What’s Next in Cold Email? Key Trends and Strategies for 2025

Will cold email die in 2025?
Are cold emails going to land in the spam folder forever..? 
Will ESPs ban cold emailing!

These are some of the questions that I often get asked!

As someone who sent his first cold email in 2014, I have seen that the cold emailing industry has changed a lot, and it is getting tougher every year. 

What worked in 2014 got irrelevant in 2024! 

Moreover, 2024 has been the year that has seen a lot of changes in the cold emailing space like: 

• ESPs have added lot of restrictions
• Google has put an end to the open tracking
• Prospect data enrichment got more intended 
• Email lists have become more segmented
• Personalization has grown more targeted 

So, where does that leave us in 2025? 

Well, after closely monitoring industry trends, tracking what has worked for my team and me, and analyzing user data, I’ve compiled comprehensive research in this blog.

In this blog, I will share: 

• Issues that cold emailers faced in 2024
• Cold email strategy for 2025

Let’s get started!

P.S. You can also take a look at this short video we have put together for a quick overview of “What’s Next in Cold Email?”👇

Table of Contents

• Common Challenges Faced by Cold Emailers in 2024 
• Cold Email Strategy 2025
• Wrapping Up
• FAQs

Common Challenges Faced by Cold Emailers in 2024 

Before exploring what will work in cold email in 2025, let’s take a look at the common issues that cold emailers face:

1. High Bounce Rates

Many cold emailers made the grave mistake of sending emails without verifying their lead data, which directly increased the bounce rate.

2. Low Reply Rate

I came across a lot of cold emailers who complained of having low reply rates. However, while accessing their email content, I came across two blunders they were doing:

• Not having clear or using generic CTAs, such as “If you are interested,” 
• Sending AI-generated content without personalizing it.

Suggested Read: How to Use AI in Cold Emailing?

3. Poor Email Deliverability

Most of the email deliverability issues in 2024 happened due to:

• Tracking open rate
• Not using authenticated Email Accounts 
• Not warming up accounts properly

Suggest Read: How to Warm Up Your Email Accounts

4. Doing Bulk Emailing Without Following the Best Practices

This is the most common issue that I noticed with the agencies. As they have to send bulk emails, they would compromise on the best practices like:

• Writing personalized emails
• Getting the custom prospect data
• Setting up robust cold email infrastructure

Suggested Read: How to Send Bulk Emails?

Ultimately, their reply rates were affected. 

Don’t feel disheartened! This is one side of the story!

In the next section, I will explain how cold emailing will work in 2025.

Cold Email Strategy to Follow in 2025: Best Practices Explained

In 2024, you may have encountered challenges with your cold email campaigns. However, to overcome these challenges, you need to implement a powerful cold email strategy that follows best practices.

Because cold email only works for those who know how to do it correctly.

Here is a positive response I received from my latest lead generation cold email campaign for Saleshandy.

After closely analyzing the industry trends and what is working, here is the framework you can follow to create the cold email strategy for 2025.

1. Targeted Prospect Research for Data Segmentation
2. Hyper Personalized Email Copies
3. Optimal Email Deliverability
4. Adopt Multichannel Outreach
5. Choose the Right Automation Tool

Let’s get into the details!

1. Targeted Prospect Research for Data Segmentation

Why?

Because it works! 

As you can clearly see the details I have added about my prospects. I have mentioned the tech stack they are using, recent certification, and the pain point. 

And that’s why I got the reply! 

While building the email list, most of the cold emailers simply focus on specific job titles or industries. But that’s not enough! 

Just because someone is the CEO, CTO, or Sales head of a company and is from the industry you are targeting means that they will be interested in buying your product.

You need to find the Intent data. 

Intent data indicates the “likelihood to buy”  based on their behavioral signals. 

Therefore, you need to find people who have performed an action that indicates they need your product. 

Again, going back to the email shared above, you can see I sent the email to a prospect who is already using a product similar to mine. 

This increases the chances of getting a reply. 

Moreover, building a targeted email list is important not only for getting more responses but also for improving your email deliverability.

Because if you are sending out hundreds of emails and no one is responding, then eventually ESPs will consider you as spam and blacklist your email accounts. 

 Don’t know how to enrich your data?

Watch this video 👇🏼

Suggested Read: How to Enrich Saleshandy Lead Finder Data with Persana.ai

Data Segmentation

Once you have gathered the targeted data, you need to segment the data by organizing prospects into groups based on the insights.

Here are the group types you can consider to segment your prospect data:

• Business stage: Startup looking for growth vs. established company optimizing operations.
• Pain Points: Manual processes, cost-efficiency, lack of scalability
• Goals: Increasing revenue, reducing costs

Hence, make sure you accurately segment & narrow down your ICP’s data because segregating it will also help you craft specific offers for each group. (In the next section, we will explore it in more detail) 

2. Hyper Personalized Email Copies

This is one trend that has been and will continue to be used to get high response rates. 

Therefore, make use of the information you have gathered while enriching your prospect data and create a hyper-personalized email copy for each lead list! 

An ideal cold email copy has the following elements: 

Icebreaker

Add a relevant icebreaker that triggers to break the conversation barrier. 

