Based on Eric Nowoslwaski’s blog post about email copywriting, the ideal word count for a cold email should be under 100 words with attention-grabbing copy that will drive action.
What makes an effective cold email is how well it respects the decision maker’s time. The best strategy for a cold email is to keep it short, providing valuable insights that set your business apart. Long emails can be overwhelming, get buried in a sea of other emails, and anything hidden in long paragraphs will get overlooked. Shorter emails look cleaner, are easier to read, and overall, lead to more replies.
The attention span of professionals comes down to only a few seconds, so the best way to write an effective cold email is to capture your prospects' attention immediately. You can do this by keeping your email neatly formatted with bullet points and breaks, bold your important words, clearly state how you can solve their problem, validate your company’s reputation with strong results, and include a call to action that will jumpstart engagement. With less words and attention-grabbing copy, prospects can quickly scan the email and decide within a matter of seconds whether they want to take action.
Keep in mind however, that although using less words in your cold emails is beneficial, it does not automatically mean more replies. Based on an analysis conducted by Hunter.io, they concluded that, since every cold email you send is different, you can receive various results depending on the content and the audience. For example, a campaign with 9 words got a 13% reply rate, while a campaign with 44 words got an 18% reply rate. Both campaigns had different goals and were sent to different people using only the necessary information needed to elicit a response. So, according to Hunter.io, the best word count for cold emails is the shortest amount needed to land new customers.
