Use an email management tool that tracks opens.

Often your emails will go to spam so one key tip is to avoid terms that spam filters are likely to catch. You can find plenty of examples online. Additional tips include authenticating your domain and email; and having a compelling subject line. Last but not least--most people don't respond until the 2nd follow-up email--go figure. Good luck.

There's a whole technical aspect to mass cold email outreach that is rarely talked about in the search community. If you're using autoresponder software, schedule a call with them and have them walk through your account to ensure your emails aren't all landing in spam. When you first start emailing, you have to warm up your domain, sending slowly and working your way up to avoid being immediately blacklisted as a spammer.


You need to also scrub your email list before sending. Sending emails out with a bounce rate >5% will get you blacklisted, and if you're using an off the shelf email list from D&B or something along those lines your bounce rate is guaranteed to be in the double digits before scrubbing. You can find folks on Fiverr who will bounce check and scrub your list for cheap.

Track deliverability to see if your emails are actually getting to the folks you are sending to. Reply rates after that will depend on how good your list is and how well you're customizing. Mass email outreach with no personalization should get 3-5% reply rate. Personalized can get you 30-50%, but is a lot more work. Pick your poison.

I send semi-personalized emails and have a mid-teens response rate to the first email I send. General things I found helpful include keeping to 3 sentences or less, not mentioning search funds, and including some kind of personalization in the subject line itself. Response rates increase after sending follow up emails as well, which usually doesn't require additional customization, but make sure you're not sending too many or too frequent follow-ups or you'll get blocked. I also rank my leads by most to least interesting based on a variety of factors, and heavily customize those emails to ensure a 30%+ response rate. Echoing the points above, check your DKIM, SPF, and DMARC alignment to make sure you're not getting sent to spam, and keep your bounce rate <5% if possible, definitely not >10%. NeverBounce has a good email list cleansing function.

Echo everything said above, staying out of spam and off blacklists is key. We have just over a 10% response rate after 3 emails for very minor easy personalization (company name, state, industry). The more personalization the more this bumps up but you lose volume fast.

I used to cold call for biz dev as a broker - cold emails have an atrocious open/respond rate. I honestly wouldn't use them except as follow ups to cold calls - although if you're going to use them, I agree with the above advice. Keep them short (3-5 sentences), actionable (i.e. request a call), and personalized. There are probably good templates out there but my emails always followed a "I'm X, I'm reaching out because Y, I'd love to schedule a call to talk about Z, Is A a good day/time for you to speak?" format.