Cold Outreach Claude , Gemini, GPT-4o

Tailored Cold Email Body Prompt – Founders 2026

1 Views 0 Times Copied
Tailored Cold Email Body Prompt – Founders 2026
prompt.txt 
                                You are an expert founder-to-founder cold email writer in 2026. You write concise, helpful, non-salesy cold emails that get high reply rates from indie hackers and bootstrapped founders (especially those under 5k MRR).

Write a complete cold email body consisting of **exactly 5 sentences**.

Rules / style requirements (strict):
- Maximum 140–180 words total — shorter is better in 2026
- Tone: fellow indie founder / maker, warm, direct, zero corporate fluff, no buzzwords ("game-changer", "revolutionary", "unlock", "scale", "leverage", "partner with", etc.)
- Structure: 5 sentences only — no more, no less
  1. Greeting + very brief context/personal hook (reference something specific from their Twitter/website)
  2. Empathetic observation about a common/visible struggle (tied to what you found)
  3. Quick, honest mention of what you built and one specific thing it does
  4. One concrete, narrow way it could help with the exact pain you noticed
  5. Low-pressure, curiosity-based close — no hard ask, no "let's hop on a call", no "book time", no "reply if interested"
- Never use: "I can help", "I’d love to", "would you be open to", "quick chat", "demo", "free trial", "solution", "fix your problem"
- Focus on being helpful and relevant, not selling
- Make it feel like a short note from one founder to another
- Personalization must feel natural and specific — never generic

Input variables I'll provide:
[Their full name]
[Their company / product name]
[Website URL or Twitter handle — whichever you used to find context]
[Specific thing I noticed — one clear, recent/relevant detail, e.g. "you tweeted last week that outbound is taking 15+ hours/week and results are still low" or "your /pricing page shows you're at $3.2k MRR and only one paid plan" or "you wrote in your changelog that lead follow-up is still manual"]
[Their apparent main lead-gen struggle based on what I saw, e.g. "manual outbound follow-ups", "low email reply rates", "cold DM volume too low to move the needle", "LinkedIn outreach feels spammy and low-conversion"]
[My name]
[My product name]
[One-sentence neutral description of what my product actually does, e.g. "AI agent that finds and qualifies leads from Twitter conversations", "tool that writes and sends personalized follow-up sequences with high deliverability"]

Output format — only this, nothing else:
Subject: [one subject line — 40–58 characters, curiosity or relevance driven, NOT salesy]

Then a blank line

Then the full 5-sentence email body starting with "Hey [Their first name]," and ending after the fifth sentence.

No signature, no P.S., no extra lines, no explanations — just the subject + the five-sentence body.
Prompt • 408 words

How to use it

What this prompt does

This prompt creates a concise, 5-sentence cold email body that feels like a genuine note from one founder to another.
It solves the problem of generic, sales-heavy cold emails that get ignored or deleted by using real, specific context from the recipient’s website or Twitter/X to show understanding of their current situation.
The main win: emails that read as helpful and relevant rather than promotional — many users see noticeably higher reply rates (especially from sub-5k MRR founders) when the message demonstrates you’ve actually looked at their work.

What you’ll need

To get the most relevant and natural-sounding email, prepare these inputs before running the prompt:

  • [Their full name]
    First and last name of the recipient (e.g. Mark Jansen)

  • [Their company / product name]
    Name of their current project, startup or main product (e.g. WaitlistKit, FormNest, ShipFast)

  • [Website URL or Twitter handle — whichever you used to find context]
    The exact source you checked (e.g. twitter.com/markjansen or waitlistkit.com/pricing)

  • [Specific thing I noticed]
    The most important input — one clear, concrete detail you actually saw (ideally recent).
    Be specific and quote-ish where possible.
    Good examples:

    • "you tweeted last week that outbound is taking 15+ hours/week and results are still low"

    • "your /pricing page shows you're at $3.2k MRR with only one paid plan"

    • "you wrote in your changelog two weeks ago that lead follow-up is still fully manual"

    • "you posted about how cold LinkedIn messages are converting under 3% lately"

  • [Their apparent main lead-gen struggle based on what I saw]
    One short phrase summarizing the core pain point you identified (keep it precise).
    Examples: manual outbound follow-ups, low email reply rates, cold DM volume too low to move the needle, LinkedIn outreach feels spammy and low-conversion, qualifying Twitter leads takes too much time

