Free cold email grader.
Paste a draft and get it scored the way ours are scored before they earn a send: length, links, asks, opener and the phrasing filters weigh. What no grader can score is whether the angle names a problem the reader has, which is the part that decides the reply.
Privacy: this tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type leaves this page, nothing is stored, and nothing is sent to GrowthPal.
A cold email draft at a glance
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Length | 50 to 125 words for a first touch. Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling |
| Links | Zero on a first touch, where you can manage it |
| Asks | One, and it should be answerable in a reply rather than a click |
| Opener | About them, grounded in a signal you could not have written for anyone else |
| What the grade cannot see | Whether the angle matters to the reader. That is the part that decides everything |
What makes a cold email work?
A cold email works when it names a problem the reader already has, in their vocabulary, with a reason to believe you, and asks for something small enough to say yes to. Everything else is hygiene.
The hygiene still matters, because it is what gets you read at all. A four-hundred-word email does not get filtered, it gets abandoned. A first touch carrying three links gets inspected more closely than one carrying none. An opener about your company tells the reader immediately that this was not written for them.
But hygiene has a ceiling, and it is low. A mechanically perfect email built on an angle nobody cares about produces silence, which is the most common outcome in cold email by a wide margin. That is the distinction this page keeps returning to: the grader measures the floor, and the floor is not where campaigns are won.
How to read your grade
The grader returns a letter grade with the specific deductions behind it.
A and B mean nothing mechanical is working against the draft. That is the beginning of the job rather than the end of it: the next step is racing this angle against a genuinely different one, not sending it at volume.
C means fixable problems, usually length, link count or an opener that is about you rather than the reader.
D means the mechanics are costing you the reply before the angle gets a chance. Fix those before judging whether the message works.
Treat the grade as a gate rather than a score to optimize. Getting from C to A is worth doing once. Getting from A to a slightly better A is time that belongs in a second angle instead.
What gets scored, and why
| Criterion | What good looks like | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 50 to 125 words | Longer emails are not filtered more, they are read less. A cold reader gives you one screen. |
| Link count | Zero on a first touch | Links are inspected and reputation-checked, and they give the reader a reason to hesitate. |
| Number of asks | One | Two asks is a decision. One question is a reply. |
| Opener subject | Them, not you | "I noticed" and "We help" both announce a template in the first four words. |
| Paragraph length | Around 40 words | Phone-first formatting. A wall of text is abandoned before it is read. |
| Promotional phrasing | Absent | Small filter cost, larger human cost. It reads as a campaign. |
| Proof | One specific point | Three proof points read as a brochure. One reads as a fact. |
The rewrites that move the grade
| Instead of | Write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "I noticed your company is growing fast" | The specific thing you noticed, named | Generic observation signals a template; a specific one cannot have been mass-produced. |
| "We help B2B companies streamline..." | The problem you think they have | Opens about the reader, not the sender. |
| "Would love to hop on a quick 15-min call" | A question they can answer in one line | Asks for a reply rather than a calendar commitment. |
| Three links to case studies | One sentence of proof, link on request | Removes the inspected elements and the hesitation. |
| Six paragraphs | Three short ones | The reader sees three sentences regardless. Choose which three. |
How to draft a first touch
- Start from the signal, not the template. Find the one thing about this company you could not have written about any other, and open with it.
- Name the problem you think it causes them. Specifically enough to be wrong. A problem statement nobody could disagree with is one nobody recognizes either.
- Give one piece of proof. A number, a comparable company, one sentence. Not three.
- Ask one question they can answer in a line. Not a meeting, not a demo, not a calendar link.
- Cut it to under 125 words and strip every link. Then read it on a phone.
- Race it against a different angle. Not a rewrite of the same claim. The point is to find which problem your market actually recognizes.
Common questions about cold email drafts
What does the grader actually check?
The mechanical things filters and readers punish: length, link count, spam-adjacent phrasing, how the ask is framed, and whether the opening line is about them or about you. What it cannot check is whether the angle names a problem the reader genuinely has, which is the part that decides the reply.
How long should a cold email be?
Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling, so 50 to 125 words for a first touch. Longer emails are not filtered more, they are read less. A cold reader gives you one screen to earn the rest of their attention.
Should a first email contain a link?
Avoid it where you can. Links get inspected and reputation-checked, and they give a reader a reason to hesitate. Ask a question the reply itself can answer, then send the link once a thread exists.
I scored well and still get no replies.
Then the mechanics were never what stood in the way. A clean email built on the wrong angle produces silence, which is the most common outcome in cold email by a wide margin. That is a message-market fit problem, and it gets solved by testing 10 to 15 angles against each other.
How personalized does the first line need to be?
Specific enough that it could not have been written for anyone else, which is a higher bar than inserting a company name. A merge field is not personalization, it is formatting. One real detail about their situation does more than three tokens.
Should I use AI to write the draft?
For research and the busywork, yes. For the angle, no, because the angle is a claim about what a specific market cares about and that comes from win/loss data rather than from a model. AI is very good at producing a grade-A email nobody answers.