How Long Should Your Cold Emails Be

Protect your replies

When someone replies to your cold email, what happens next matters a lot. Josh explains that if you keep responding from your outreach mailbox, you’re risking the thread. Outreach mailboxes, especially those from burner domains or risky setups, can get suspended without warning. If that happens mid-thread, the conversation is lost.

His solution: loop in your real inbox early. After the first reply, CC your main sales address or primary domain mailbox. You get the engagement credit, but now the thread lives in a safer place. This protects your data and reputation.

The hidden danger of done-for-you email setups

Josh and George talk about platforms that spin up hundreds of mailboxes for you—but don’t give you admin access. If a mailbox gets flagged, the provider may just delete it and give you a new one. Sounds convenient, but you lose the thread, contact history, and any replies. If you don’t control the workspace, you don’t control the risk.

If you’re using one of these services, ask for access to the Google Admin or Microsoft Admin panel. If they can’t give it, at least ask for a heads-up before they remove a mailbox, so you can recover the data.

Why mailboxes get suspended

Josh lists three main reasons accounts get shut down:

• High bounce rates due to poor list hygiene
  
• Spam complaints from poor targeting or content
  
• Low-quality warming or sending platforms with bad patterns
  

To avoid this, always clean your lists. Use reputable warming and sending tools. Watch for sudden changes in volume or reply behavior.

Platform differences: Google vs Microsoft

George shares his experience with Microsoft accounts getting blocked more often than Google. Even on paid tenants, Microsoft can restrict new mailboxes for 14 to 30 days. Google Workspace also throttles new domains—Josh notes that he sees caps around 20–25 emails per day for the first 60–90 days.

Best practice? Wait before sending. For new domains, Josh recommends:

• Wait 24 hours after setup
  
• Delay warming for at least 2 weeks on Google
  
• Wait 30 days on Microsoft before warming or sending
  

Summer seasonality is real

They both note a clear drop in replies around early July. Clients went from 3–6% reply rates to almost nothing. Out-of-office replies jumped to 9% in some cases. This is a normal seasonal dip—people are on vacation or slow to respond.

But out-of-office replies are actually a good sign. If you get them, it means your email hit the inbox. Spam folder messages don’t trigger OOO replies.

Josh suggests scaling volume down by 50% during slow periods like:

• Late June to mid July
  
• Mid November to early January
  

Track your seasonal data

Too many people panic during slow periods. Josh recommends taking the long view. Track your campaign performance month to month. Identify patterns. If March and April perform well, plan to scale during that time. If July is slow, use that time for testing or cleanup.

Should you add links in your signature?

Some marketers swear that putting LinkedIn or YouTube links in their signature increases replies. Josh says maybe. The key question is: does it actually help you convert?

If your leads mention checking out your profile before booking a call, maybe it works. But links tie campaigns together. If one campaign gets flagged, any shared link (like your LinkedIn URL) becomes a traceable signal across all your campaigns.

Josh prefers to strip signatures down to the bare minimum. But if branding helps you close, explore safer ways to do it—like swapping URLs or using redirects that are harder to trace.

There is no perfect campaign

George ends the episode with a reminder: most people give up too soon. Cold email is not a one-click channel. You need to test ideas, stay patient, and learn from results. One or two campaigns won’t prove anything. Run 20 over a few months. Watch what works. Then scale.

Josh agrees. Some of the best-performing campaigns come from creative ideas that would not show up in a cold email playbook. Success comes from iteration and paying attention, not from copying templates.

Closing notes

Cold email works when you control your setup, test your assumptions, and plan for long-term growth. If you want help building a strategy, Josh offers free consultations and is available through LinkedIn or his site.