I’ve hit a wall with cold email and I can’t figure out why. As far as I can tell, I’ve done everything by the book. I send from two dedicated domains, look-alikes of the main brand domain, which itself never sends cold. They’re about 7 months old. Both have SPF set to -all, 2048-bit DKIM and DMARC at p=reject with strict alignment, and both redirect to the main site. On those domains I run 10 Google Workspace mailboxes, 5 per domain, about 4.5 months old. Each one has a name and a profile photo, and they send through the Gmail API rather than SMTP. I keep the volume low. Each mailbox sends 6 emails a day, so 60 a day in total, only Monday to Friday in US business hours, with 10–20 minutes between sends from the same mailbox. The emails are as plain as they get: plain text, no links, no images, no attachments, no open or click tracking. The first email is about 90 words. Two follow-ups of about 50 words come after it in the same thread, so that’s 3 touches over about a week and a half. I write every subject for the specific lead, and none of them contain numbers. I’m emailing founders and CEOs of US Shopify brands. Every address is verified “ok” in MillionVerifier, with no catch-alls. Every recipient is on Google Workspace, there are no role addresses, and I only email one person per company at a time. The result is 0 bounces on the last 243 sends. And still I keep landing in spam. I’ve sent 181 first emails and haven’t had a single reply. What am I missing?

It's been years since I've picked up one of the copywriting classics that I used to read and reread regularly (photo attached of three I have even lugged around with me as I moved cities and countries). I feel my life and my emails are suffering for it. I'm gonna get back into rereading some classic copywriting and marketing books... but I was thinking, maybe turn it into some kind of group activity? A book club? A naked book club? A naked book club in a bathtub? I have no idea. Maybe you can tell me if you are currently or have previously been in a book club? If so, what did you like and what did you not like?

This is actually key for any type of copy. But whenever you're sending daily emails (as you should be doing... otherwise, why are you here?)... You want to exude enormous amounts of confidence in whatever you're selling. Why? Because if you don't believe in what you're offering, why would anyone else do? "Ok, Svet, this is obvious, but how to pump my copy?" Well, first: Teach and/or promote things you feel excited about. For example, I recently added a new copywriting course for my Skool community members. And they're raving about it. That raving is social proof. And social proof is great for confidence. It's like when @John Bejakovic shares how much cash he's amassed from an affiliate promo (and makes us all jealous). Second, before you sit down to craft your email, make sure to pump up your energy. Maybe do a few push-ups. Perhaps dance a bit to EDM. Or watch something motivational. Whatever it takes to get you into "I can CRUSH this" mode. People buy from confident leaders. So, you might as well lead with confidence.

I've seen at least a couple hundred emails from different folks saying something like "I had this guy on my list for 107 years, he never opened a single email, then out of the blue he spent $19k on stickers from my Etsy store." Do you find this happens regularly? Never? I ran my own analysis and the conclusion may shock you.

@Vasileios Apostolou writes in his email today: === I found this question in a book. I think it’s worth thinking about. “Imagine your child, or someone else you love, inherits your exact habits upon coming into adulthood. Which ones would you pay good money to delete from their life?” === I have no children, but imagining I had one or a dozen, and imagining the kind of fatherly love I keep hearing about from people who do have children... ... I might pay good money to delete the following from my imaginary child's adult life, had they inherited it from me: - The habit of working too much, or spending too much of their mental space thinking about work-related things - [A habit I had when I was younger, "upon coming into adulthood"] The habit of following the latest reasonable-sounding but ultimately harmful restrictive diet/way of eating - 8. The habit of thinking things will be better in the future if they only get X, or that things were better in the past back when they had Y What about you? What would you pay to delete?