Cold Email First Line [How To Use Opening Lines 2026 GUIDE]

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1. What is a Cold Email First Line (aka Opening Line)?

A cold email first line, also known as a cold email opening line is the first line of your cold email whose objective is to break the ice with your prospect.

That's why people also call it: an icebreaker. Cold email icebreakers can be generic, semi-personalized or hyper-personalized.

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To sum-up these are all the synonyms for cold email first line:

• cold email opening line

• cold email intro line

• cold email icebreaker

Why cold email first lines are important?

Cold email first lines are key to boost your open rate but also to give the tone of your cold email to prospects

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They influence your open rate with the preview text

When prospects receive a cold email, whether it's on mobile or on desktop, they will see two things:

• the cold email subject line

• the preview text

We already covered cold email subject lines in another article so let's focus on the preview text. Indeed, cold email opening lines are themselves the preview text or at least part of it if the sentences are long.

There are 2 scenarios with the preview text that can impact your open rate:

Scenario 1: if you have personalized first lines, you will have more chances to have your emails opened as prospects will wonder what's inside your cold email.

Scenario 2: on the opposite, if prospects see that the preview text is generic, they won't even open your email especially if it's coupled with a poor subject line.

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They give the tone of your cold email

Your cold email intro lines set the tone: are you sales pushy or are you a friendly cold emailer?

Nowadays, prospects can spot straight away automated sales outreach emails or not. If it's badly done, especially with the opening line, they will consider you as spam.

What are bad cold email opening lines?

Bad cold email opening lines are like the first 30 minutes of a bad Netflix show, it's boring and you don't want to continue.

These kind of lines are usually generic, they don't stand out compare to other emails you receive and seems like a template.

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What are good cold email first lines?

Good cold email first lines are a fine wine, as exciting as the first 30 minutes of any popular Netflix Show, they make you click the email in your primary inbox (1) and then make you read the full email (2). However, even the best copy fails if it never arrives; it is essential to test your email deliverability to ensure your technical setup isn't working against your creative efforts

These kind of cold email icebreakers are hyper-personalize or specific enough to the recipient for them to engage with your cold email.

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3. How to write performing cold email first lines

Writing performing cold email opening lines is not rocket science, let's see how to do it.

Opening line after the first name or not: which version is the best?

You have three options to write your first lines.

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Option 1: you put the opening line next to your Hi {{firstName}} cold email variable

It looks like this:

• Hi {{firstName}}, {{OpeningLine}}; or

• Hi {{firstName}} - {{OpeningLine}}

Option 2: you put the opening line after a line break following the {{firstName}} variable

It looks like this:

Hi {{firstName}},

{{OpeningLine}}

Option 3: you don't use the {{firstName}} variable and write directly a first line

It looks like this:{{OpeningLine}}

Out of these three options, option 1 is my favorite because it's a pattern that looks less like a template. Option 2 is the usual go-to while option 3 is a bit risky if you're not skilled enough in email copywriting.

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Either way, the performance of your cold email icebreaker won't be impacted by the option you choose.

Don't use a formal language

Like I mentioned above, people know how to spot sales automation now. By using a more casual language, your copy will stand out compare to other cold emails received by your prospect.

Your goal should be to do the opposite of traditional templates.

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Using what I call generic personalization

Personalized first lines work the best but it's very time consuming to prepare them. Instead, let me show you how you can personalize at scale your cold emails.

1/ Work on your ICP and segment them by industry and location

For example, instead of targeting Digital Marketing Agency in the US, you can focus on targeting SEO agencies in Austin.

2/ Craft a personalized opening line for your buyer persona

Once you've segmented your buyer persona by location and industry, only write 1 first line that will be addressed to the dozens of SEO agencies in Austin.

For example, the icebreaker could be:

Hey {{firstName}} - it's cool to see an Austin SEO agency, saw you leverage your location to get some local clients, well done!

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Hyper-personalizing your opening lines manually or with AI

Hyper-personalizing cold email first lines takes time, but the ROI is massive. You basically have two options here: you write the lines manually or you use an AI icebreakers generator.

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So should you write personalized opening lines manually vs with AI?

Long story short, with AI you'll be** able to add a basic level of personalization** as AI first lines are generated from website URLs or LinkedIn URLs.

In less than 30 minutes, you can generate as much as 300 hundreds cold email intro lines.

Overall I'd say you better personalize your first lines manually if your offer is high-ticket, otherwise go for the AI way.

Use LinkedIn Posts & Tweets about your prospects

It's the easiest way to craft personalized cold email first lines. Use Breakcold or go on the platforms directly to get inspired to write an amazing opening line.

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Find podcasts your prospects made

Email opening lines made from podcasts are the best working ones from my experience, especially if they come from a podcast that no one listen. Your prospects ego will always feels good in this kind of situations.

Read blogposts your prospects wrote

Similar vibe as first lines wrote using podcasts.

Hire cold email first lines writers

To carry the job of writing cold email opening lines that boost the open rate & reply rate, you can hire first line writers.

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It can get expensive quickly so usually cold email generation agencies for example invest in writer located in Asia or India.

Hire virtual assistants

The good thing with virtual assistants is that you can hire them for pretty much anything. Once they have a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in hands, they're capable of crafting the lines the way you want compare to first line writers.

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4. My personal cold email opening lines process

When it comes to cold email opening lines, my process is different if I'm focusing on high-valuable clients or not. The good news is that both ways can be executed with my social selling and cold email software: Breakcold.

My process for high-ticket clients

My cold email first lines process for high-ticket clients works with social selling.

1/ I use my social selling feed to get inspired

• My prospects are organized in different lists.

• Each list display a different social selling feed regrouping LinkedIn and Twitter news about my prospects and their company

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2/ I aggregate company news when I want to reach out

• Once I'm inspired by some news I select the prospect I want to reach out to

• Company news automatically populates

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3/ I send a DM if I'm connected and an email if I'm not

• I craft my cold email first line and send a DM on LinkedIn if we're connected, otherwise I send a cold email.

• I only send Twitter DMs if I know they're following me on Twitter which is rarely the case for the prospects I want to close.

My process for smaller value clients

My cold email first lines process for high-ticket clients works with AI cold email intro lines (ie, first lines generated by Artificial Intelligence).

1/ I select the leads that I want to prospect

I select the leads I want to contact inside Breakcold. I can select them one by one or all at once.

2/ I generate in bulk icebreakers from Website URLs

Then I click on the mass icebreakers generation button. Breakcold will generate 4 icebreakers per prospect.

I choose to generate the opening lines from a Website URL, why? Because not every prospects fill their LinkedIn profiles so the quality of the lines can be bad or non-existent.

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3/ I pick my favorite cold email icebreaker in each lead

Once cold email first lines are generated, I spend 1 hour to review about 200 prospects in order to pick the best line generated.

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4/ I put the opening line in my cold email sequence

Finally, I put the email opening lines in my cold email sequence using the corresponding variable.

The whole process is a child's play.

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