---
name: copywriting-first-touch
description: >-
  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
metadata:
  based_on: An MIT-licensed open-source skill of the same name
  upstream_license: MIT
  adapted_by: TheCold.Ai
  adapted_on: "2026-09-18"
  changes:
    - British English throughout; dashes and emoji removed
    - The meeting ask removed from the first touch and replaced with a value-based ask
    - Hard limits added: ninety-nine words in the body, sixteen in the opening line, no links
    - A section added on what a shorter sequence does to the daily new-lead cap
    - The accuracy rules rewritten as four plain categories rather than coloured markers
---

# First touch

You are writing the most important email in any sequence: the first one. It has
to earn attention in about three seconds, hold it long enough to be read, and
produce a reply. Without pitching, without flattery, and without pretending to
personalisation 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 they
solve 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 and
write without pretending otherwise. An email that invents a detail is worse than
one 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, not
to explain the product.

### The three seconds

The reader decides in about three seconds. Those three seconds are spent on the
subject line, the sender name and the first line. Everything after them is
irrelevant 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 the
problem it usually creates, and stop. Do not congratulate.

**A tension.** The default when there is no signal. Name a specific irony in
their world that they recognise instantly. It should read as though written by
somebody who has lived the problem rather than researched it.

**An observation.** For analytical readers. Something non-obvious about their
sector that reframes a thing they already think they understand. Not a
statistic.

## 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 that
does not move the reader towards the ask comes out.

**Sixteen words in the opening line.** Past that it stops reading as something
you noticed and starts reading as research being performed at somebody.

**No links. None.** Not the website, not the calendar, not the one in the
signature. This email is going from a domain that has never written to this
person 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, a
demo or a slot. Asking for time before giving anything signals pipeline
pressure, 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 email
Opening line: sixteen words at most, names the tension, never a question
Two or three sentences: develop it, in their world, no product
One sentence: what becomes possible, without naming what you sell
The ask: one, value-based, needing one word back
Optional 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`), naming
the tension in the role (`forecast accuracy`, `team coverage`), or plain
curiosity (`quick thought`, `something noticed`).

### Opening lines

Sixteen words at most. Names a tension, an irony or a specific moment. Never
opens with a question, with "I", with a compliment, or with your company. It
should make the reader wonder how you know that.

*Tension.* "Most operations managers have the system. The handover still breaks
every time somebody leaves."

*Signal.* "Three field roles went up last week. That pace usually surfaces the
scheduling problem first."

*Observation.* "Most firms answer this by hiring. It moves the bottleneck rather
than removing it."

### The body

Two or three sentences after the opening. Each one does a different job: expand
the tension, sharpen it, then name the consequence. Stay in their world. One
problem 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 you
sell. "There is usually a structural reason it keeps happening." "The teams that
get 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 cannot
fulfil the same day is how a warm answer goes cold.

Never: "Can we jump on a call", "Would love to connect", "Let me know if
interested", or a calendar link.

### The sequence line

Only for sequence openers, and only if it earns its words: "Sending something
specific 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 cost
that no copy can fix. Every person added to a campaign consumes one send for
each step, so the number of new people a fleet can take each day is its daily
capacity divided by the number of steps.

A fleet sending 240 a day sustains 48 new people on a five step sequence and 80
on three. Same fleet, same cost, two thirds more people reached.

Illustrative figures, not measured from any account. The point is the shape: a
shorter sequence puts more weight on this email and reaches more people, and a
longer one does the opposite while looking more thorough.

## Phase 5: what to output

**The email.** Use, target, seniority, angle in one sentence, whether a signal
was used, and which variables exist.

Then the subject and the body.

**Why this works.** Three bullets: why those two subject words, what tension the
opening names and why it lands for this reader, and why that ask suits this
seniority.

**Word count**, against ninety-nine, and the opening line count against sixteen.

**If it opens a sequence.** What tension email two deepens, what shift email
three 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 this
after 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.

---

## Credits

Adapted by TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in Middlesbrough, England, from an
open-source `copywriting-first-touch` skill published under the MIT licence.
What changed is listed in this file's frontmatter under `metadata.changes`. The
licence terms are reproduced in the LICENSE file of the download bundle at
thecold.ai/claude-skills/. Not affiliated with Anthropic, or with the authors of
the upstream files.