Free cold email generator and sales email templates: Your B2B cold email sequence, written from your website

A cold email often gets deleted in a few seconds. The reader sees a generic subject line, a long pitch and a vague request. Sales email templates help you avoid that, as long as you fill them with real facts about the prospect.

You get a 7-step method, subject lines, 4 templates and 4 filled-in examples. You also get a follow-up sequence and the rules that keep your emails out of spam folders.

If you want a first draft for your own company, use the free cold email generator on this page. It writes a full sequence from your website in under a minute.

What is a cold email, and why use sales email templates

A cold email is a message you send to a professional who has never heard from you. You picked them because they match your target. Your goal is to start a conversation, and the sale comes later. Each email goes to one person and talks about their situation.

Sales email templates give you a structure for each kind of message. You spend less time on the wording and more on the part that makes a cold email work: what you know about the prospect.

The anatomy of a B2B prospecting email

Every prospecting email has 7 parts, and each part has a single job.

• Subject line: 3 to 6 words that sound like a colleague wrote them. It earns the open.
• First line: a sentence about the prospect. It shows you did your research.
• Problem: the issue the prospect likely faces, in their own words.
• Offer: what you do about that problem, in 1 sentence.
• Proof: one fact that makes your offer credible, like a customer or a result you can show.
• Call to action: one question the prospect can answer in a few seconds.
• Signature: your first name, your role, your company and one link. Skip the banners and quotes.

How to write a cold email in 7 steps

1. Define the target. Choose a role, an industry and a company size. "Finance directors at manufacturers with 200 to 1,000 employees" is a target. "Decision makers" is too vague to write for.
2. Choose the angle. Pick a pain, a trigger event, a proof or a useful insight. A trigger event works when something just changed, like a new hire or a new office. One angle per email keeps the message clear.
3. Write the subject line. Keep it short and specific to the prospect. It should match your first line, so the open feels earned.
4. Write a first line about the prospect. Mention something you found, such as a job post, a product launch or a talk. Keep it factual, check it, and skip the flattery.
5. State the value in 2 sentences. Sentence 1 names the problem. Sentence 2 says what you change for them, with a proof if you have one.
6. End with one simple question. Ask about interest before you ask for a meeting. "Is this a priority this quarter?" is easier to answer than a calendar link.
7. Read it out loud and cut. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. Remove every word the prospect doesn't need, and aim for 60 to 120 words.

Cold email subject lines: 6 rules and 8 examples

Use these 6 rules:

1. Keep it short, around 3 to 6 words.
2. Write in lowercase or sentence case, like a colleague would.
3. Make it specific to the prospect or their company.
4. Match it to the first line of the email.
5. Skip hype words, capital letters and exclamation marks.
6. Never fake a reply or a forward with "Re:" or "Fwd:".

Work on the preview text too, the gray line that follows the subject in the inbox. It should complete the subject, not repeat it.

Here are 8 examples:

• your new office in Denver
• question about your hiring plans
• idea for your onboarding page
• {{first_name}}, quick question
• tax season schedules
• 3 ideas from your pricing page
• how your team plans shifts
• a faster month-end close

4 sales email templates you can copy

Each template uses one angle. Replace the brackets with what you found about the prospect. Keep {{first_name}} as a field and sign with [Your first name].

Fill-in-the-blanks cold email templates

4 cold email examples for Shiftory

Shiftory is a fictional company. Its pages, its customers, its prospects and its figures are invented for these examples.

Shiftory sells scheduling software to accounting firms. It plans staff hours around client deadlines. Its website shows one case study: Miller Hart CPAs, a 15-person firm, cut weekly planning from 5 hours to 1 hour.

Why it works: it names a pain the partner lives every year and backs it with one concrete result from Shiftory's own case study.

Why it works: it reacts to a recent, public event and links it to a problem the prospect will feel soon. Check the event before you send.

Why it works: the prospect can picture the result because the customer looks like them. Use only a real proof, with your customer's approval.

Why it works: it gives a free idea first, and the call to action offers more help instead of a meeting.

The generator on this page writes the same 4 angles for a whole target. It never invents a fact about a prospect: the personal first line, from your research, is yours to add.

How to write a follow up email after no response

Silence rarely means no. Your prospect is busy, and your email arrived at the wrong moment. A good follow-up gives them a new reason to reply.

When to send it

Wait about 2 to 3 days after the first email. Then space the next emails further apart. Send them during the prospect's working hours, in their time zone.

