A cold email checker is not a spam-score gadget. It is a buyer-time audit: can this person open, understand the hypothesis, and answer in under 30 seconds? If any of those three fail, the send is not ready.
The 60-second cold email checker
| Check | Pass looks like | Fail looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | 3–7 words, specific, no hype | “Quick question” / “Partnership opportunity” |
| Observation | One verifiable detail about their world | Generic praise or LinkedIn flattery |
| Hypothesis | A costly workaround you can name | Feature dump or “we help companies like yours” |
| Ask | One question answerable in a sentence | “15 minutes this week?” with a calendar link |
| Length | 50–90 body words (first touch) | 120+ words or three CTAs |
Score each row pass/fail. Fix fails in this order: ask → observation → length → subject → hypothesis. The ask and the observation do most of the work.
Red flags that almost always kill reply rate
- Double CTA. “Reply or book here” forces a decision. Pick one for email one.
- Company bio in paragraph one. They did not ask who you are yet.
- Fake personalization. “Loved your post about X” with no X-related ask wastes trust.
- Attachment or three links. First-touch deliverability and attention both suffer.
- Apology opener. “Sorry to bother” frames you as noise before they read the point.
- Hard ask too early. Calendar link before any problem fit — see soft ask vs hard ask.
Before / after (same account, different diagnosis)
Fail (≈145 words, hard ask, no hypothesis):
Pass (~72 words, soft ask, one hypothesis):
Same sender, same account. The second email passes the checker: specific subject, verifiable observation, named workaround, one soft ask, under 90 words.
How to diagnose without a tool
- Read it on your phone with the preview pane closed. If you cannot find the ask in two scrolls, cut.
- Delete the first sentence. If the email still works, the opener was throat-clearing.
- Circle every “we / our / I.” More than three in a first touch usually means pitch-heavy.
- Answer your own ask out loud in one sentence. If you cannot, the buyer cannot either.
- Count words on the send-ready draft — not the Google Doc with comments. Targets: cold email word count ranges.
When to use Cold Email Autopsy
Use the free Cold Email Autopsy when you want a structured pass over subject, length, ask friction, and common failure modes — especially before a sequence goes to 200+ contacts. It is a diagnostic, not a rewrite bot: you still own the judgment.
After a reply, discovery quality matters more than the opener. Bring a tight bank (15 SaaS discovery questions) and score the call the same day (scorecard template).
Check the draft, then steal the structure
Free diagnostic (no login): Cold Email Autopsy. More free tools on the landing hub. Five cold email frameworks with length + ask guardrails: Cold Email Pack — $17. Full discovery + objections + outbound: Sales Enablement Kit — $47.
Run Cold Email Autopsy (free) Get the $17 cold email pack