I recommend that you watch this video, as this video is the top 5 cold email icebreakers that have worked for me & my team. 

Offer

You have to create a competitive offer that is actually worth responding to! 

Don’t just write “ Get free consultation/quote” because this is not going to work. 

You need to create an offer that is backed up by personalization with the custom data that you have gathered during the data enrichment process. 

For instance, in the offer written in this email copy, you can see how I mentioned the grave pain point, the value we bring to the table, and the USPs of my product. 

While creating an offer, make sure you keep these things in mind: 

• Your product/service’s USP
• Is this offer aligned with your ICP’s pain point
• Will my offer genuinely help my prospects 

CTA

You should add a clear and actionable CTA that requires the prospect only to say yes or no.

Don’t write a CTA like “email me back to earn more than 1 million dollars in a year”.

Because these CTAs just looked unrealistic, non-achievable, and spammy. No one will respond to such emails.

You can learn how to write effective CTAs from this video.

PS: Here is the checklist you can keep handy to write compelling cold email copies: 

• Write less than 100 words 
• Don’t copy-paste emails generated by AI
• Personalized videos 
• Add custom GIFs in the follow-up emails
• Plain text email content 
• A competitive & valuable offer 
• Personalize the subject line & email copy as per the prospect data
• Actionable CTAs

Recommended Read: 60+ Cold Email Templates

3. Optimal Email Deliverability

If you have a weak cold email infrastructure, then your emails will go to the spam filter.

Don’t rely on cheap domains as they will harm your sender reputation; instead, go for Gmail & Outlook as they offer the best email deliverability. 

Suggested Read: How to Set Up Secondary Domains 

Now, this is one thing I have commonly noticed: During the email account warm-up period, cold emailers also send their cold emails.

This increases the total number of emails sent from your account, triggering the spam filters.

Instead, you should slowly introduce cold emails alongside your warm-up emails.

Sending too many emails from one account is not recommended during the initial days. 

Industry Practice: You should create 5 email accounts with 1 domain and send 50 emails per day from each account for BEST EMAIL DELIVERABILITY.

Here are the email deliverability practices that I use to maintain a high sender reputation: 

• Rigorously warm up accounts for the first 4 weeks.
• Do not send more than 50 emails from one email account.
• Use multiple mailboxes, rotate between them, and share the volume. 
• Do not track open rates.
• Scale your cold email sending slowly – don’t bulk send or ramp up the number of emails all at once.
• Do not include any links or images in the primary email (you can include them in follow-up emails, though)
• Maintain time intervals between each email.(e.g., 5-7 seconds)

4. Adopt Multichannel Outreach

Now, we are not saying that cold emailing will not get you results. 

But we are saying that you combine your cold emails with LinkedIn outreach, cold calling, retargeting ads, etc, to get results quickly.  

By spreading your outreach efforts across multiple channels, you are more likely to get a response.

5. Choose the Right Automation Tool

2024 brought a lot of change to the cold emailing world, and outreach in 2025 will require much more time and effort from you.

Therefore, you should put the “human mind” to work where it is actually required, i.e.: 

• Identifying people who actually want your product & service
• Crafting an offer that actually needs your product 

This will help you to create a cold email strategy that brings actual results.

Hence, choosing an all-in-one cold email automation tool will help you automate tasks like sending emails and writing email copy, allowing you to invest your time and effort in adding a human touch to things that actually matter. 

Enter: Saleshandy, the best cold email automation tool.

Saleshandy’s Features: 

• B2B Lead Finder: Find your prospects’ accurate email addresses and phone numbers through an extensive database of 700M+ contacts and 60M+ companies.
• Sequence Automation: Create multi-step email sequences and schedule them in prospect time zones.
• Personalization: Personalize your emails at scale using features like spintax and merge tags.
• Deliverability Suite: Access a comprehensive suite featuring sender rotation, email warm-up tools, and sequence score. 

 Wrapping Up! 

As you can see, I have shared five cold email strategies that you can use to succeed in 2025. Make sure to follow all of them without skipping any.

All I have to say is: be optimistic about the future! Cold emailing is an art, and it takes time to master. Keep iterating and optimizing your strategy with the latest trends.

Follow these three evergreen rules of cold emails to succeed in the coming years:

You will continue getting results from your cold email campaigns as long as you follow these practices:

• Keep emails short and to the point
• Don’t send generic bulk emails
• Follow best email deliverability practices
• Adopt multichannel outreach

FAQs

1. Does Cold Emailing Work Anymore?

Yes, cold emailing works and will continue to work for the coming years. However, the success of cold emailing depends on how personalized email copies you write, understand your prospect’s unique pain points, and the deliverability practices you follow. 

2. How Effective are Cold Emails?

Cold emails are a very effective outreach channel only when done properly. A well-crafted email with a clear purpose and tailored messaging increases the chances of a response and can open valuable conversations.

3. What is The Success Rate of Cold Emails?

Well, the success rate of cold email campaigns depends on factors like:

• Industry
• target audience
• how well the email is tailored.

Moreover, the average response rates are typically 8-10%. However, personalized cold emails can help you to achieve significantly higher results.