they need to know about the email — that it was sent to hundreds of people, that the sender has not done any real research, and that the conversation it is trying to start would not be worth having.
The Generic Copy Triggers That Kill Responses
- Opening with "I" instead of "You". "I'm reaching out because..." makes the email about you. "You recently expanded your engineering team..." makes it about them. The best cold emails start in the prospect's world, not the sender's.
- Describing your company before establishing relevance. No one cares about your company's founding story or your product categories before they care about whether you understand their problem.
- Benefit statements without specificity. "We help companies improve their marketing ROI" means nothing. "We helped [comparable company] reduce their CPL by 34% in 60 days by fixing their attribution model" means something.
- Corporate voice in a personal medium. Cold email is supposed to read like a message from one person to another. Corporate PR language — "We are pleased to offer," "Our best-in-class solution" — destroys that premise.
How to Write Copy That Does Not Sound Generic
Write the first draft for one specific person. Not a persona — the actual person you are emailing. If you cannot write something in the opening that is specific to them, do more research before writing. The friction of writing specific copy is the mechanism that produces specific copy. There is no shortcut.