SKILL.md · 9.4 KB
---name: copywriting-first-touchdescription: >- Writes the first email to a cold prospect, either on its own or as the opener of a sequence. Use when someone asks for a first email, a cold email draft, a first touch, how to open with a particular prospect, or an outreach email with no prior context. Produces one email with a subject line, a body inside the word limit, the reasoning behind each choice, and the setup for the next two emails when it opens a sequence.license: MIT--- # First touch You are writing the most important email in any sequence: the first one. It hasto earn attention in about three seconds, hold it long enough to be read, andproduce a reply. Without pitching, without flattery, and without pretending topersonalisation you do not have. Answer in the language the person is writing in. ## Phase 1: gather the context Ask for everything missing in one message. Never in rounds. **The sender.** Company, what they do in one sentence, the single problem theysolve that matters most to this prospect, and any proof they can actually name.Never invent one. **The prospect.** Title and seniority, sector, company size, and any real signal:a new role, hiring, funding, a post, a change of tools, something in the news. **The use.** Standalone, or the opener of a sequence? If it opens a sequence,what are the next two emails about, so this one sets up the right tension. **The data.** What actually exists per prospect. If there is nothing, say so andwrite without pretending otherwise. An email that invents a detail is worse thanone that never claimed to have one. ## Phase 2: what the first touch is for One job: earn the right to a second message. Not to pitch, not to impress, notto explain the product. ### The three seconds The reader decides in about three seconds. Those three seconds are spent on thesubject line, the sender name and the first line. Everything after them isirrelevant if those three fail. ### What kills a first email | Mistake | Why it fails ||---|---|| Opening with a compliment | Reads as a salesperson in the first four words || Starting with "I" | The email is about the sender, not the reader || A generic pain | They have read it fifty times this week || Naming a product or feature | Too early, and nobody asked || Length | Nobody reads past the fourth line of a cold email || Invented personalisation | "As a VP of X you must struggle with Y" is insulting || A question as the first line | Creates no tension, and is answered by closing the tab || Two asks | Confusion costs the reply. One ask only || Jargon | Any sentence built from leverage, synergies and optimisation || A link | See the hard limits below. This is the one people argue with | ### What works **A signal.** Strongest, when a real one exists. Name it, connect it to theproblem it usually creates, and stop. Do not congratulate. **A tension.** The default when there is no signal. Name a specific irony intheir world that they recognise instantly. It should read as though written bysomebody who has lived the problem rather than researched it. **An observation.** For analytical readers. Something non-obvious about theirsector that reframes a thing they already think they understand. Not astatistic. ## Phase 3: the hard limits These are ours, not the original author's, and they are not preferences. **Ninety-nine words in the body.** Not counting the subject line. Everything thatdoes not move the reader towards the ask comes out. **Sixteen words in the opening line.** Past that it stops reading as somethingyou noticed and starts reading as research being performed at somebody. **No links. None.** Not the website, not the calendar, not the one in thesignature. This email is going from a domain that has never written to thisperson before. Links are the easiest thing in it for a filter to score against,and the action you want is a reply, which needs no link. **No meeting ask.** The first email does not ask for fifteen minutes, a call, ademo or a slot. Asking for time before giving anything signals pipelinepressure, and the reader has not yet agreed there is a problem worth solving.The ask goes further down the sequence. **No invented number.** Not a percentage, not a result, not a customer outcome. ## Phase 4: writing it ### Calibrate for seniority first | Seniority | Altitude | Opening angle | The ask ||---|---|---|---|| Director and above | The outcome they are accountable for | A quarter that missed, a board question, a commitment made externally | Something worth reading, offered on reply || Manager | Operational friction | The gap between what the team is asked for and what it can do | A comparison with teams like theirs || Individual contributor | The daily annoyance | One hyper-specific moment in their week | A useful thing, peer to peer | ### The shape ```Subject: two words, lower case, like an internal emailOpening line: sixteen words at most, names the tension, never a questionTwo or three sentences: develop it, in their world, no productOne sentence: what becomes possible, without naming what you sellThe ask: one, value-based, needing one word backOptional final line, sequence openers only: forward momentum``` ### Subject lines Two words, lower case. It should read like something a colleague would send.Never "Quick question", "Following up", a product name, or a superlative. Patterns that work: naming the problem (`pipeline gap`, `ramp friction`,`review cycles`), naming the moment (`q4 pressure`, `planning season`), namingthe tension in the role (`forecast accuracy`, `team coverage`), or plaincuriosity (`quick thought`, `something noticed`). ### Opening lines Sixteen words at most. Names a tension, an irony or a specific moment. Neveropens with a question, with "I", with a compliment, or with your company. Itshould make the reader wonder how you know that. *Tension.* "Most operations managers have the system. The handover still breaksevery time somebody leaves." *Signal.* "Three field roles went up last week. That pace usually surfaces thescheduling problem first." *Observation.* "Most firms answer this by hiring. It moves the bottleneck ratherthan removing it." ### The body Two or three sentences after the opening. Each one does a different job: expandthe tension, sharpen it, then name the consequence. Stay in their world. Oneproblem only, never two. Short enough that each is one line on a phone. ### The bridge One sentence connecting the problem to a better state without naming what yousell. "There is usually a structural reason it keeps happening." "The teams thatget past this do one thing differently." ### The ask One, value-based, answerable in a word. What they get, not what you want. - "Put together how three firms your size handle it. Worth sending?"- "Happy to share what we see across teams like yours. Useful?"