  • [My name]
    Your first name (or first + last if that’s how you sign emails)

  • [My product name]
    The name of your tool/product (e.g. LeadSieve, ReplyFlow, ThreadPage)

  • [One-sentence neutral description of what my product actually does]
    A short, factual, non-hype description of the core function.
    Examples:

    • "AI tool that automatically scores and ranks Twitter leads by buying intent"

    • "tool that writes and sends personalized follow-up sequences with high deliverability"

    • "AI agent that finds early-stage leads from public Twitter conversations"

Recommended Models

For natural founder tone, strict 5-sentence structure, and avoiding salesy language in 2026:

  • Best overall: Claude 4 / Claude 3.7 Sonnet / Claude 4 Opus
    → Superior at staying concise, empathetic, and strictly following the “no hard ask / no buzzwords” rules while keeping the tone warm and peer-like

  • Very good & fast: Gemini 2.5 Pro / Gemini 2.5 Flash
    → Excellent at producing short, clean sentences and respecting word/character limits

  • Strong alternative: GPT-4o latest / o1 / Grok 3
    → Works reliably; if the output drifts toward being too promotional, reinforce the “no CTA words” rule in a brief system message

Realistic Sample Result

Example inputs you provide:

  • Their full name: Mark Jansen

  • Their company / product name: WaitlistKit

  • Website URL or Twitter handle: twitter.com/markjansen

  • Specific thing I noticed: tweeted 12 days ago "still spending 10+ hours a week manually qualifying Twitter leads — most don't even have paying customers yet"

  • Their apparent main lead-gen struggle: spending too much time manually qualifying Twitter leads

  • My name: Lisa

  • My product name: LeadSieve

  • One-sentence neutral description: AI tool that automatically scores and ranks Twitter leads by buying intent and budget signals

Typical output you’ll get (ready to copy-paste):

Subject: Those 10h/week qualifying Twitter leads?

Hey Mark,

Saw your tweet about spending over 10 hours a week manually qualifying Twitter leads — that used to eat entire weeks for me too.
Most of that time usually goes to people who aren’t close to paying yet.
I built LeadSieve — it automatically scores Twitter conversations and ranks leads by real buying intent and budget signals.
It’s been bringing qualification time down to under 2 hours a week for a few other indie makers I know.
Curious if something like that would even make sense for WaitlistKit right now?

Lisa

Frequently asked questions

In 2026, founders are extremely time-poor and tend to skim or delete longer cold emails instantly. Five short sentences create the sweet spot: long enough to show relevance and empathy, short enough to be read in ~12–20 seconds. Users consistently report much higher reply rates with this strict structure compared to 6–10 sentence emails or classic “problem-agitate-solve” templates.
The more recent and concrete, the better — ideally something from the last 7–30 days (a tweet, changelog entry, pricing page observation, recent post, etc.). Even slightly older but still relevant details (e.g., a pinned tweet or a recurring theme in their content) usually work well. Generic inputs like “you’re building a SaaS” or “you want more customers” produce noticeably weaker, more generic emails with lower reply rates.
Yes — but the best results come when there is at least a logical, believable connection between their visible struggle and something your product actually does. The prompt is written to stay very narrow and honest in sentence #4 (“one concrete, narrow way it could help”). If the fit is weak, the email may still get opened and read, but reply rates drop significantly. Most successful users only send these to leads where they see a realistic 1-step connection.
Hard CTAs (“let’s chat”, “book a call”, “are you interested?”, “can I send you a demo?”) trigger instant resistance in most founders in 2026 — especially in the first cold touch. The curiosity-based, no-pressure close (“Curious if something like that would even make sense for [product] right now?”) leaves the door open without demanding a decision. Users who keep this style tend to see 2–4× more replies than versions that push for a next step too early.
The tone and phrasing are intentionally very “indie hacker / bootstrapped founder” flavored (casual, maker-to-maker, no polish). You can still use it for other B2B audiences, but most people who target agencies, consultants, SaaS selling to mid-market or enterprise slightly rewrite the output to be 15–25% more professional/formal before sending. The 5-sentence structure and “show relevance first” philosophy still perform very well across niches — just adjust the voice to match the recipient’s world.

AI Business Mastery Newsletter

Proven AI Strategies That Work

Get expert guides, automation blueprints, and proven AI strategies to transform your business. Stay ahead with our curated insights.

Featured in these collections

Related Prompts