Writing a great cold email is tricky. But there a few simple rules that everyone should live by. Here, in the words of others, are four of the most important ones:

1. Establish rapport
How to Use Email Cold Call to Get in Front of a Prospect Every Time

No one likes to receive unsolicited emails therefore the first thing you should do is break the ice. Try to build some form of rapport, even though you are not in front of your prospect in person.

2. Be brief
Does Email Cold Calling Work?

You have less than 20 seconds to capture the decision-maker’s attention. After the first couple sentences, they decide if they’ll delete it, forward it or respond.

3. Be extremely clear throughout
More What Not to Do on a Cold Call Email

The rule, in a cold call and in a cold email is that you must be crystal clear. If your prospect does not understand what you are talking about, that prospect will simply delete your email. On the phone, your prospect will say, “I’m not interested” and hang up.

4. Have a clear ask or next step
“A fabulous example of how not to cold e-mail people”

Then there’s the ‘let me know when you want to meet’ stuff. Sure, any sales rep is going to “look forward to hearing back from” a prospect, but how often does that happen? Whatever happened to “I’ll call you.”