Takeaways: "The Cold Email Handbook"

I recently read The Cold Email Handbook and since my experience with cold emails is pretty limited, it was a good deep dive into how things work at scale. One of the biggest challenges is how often you’re operating in the dark. Did my email land in spam? Did they open it? Did they actually read it? You rarely know for sure.

Here’s why cold outbound can work so well:

• The inbox is still a “sacred” space where deals get made and genuine conversations happen.
• It’s direct—no funnels, no fluff, just a reply.
• When done right, it speaks directly to pain points: making money, saving time, or cutting costs.

And here’s why it fails so often:

• Spammy, generic emails that get ignored.
• Poor infrastructure—emails going to spam instead of inboxes.
• Scaling too aggressively and coming across like a bot.

Tech Side
Something else I didn’t fully grasp before reading this was how tricky it is to send mass emails without getting flagged by Email Service Providers. The technical side of this is definitely more complex than I expected!

The number of adjacent domains you should buy depends on how much email volume you want to send.

"Quick question"

One thing that caught me off guard was seeing "Quick question" listed as a solid subject line. When I see emails with that subject, I immediately know it’s a cold email!

Write good subject lines: My best rule for writing good subject lines is that they feel like they could be the subject lines of an internal email—this helps them feel natural in the inbox. For example, “Quick question”, or “Idea for better outbound” are two casual, natural-feeling subject lines.

Pain Sniffing
I also learned about Pain Sniffing, an interesting strategy for sales and marketing. It shifts the focus away from generic buyer personas or assumptions about who might need your product. Instead, it’s about zeroing in on people who are actively dealing with the problem your product solves.

The idea is to systematically identify signs that a prospect is struggling with a specific pain point. Once you spot those indicators, you can tailor your outreach to hit their current needs directly—making it more relevant and timely.

Good read!