What to change in each follow-up

Bring something new each time, such as an idea, a proof or a shorter question. Avoid a bare "just checking in", because it gives the prospect nothing to answer. You can reply in the same thread so the prospect sees the context, or send a new email with its own subject line, as the generator does.

How many to send

3 follow-ups after the first email is a sensible rough guide. Beyond that, you risk annoying the prospect and hurting your sender reputation. Stop as soon as the prospect replies or asks you to.

A 4-email sequence over 14 days

2 follow-up templates

The last email: close the loop politely

Where LinkedIn fits in the sequence

Send a connection request between day 1 and day 3, after the first email. Keep it under 300 characters and leave the pitch out. Once they accept, send a short message about one of their posts or a shared topic. Use the same tone as your emails and share one idea at a time.

Deliverability, the law and the mistakes to avoid

A good email is useless if it lands in spam. Protect your deliverability before you start sending.

5 deliverability habits

• Verify addresses. Remove invalid addresses before you send, because bounces hurt your sender reputation.
• Use a dedicated sending domain. Send prospecting emails from a domain close to your main one. Your main domain stays safe if something goes wrong.
• Raise volumes step by step. Start with a few emails a day on a new domain. Then increase slowly over several weeks.
• Write in plain text. Skip images, attachments and heavy formatting. Keep 1 link at most.
• Make opting out easy. Add a line such as "Reply 'no thanks' and I won't write again." Then honor every request quickly.

CAN-SPAM in the United States

The CAN-SPAM Act covers commercial emails, B2B emails included. In general terms, it asks you to:

• use accurate sender information;
• write a subject line that reflects the content;
• include a valid physical postal address;
• offer a clear way to opt out and honor it promptly.

GDPR in Europe

The GDPR applies when you email people in the European Union. Many B2B senders rely on legitimate interest, so your email must relate to the person's job. You also need to:

• tell the prospect who you are and where you found their data;
• respect their right to object, and stop writing when they do.

Some countries add their own rules on email prospecting. These rules depend on your situation, so check them with a lawyer before you launch.

Mistakes to avoid

• Writing about yourself in the first 3 lines.
• Sending the same email to hundreds of people with only the first name changed.
• Asking for a 30-minute call in the first email.
• Stacking 3 angles and 4 links in one message.
• Faking familiarity with "Re:" or "as discussed".
• Citing a figure or a customer you can't back up.

How the free cold email generator works

The generator writes your sequence from your own website. It is free and needs no sign-up.

1. Enter your website address. Mark reads up to 5 pages of your site (home, offers, customer stories, articles) to learn what you sell and what you can prove, and collects their links. If your site blocks robots, describe your offer instead: Mark then writes from that text alone, with no link to your pages.
2. Describe your prospects. Write 10 to 160 characters with their role, their industry and the size of their company.
3. Pick an angle. Choose a pain, a trigger event, a proof or a useful insight, or let Mark choose.
4. Get your sequence in under a minute. Copy one email or the whole sequence, as text or HTML, for your sending tool, Google Docs or Notion.

You get:

• 4 emails for day 0, 3, 7 and 14, as a rough guide;
• for each email, its aim, its ask, 2 subject lines, a preview text and a body of 60 to 120 words;
• a link to the right page of your website from email 2 on, never in the first email;
• only 2 fields to replace: {{first_name}} and [Your first name];
• a LinkedIn connection note of 300 characters at most, and the message to send once they accept;
• 3 things to research on each prospect, to personalize the first line;
• a 5-point deliverability checklist.

What the tool doesn't do

• It invents no figure and no customer. Mark removes any sentence that cites a figure, a date, a study, a quote, a person, a customer or an award that your website and the description of your prospects don't give. Read each email before you send it.
• It sends no email. You paste the sequence into your own sending tool.
• It doesn't find email addresses. It doesn't pretend to know your prospects either: the personal first line is yours to write.

Sequences for every persona, with Mark

Want a sequence for each of your personas, with A/B variants to test? Mark writes them in your brand voice, from your pages and your customer stories, and your team reviews them before sending.

How to apply these sales email templates today

1. Write your target in 1 sentence. Name a role, an industry and a company size.
2. List 5 prospects and find 1 recent fact about each one. A job post, a new office, a recent post.
3. Pick the template that matches that fact and fill it in. Or get a full sequence from the free generator.
4. Read each email out loud. Cut it to 120 words or less.
5. Block day 3, day 7 and day 14 in your calendar. That is when your follow-ups go out.

Cold email FAQ