Get your cold email critiqued and scored like a skeptical prospect
Runs your cold email through a three-pass review: a brutal line-by-line read from a busy prospect's perspective, a five-dimension strategic score, and a rewrite that fixes the weakest dimensions. You learn why the email underperforms, not just that it does — the pattern transfers to every email you write after.
You are two people in one review. First: a VP with 200 unread emails, zero patience, and a delete key. Second: a cold email strategist who has diagnosed thousands of underperforming campaigns and can name exactly why an email died. I'm going to paste a cold email. Review it in three passes: PASS 1 — The Prospect. React in real time, line by line, as the busy skeptic would. Be honest to the point of discomfort: note the exact line where you'd stop reading and why. If you'd delete it from the subject line alone, say so. PASS 2 — The Strategist. Score the email 1-10 on five dimensions: relevance (is there a reason THIS person got THIS email?), clarity (one readable idea per sentence?), credibility (is there proof or just claims?), brevity (does every sentence earn its place?), and the ask (is the CTA low-friction and specific?). One sentence of justification per score. PASS 3 — The Rewrite. Rewrite the email fixing the three lowest-scoring dimensions. Keep my offer and voice; change the execution. Under 90 words. Then list the three changes you made and why, so I learn the pattern instead of just getting a fix. No politeness padding. 'This is pretty good!' is banned. Every email can lose a sentence. Before you review anything, interview me. Ask me these questions ONE AT A TIME, waiting for my answer each time: 1. Paste the cold email, including the subject line. 2. Who's it going to (role, industry, seniority)? 3. What's it performing at, if you've sent it — opens, replies, meetings? 4. What can you claim as proof that isn't in the email yet? Once you have my answers, run the three passes in order.
How to use it
- 1
Copy the prompt into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM.
- 2
Paste your real email with its subject line — critiquing a sanitized version wastes the exercise.
- 3
Read Pass 1 without defending yourself; the line where the prospect stops reading is your real problem.
- 4
Ship the rewrite, and keep the three-changes list as a checklist for your next draft.
Best practices
Include real performance numbers in question 3 — the diagnosis sharpens dramatically when the model knows replies are at 0.5% versus 3%.
Run your best-performing email through it too; knowing why your winner wins is how you write the next one.
If Pass 2 scores everything 7+, push back with 'be harsher, assume this campaign is failing' — mediocre emails deserve mediocre scores.
Re-submit the rewrite for a second round; two passes typically converge on a genuinely tight email.
Example: what this looks like in practice
An AE at a mid-market cybersecurity vendor pastes an email that's pulled 2 replies from 600 sends. Pass 1 stops reading at sentence two: 'a next-generation platform leveraging AI' — the prospect's note reads 'this is where I know it's a mass blast'. Pass 2 scores relevance 3 and credibility 4, flagging zero proof and no reason-why-now. The rewrite opens on the prospect's compliance deadline instead, swaps the platform description for 'helped a 900-person fintech pass SOC 2 renewal in 6 weeks', and cuts 40 words. The revised version pulls 11 replies from the next 500 sends.
Best fit
This prompt is one gear in a bigger machine. We orchestrate 20+ tools into outbound systems our clients own — and guarantee the results.
Apply for a Pilot Spot → →Frequently asked questions
Usually one of five failures: no reason this person got this email, unclear writing, claims without proof, too long, or a high-friction ask. This prompt scores all five and shows you the exact line where a busy reader stops. Most underperforming emails fail on relevance and credibility, not on wordsmithing — which is why editing sentences rarely fixes them.
More cold email writing prompts
Write a complete cold email from scratch
Produces a complete, send-ready cold email of 60-100 words with the four-part spine that books meetings: reason, problem, proven outcome, soft ask. The five-question interview forces you to articulate the 'why now' most campaigns skip, and the prompt refuses to write until that angle is real.
Audit and rank your subject lines before you hit send
Puts every subject line candidate through a brutal pre-send audit: a 1-10 plausibility score, its biggest weakness named, spam-pattern flags, and a fixed rewrite. You get a ranked list with a clear verdict — two to test, the rest to kill — instead of sending on gut feel.
Distill your value prop into one cold-email-ready sentence
Forces your value proposition through a compression process that ends with one falsifiable sentence under 22 words — who it's for, the outcome, and a number or mechanism no competitor could claim. You get 5 ranked candidates with tradeoff notes, ready to drop into every cold email you write.