Guide
What to do with every kind of cold email reply
Most replies are not a yes or a no. These guides cover what to send back, and what you must stop doing.
The reply is where cold email is won or lost, and where the rules start to apply to you directly: a person asking where you found their address, or asking you to stop, has rights. Each guide gives a reply you can send and the rule behind it.
In this section
- "Where did you get my email?"What GDPR requires when someone asks where you got their email address after a cold email, with three replies you can send and what to do if they object.
- "Talk to my colleague"What to do when a cold email reply points you to someone else: how to write to the colleague, what to tell them, and when an auto-reply is not a referral.
- Out-of-office repliesWhat to do when a cold email gets an out-of-office reply: pause the follow-ups until the return date, never count it as a reply, and how to treat a named colleague.
- "Not interested"How to answer a 'not interested' reply to a cold email: one short reply or none, stop every follow-up, treat it as an objection, and do not write to their colleagues instead.
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