What’s a Cold Email in 2025? Hopefully Not What You Think
Somewhere between 2016’s hustle culture and the Great Resignation, cold emails mutated. What was once a pure, if slightly needy, method of outreach is now a Frankenstein monster of fake familiarity, soulless formatting and the ever-present "quick bumping this to the top of your inbox" subject line.
I've recently become fixated on this limp genre because I received the worst cold email of my life last week. It opened with: "Hope your family is safe during these uncertain times." A line that might’ve passed in 2020, if the rest of the message hadn’t been about blockchain-enabled loyalty programmes. No preamble, no context, just a gentle trauma tap and a sell.
Here’s the thing: New Zealanders are sensitive to sincerity. Not soft, just allergic to pretence. So why are 90% of outreach messages formatted like the sender works in a WeWork in Utah? There’s a weird global homogenisation happening in marketing copy—not just spelling but tone, timing, even expressions. It’s like everyone got the same LinkedIn course and hit copy-paste.
What’s next? I think we need to swing the pendulum the other direction. Less automation, more intelligent effort. Actually read who you're emailing. Reference something specific. Be brave enough not to sound like everyone else in the inbox. I once got a pitch from a junior art director that started, "I got your name from a bar napkin at Auckland Art Fair." I replied within fourteen minutes. Still in touch three years later.
Cold emails don’t have to be cold if you give them a human temperature. Lukewarm will do nicely.
I've recently become fixated on this limp genre because I received the worst cold email of my life last week. It opened with: "Hope your family is safe during these uncertain times." A line that might’ve passed in 2020, if the rest of the message hadn’t been about blockchain-enabled loyalty programmes. No preamble, no context, just a gentle trauma tap and a sell.
Here’s the thing: New Zealanders are sensitive to sincerity. Not soft, just allergic to pretence. So why are 90% of outreach messages formatted like the sender works in a WeWork in Utah? There’s a weird global homogenisation happening in marketing copy—not just spelling but tone, timing, even expressions. It’s like everyone got the same LinkedIn course and hit copy-paste.
What’s next? I think we need to swing the pendulum the other direction. Less automation, more intelligent effort. Actually read who you're emailing. Reference something specific. Be brave enough not to sound like everyone else in the inbox. I once got a pitch from a junior art director that started, "I got your name from a bar napkin at Auckland Art Fair." I replied within fourteen minutes. Still in touch three years later.
Cold emails don’t have to be cold if you give them a human temperature. Lukewarm will do nicely.