- "Wrote a page on the handover problem specifically. Want it?" Whatever is offered has to exist before the campaign sends. A reply you cannotfulfil the same day is how a warm answer goes cold. Never: "Can we jump on a call", "Would love to connect", "Let me know ifinterested", or a calendar link. ### The sequence line Only for sequence openers, and only if it earns its words: "Sending somethingspecific to this next week." It creates momentum without giving away email two. ## The thing about sequence length If this email opens a sequence, the number of steps is a decision with a costthat no copy can fix. Every person added to a campaign consumes one send foreach step, so the number of new people a fleet can take each day is its dailycapacity divided by the number of steps. A fleet sending 240 a day sustains 48 new people on a five step sequence and 80on three. Same fleet, same cost, two thirds more people reached. Illustrative figures, not measured from any account. The point is the shape: ashorter sequence puts more weight on this email and reaches more people, and alonger one does the opposite while looking more thorough. ## Phase 5: what to output **The email.** Use, target, seniority, angle in one sentence, whether a signalwas used, and which variables exist. Then the subject and the body. **Why this works.** Three bullets: why those two subject words, what tension theopening names and why it lands for this reader, and why that ask suits thisseniority. **Word count**, against ninety-nine, and the opening line count against sixteen. **If it opens a sequence.** What tension email two deepens, what shift emailthree introduces, and one sentence on how the three tell a single story. ## Accuracy Four categories, and only the first two may appear as stated fact. 1. **Verified.** Use freely.2. **A reasonable inference** for this role or sector. Use, phrased neutrally as an observation rather than a claim about them.3. **Unsupported.** Remove, or reframe as a question about their world.4. **Invented.** A metric, an outcome or a customer result that does not exist. Never, under any framing. Safe: "Firms like [name]" with no outcome attached. Never: "[Name] achieved thisafter working with us", unless they did and said you could say so. ## Not for you if - You are writing to people who already know you. This is built for the version where nothing is owed to you.- You want a template to send to a thousand people. The opening line is the whole mechanism and it does not survive being generic.- You have no offer yet. This will produce a well-formed email for a proposition nobody wants. The first email decides whether there is a second one, and it gets about three seconds to do it: the subject line, the sender name, and the first line. Everything after those is irrelevant if they fail. This file writes that email, calibrated to who is reading it, and enforces the limits that keep it out of a spam folder. The largest change we made to the original is the ask: it wanted fifteen minutes, and we do not ask for time in a first email.
The ask does not request a meeting
Most first-touch templates end on fifteen minutes or a choice of two days. We use a value-based ask that needs one word back instead, because asking for time before giving anything signals pipeline pressure to somebody who has not yet agreed there is a problem. It is the rule we would defend hardest.
Three altitudes, not one voice
A director is written to about the outcome they are accountable for, a manager about the gap between what the team is asked for and what it can do, and an individual contributor about one specific moment in their week. Same offer, three different first lines, because the tension that lands is different at each level.
The opening line has a word count
Sixteen. Past that the personalised line stops reading as something you noticed and starts reading as research being performed at somebody. The file counts it and reports the count, which turns a matter of taste into a check.
Four accuracy categories, and only two may be stated
Verified, a reasonable inference phrased as an observation, unsupported, and invented. The last is never used under any framing, including the common one where a plausible figure is treated as a placeholder that somebody will replace later. Nobody replaces it.
The sequence-length cost, in the first-email file
It belongs here because this is where the decision gets made. A shorter sequence puts more weight on this email and reaches more people; a longer one does the opposite while looking more thorough. The arithmetic is stated so the choice is made on purpose.
Written here, from the first line, and kept current by the people who send with it.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Written by | TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in England. |
| Published | 2026-09-18, and revised in place since. There is no draft flag on a skill, so nothing goes in that we would want back. |
| This file's licence | MIT. Copy it, change it, use it with your own clients. |
This is not worth your time if any of these is true. We would rather you closed the tab than installed something that cannot help you.
- You want a template to send to a thousand people. The opening line is the whole mechanism and it does not survive being generic.
- You are writing to somebody who already knows you. This is built for the version where nothing is owed to you.
- You have no offer yet. It will produce a well-formed email for a proposition nobody wants.
Want it run for you instead?
These files are the judgement. The sending infrastructure, the lists and the replies are what we run daily for clients.
Questions about this skill
Straight answers. If yours isn't here, ask it on the call: we'd rather tell you no than sell you the wrong thing.
Why no meeting ask in the first email?
Because it converts the wrong people. A calendar link in a first email produces bookings from readers who were curious for four seconds, and those are the ones who do not attend. If you are paid on attendance rather than on bookings, the difference is your invoice. The ask that belongs in a first email hands something over and needs one word back.
Two-word subject lines, seriously?
Lower case, two words, and it should read like something a colleague sent. The test in the file is whether a colleague would plausibly send that subject to another colleague. Published analyses across large samples agree, and the reason is not cleverness: buyers categorise before they open, and anything that looks commercial is filed as commercial.
What if there is no signal to open on?
Then it opens on a tension instead, which is the default in the file rather than a fallback. A tension the reader recognises at once beats a weak signal, and it beats an invented one by a distance. What it must never do is manufacture personalisation from their job title.
The rest of writing and replies: copywriting-refiner, cold-email-writer, copywriting-follow-up and reply-handler. Everything sits on the library page, next to the follow-ups, which is the one people usually want after this. What we do for money is outbound, and none of it is a condition of using this.
Claude is a product of Anthropic. TheCold.Ai is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Anthropic.