Write a cold outreach sequence
AI cold email sequence is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
AI cold email sequence is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
A cold sequence works when each touch carries new information: the second email should not exist unless it says something the first one did not, and most sequences fail this test by touch three.
| name | email-rules |
|---|---|
| description | Rules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email. |
| allowed-tools | none — this skill adds judgement, not reach |
| compatibility | Zealos, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any client that reads SKILL.md |
| license | Free to use and edit |
--- name: email-rules description: Rules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email. --- # Email rules ## Length Under 120 words. Outbound: under 90. If it does not fit, the ask is not clear enough yet. ## Subject lines - 4–7 words, lowercase or sentence case. Not Title Case. - Say the subject, not a tease. "Pricing for 40 seats" beats "Quick question". - Never fake a reply with "Re:". - No emoji, no "[URGENT]", no personalisation tokens visible in the subject. ## Structure 1. **One line of why-you**, specific enough that it could not be sent to anyone else. If it could, delete it — a generic opener is worse than none. 2. **The point**, in one or two sentences. 3. **One ask.** A question they can answer in a sentence, or a specific time. No signature block essay. No attachment on a first email. ## Calls to action Ask for a reply, not a meeting, on a first touch. "Worth a look?" outperforms "Do you have 30 minutes Tuesday?" because the cost of answering is lower. ## When not to send - Nothing has changed since the last email. - You are following up on a follow-up with no new information. - The recipient is on a thread where someone else owes the reply. - The message exists to make the sender feel productive. A skipped email costs nothing. A fourth "just bumping this" costs the account.
The sequence you build has four touches that each say something, rather than seven that say the same thing with escalating politeness.
Your first outbound motion inherits the rules you would have learned in month six, without the two hundred wasted sends.
Campaign copy and sales copy stop diverging, because both are drafted against the same written rules.
As many as you have distinct things to say — usually three or four. Length is a symptom of not knowing what the message is.
An agent drafts it; the skill decides whether each touch earns its place. Reviewing four drafted touches is faster than writing one.
Deliverability is a domain and volume problem rather than a copy problem, though the rules here — short, one ask, no attachment on a first touch — help.
An AI SDR agent is only as good as the definition of a good customer it is working from, which is why the fit criteria belong in a written skill rather than buried in a prompt nobody can find.
/our-icpAI email triage is worth having only when it sorts by consequence rather than by recency: what blocks a deal, what someone is waiting on you for, and what can be read at the end of the week.
/email-rulesAccount research earns its time only when it changes the first sentence you write, which means looking for what recently changed rather than assembling a profile anyone could have found.
/our-icpQualification is a claim about evidence, not a score: a deal is qualified when every criterion has a source you can quote, and unevidenced criteria are named rather than filled in optimistically.
/meddiccA follow-up gets a reply when it opens with the specific commitment made on the call, stays under 120 words, and asks for exactly one thing the recipient can answer in a sentence.
/email-rulesA writing-voice skill is the highest-leverage thing you can give an AI, because it changes every sentence the product produces and it needs no tools, no integrations and no data.
/our-writing-voice