Cold email in 10 minutes

Cold email is a short, personal email to someone who doesn’t know you yet, sent because you can genuinely help their business. Done well, it is one of the cheapest ways to book sales calls. Done badly, your emails land in spam and the domains you send from get burned. This page covers the basics you need before you order anything.

What cold email actually is

You pick a group of people who fit your offer (for example, “heads of sales at software companies with 20-200 staff”), find their work email addresses, and send each of them a short sequence of emails: usually a first email and a couple of follow-ups. A small share of them reply, and some of those replies turn into calls.

Two things make it work:

• Reaching the right people with an offer they care about. No setup fixes a bad list or a weak message.
• Landing in the inbox, not in spam. That depends on the accounts you send from, how they are set up, how much you send from each one, and what you write.

The 4 parts of a cold email stack

Every cold email setup, whoever you buy it from, has the same four parts. A stack is just the set of tools you use together.

Part	What it does	Who provides it
1. Infrastructure	The inboxes and domains your emails are sent from, with the technical records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) set up and the inboxes warmed up.	Maildeck (that’s us), on Outlook, Google Workspace and SMTP.
2. Sequencer	The tool that sends your campaigns and follow-ups on a schedule, spread across all your inboxes.	A sending tool you sign up for yourself, such as Instantly or Plusvibe. Maildeck connects your inboxes to it.
3. Leads and enrichment	Finds the right people and their work email addresses.	LeadSonar (leadsonar.io), our sister product.
4. Cleaning and verification	Removes bad and risky addresses before you send, so bounces don’t damage your domains.	EmailShield (emailshield.co), our sister product.

In one line: LeadSonar finds the people, EmailShield cleans the list, your sequencer sends the emails, and Maildeck gives it all somewhere safe to send from.

Words you'll see a lot

A domain is the part after the @ (like getyourbrand.com). An inbox (or mailbox) is one email account on that domain. Warmup is a period of gentle, automatic sending that builds a new inbox’s reputation. The Glossary has the rest.

Why many inboxes on several domains beats one inbox

You might wonder why you can’t just send everything from your normal work email. Three reasons:

• Each inbox can only send a small number of cold emails a day safely. Email providers watch for accounts that suddenly send a lot. So instead of sending 1,000 emails from one inbox, you send a handful from each of many inboxes. See Sending limits for the numbers.
• Separate domains protect your main one. You send from brand variations (like getyourbrand.com or tryyourbrand.com), never your main company domain. If a sending domain gets a bad reputation, your everyday email and website are untouched. Domains explains how to choose them.
• Spreading across providers spreads the risk. If one provider tightens its rules, inboxes on the others keep sending. That’s the idea behind the Diversified Stack.

This is why a Maildeck plan is measured in inboxes and domains, not in a single account.

From emails to calls: the rule of thumb

To plan how much you need to send, work backwards from the calls you want. We use the same rule of thumb as the app and Maya:

• About 1 positive reply per 200 cold emails.
• About 1 booked call per 500 cold emails.
• Each contact gets about 3 emails in a sequence, so contacts needed per month is roughly emails divided by 3.

You want	Emails a month	Positive replies (about)	New contacts to find
10 calls	5,000	25	about 1,700
50 calls	25,000	125	about 8,300
300 calls	150,000	750	50,000

A rule of thumb, not a promise

Real results depend on your offer, your list and your copy. Some campaigns do much better, some much worse. Use these numbers to size your setup, then watch your own results.

Choosing a plan turns these numbers into a plan.

Next

Your first order Quick Start, screen by screen.

Choosing a plan Turn the calls you want into the right plan.

Inbox types Outlook, Google Workspace and SMTP compared.

Glossary Every cold email term, in one line each.