Cold email

It is the written version of a cold call. You write to someone because they match your target, without them having asked for anything. It is mostly used in B2B, with a decision-maker's work address found on the company website, in a database or by guessing the company's address format.

A typical cold email fits in a few lines: a reason to write to this particular person, an observation about their situation, a question or a simple proposal. It almost always sits inside a short sequence of follow-ups spaced a few days apart.

It differs from a newsletter or marketing email, which goes to people who signed up. Here nobody signed up. That is exactly why the rules are stricter.

On the technical side, since 2024 Google has required senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses to authenticate their domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep their spam complaint rate under 0.3%. Even far below that volume, those settings are the minimum to reach the inbox.

On the legal side, rules depend on the country. In France, the CNIL allows B2B email prospecting without prior consent on two conditions: the message must relate to the recipient's profession, and they must be able to opt out easily. In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act requires no prior consent but does require an honest subject line, a postal address and a working opt-out. In the UK, emails to corporate addresses are allowed without consent under PECR, with the same duty to identify yourself and offer an opt-out, while sole traders are protected like individuals.

You should also be able to tell a recipient where you got their address if they ask. The European frame is covered in the GDPR and B2B prospecting entry of this glossary.

Open rates have lost most of their value. Some mail apps, Apple Mail since 2021 among them, load images in advance, which fires the tracking pixel without anyone reading anything. Look at the reply rate first, then at meetings booked.

Track bounces and complaints separately. Lots of bounces mean your addresses are bad. Rising complaints mean your target or your message is off, and they hurt every email you send afterwards, including emails to your customers if you use the same domain.

That is why many teams send cold emails from a secondary domain, whose sending volume ramps up gradually over a few weeks before the real campaigns start.

Sending the same text to a thousand people with only the first name swapped. Filters spot identical sends, and so do readers.

Talking about yourself for five lines before getting to the person. The recipient should understand from the first sentence why you are writing to them.

Buying an address list without knowing where it came from. You get dead addresses, bounces, sometimes spam traps run by anti-spam services, and no answer to the question "where did you get my email?".

Following up with someone who said no or asked not to be contacted again. It is a sales mistake and, in most countries, a legal one too.

The two channels play on different ground. Email reaches people who are barely active on LinkedIn and scales easily, at the cost of serious technical preparation. LinkedIn shows who is writing, with a real profile, and lets you build on a recent post or reaction, which makes the first message easier to personalize.

MimikFlow is built around LinkedIn, with WhatsApp as a second channel when the prospect's number is known and authorised. If you already run cold email, the two combine well: LinkedIn for priority accounts and warm sources, email to widen coverage. Measure each channel separately, on the same target.