The first line of a cold mail is read before it is opened.

A founder in Ahmedabad checks their mail between two meetings. There are forty unread. They do not open each one to decide what it is. They read down the list: who it is from, the subject, and a grey line of the first few words underneath. Then the thumb decides.

That grey line is the preview, and it is written by whatever you put at the top of the mail. Most people put “Hi, I hope this mail finds you well.” So that is what the preview says, and the thumb moves on.

Two lines doing one job

When we wrote up the 27 cold mails we sent, most of the attention went to subject lines. The subject earns the open. But on a phone the subject and the first line arrive together, and the reader takes them in as one sentence. A good subject over a wasted first line is half a sentence.

Our mail to The Souled Store had the subject “i love you” and the first line “by ‘you’ i mean the company”. In the inbox, the two sit one above the other, so the joke pays off before the mail is even opened. Whatever you think of the joke, the first line was finishing what the subject started.

Four openings that waste it

• The greeting. “Hope you are doing well.” Nobody has ever been reassured by it. It tells the reader exactly one thing: a stranger wants something.
• The introduction. “My name is Rohan and I am the founder of…” Your name is already at the top of the mail. The reader learns nothing new and still does not know why you wrote.
• The apology. “Sorry to disturb you” or “I know you must be busy.” It asks permission to take their time while taking it, and it invites them to agree that you are a disturbance.
• The company history. “We are a ten-year-old firm with expertise across industries…” This sounds like the most effort and reads most like a brochure, usually with one of the nine overused words before the full stop.

Each of these is polite. Politeness is welcome in the second paragraph. In the first line it costs you the read.

What the first line has to do

It has to tell the reader that this mail was written to them, and could not have gone to anyone else. The quickest way is to start with them: something you noticed about their business that a mail merge could not have known.

Openings like these:

• To a restaurant: “Your menu says authentic Kathiyawadi, and the photo at the top of it is paneer tikka.”
• To a jeweller: “The Gujarati version of your website stops halfway down the homepage.”
• To a startup: “Your last three LinkedIn posts were about hiring, and your careers page doesn't load.”

Each one is specific, each can be checked in ten seconds, and each is a little uncomfortable to ignore. None of them mentions you. That comes next, in one sentence, once they are reading.

The first line is read by everyone you write to. The rest is read only by the people it persuades.

Specific, without being rude

Pointing at a mistake is the fastest way to be noticed, and it works for about one sentence. One of our own mails told a brand their website deserved a 2/10. It got opened, and the body had to be twice as generous to earn it back. That is an expensive way to start.

If you open with something that is wrong, say it the way a friend would, and make the next line explain why you are telling them. A useful test: if you would not say it to their face at a wedding reception, it does not belong in their inbox.

And if you could not find anything specific to say, that is the answer. Do not send the mail yet.

A five-minute check before you send

• Send the mail to yourself and look at it in your phone's inbox, not in the compose window. That is the only view that counts.
• Read the subject and the preview together as one line. Would you know who it was meant for?
• Delete your first line. If the mail loses nothing, the first line was a greeting, whatever words it used.
• Read the new first line aloud. If it would sound odd said across a table to that person, rewrite it.

Then send it to one person, by name. After the opening, the shape from the 27 mails still holds: prove you looked, say what you do once, and make the reply small enough to send while walking. All of them are on the work page if you want to see which openings we would keep.

Most people write the subject last and agonise over it. Spend half that time on the line underneath. The same people see it, and it does more of the persuading.