Cold email grader

What the cold email grader checks

Paste a cold email with the subject on the first line, and optionally who it's for. The grader scores it from 0 to 100, tells you to keep it, rewrite it or start over, and marks every line that lost points.

Two kinds of checks run on the same email:

• Ken's copy rubric, answered the way a busy buyer reads. Can you understand it on one skim? Does it sound like a person? Are the offer and the ask obvious? How clear is the call to action? Is the P.S. clear? Would you reply? Is there a phrase nobody would say out loud? Plus two more for a pasted email: is it relevant to this reader, and is anything in it true only of them?
• Rule checks that need no model and run in your browser: spam words by tier, ALL CAPS and stacked punctuation, links and URL shorteners, a fake Re: or Fwd: in the subject, unfilled merge fields like {{first_name}}, length, reading level, the phrases that make copy read as AI, and the subject line itself.

How the score is built

The dial is the average of six scores, each out of 100:

• Relevance and personalization come from the rubric.
• Call to action is the rubric's ask score, with the P.S. counted for a quarter when there is one.
• Length scores the word count. First touches that get replies sit between 50 and 90 words.
• Deliverability takes 3 points for every rule point lost on spam words, formatting, links, a fake reply prefix, placeholders and the subject.
• Readability blends the rubric's quick-read and sounds-like-a-person scores with the reading grade and the AI-tell check.

80 and up is keep, 60 to 79 is rewrite, under 60 is start over. If the model is busy or you've used today's free grades, the page still shows the rule checks and a rules-only score.

How to fix a low-scoring cold email

Most low scores come from a handful of habits:

• The ask is missing, doubled or buried. End with one plain ask for the real offer: the call, the demo or the sample.
• The email is about you. Open with something true about their company, then say why it made you write.
• Brochure words. If you wouldn't say the sentence across a table, rewrite it until you would.
• It's too long. Cut the paragraph that repeats the one before it. A cold email is a note, not a pitch deck.
• The subject reads like marketing. Use a few plain words with no punctuation, the way you'd title a note to a colleague.

Grade it again after each pass. Ken's rewrite drafts a new version on the same offer, and marks in purple every fact it had to assume, so you confirm it before it goes anywhere near a list.

Roast mode, the rewrite and the share card

Roast mode writes the same result as a blunt teardown. The checks and the score don't change, only the tone.

The rewrite follows Ken's copy rules: one person writing to one person, one idea, 50 to 90 words, plain text and one ask. It keeps your name, your offer and your merge fields, and it's graded the same way as your email, so you can see whether it's better.

The share card is an image of the score, the verdict and the six scores, ready for LinkedIn or X. Its link is signed, so nobody can put words on it, and it holds no part of your email.

Why grading matters before you send

A cold email gets one read. If the subject looks like a promotion it may never be opened, and if the first two lines don't say why you're writing, the reader archives it. You don't get that attention back for the follow-ups either.

Copy also feeds spam filtering. Gmail and Outlook lean mostly on sender reputation and authentication, but corporate gateways such as Proofpoint, Mimecast and Barracuda still score message content. A short, clear email with no spam words loses nothing on either side. Grading takes seconds. Learning the same lesson from 2,000 sends that got no replies takes weeks.