You've probably seen the threads. Someone posts in r/Entrepreneur or r/sales asking "Why does nobody respond to my cold emails?" and the answers are always the same - Reddit says cold email is dead, everyone ignores it, it's spam, you need to build relationships first, blah blah blah.
Here's the thing: Reddit is half right and completely wrong at the same time.
Cold email absolutely works. We've seen it generate millions in revenue for service businesses and agencies. But the version of cold email that most people are doing - the version Reddit is rightfully roasting - doesn't work at all.
Let me explain what's actually happening, and more importantly, what you can do about it.
When Reddit says cold email doesn't work, they're usually talking about one of these scenarios:
Yeah, that version doesn't work. It doesn't work because you're not actually reaching people - you're reaching spam folders. Or if you do reach inboxes, you're sending messages that make people immediately delete them.
Reddit isn't wrong about this. They're just not looking at cold email that's actually done right.
This is where 90% of cold email campaigns die before they even start. You're probably reaching out to people who shouldn't exist on your list in the first place.
Working cold email means targeting a specific person at a specific company who has a specific problem you solve. Not "anyone with a pulse." Not "every business owner in California." Not "people in this industry."
If you're running an agency that does SEO for personal injury lawyers, your list should be PIL firms that don't have visible SEO infrastructure. That's it. Not "all lawyers." Not "all small businesses." That specificity is what separates a 30% response rate from a 0.5% response rate.
Reddit sees a lot of emails that sound like they were written by a LinkedIn algorithm. Cheesy subject lines, forced enthusiasm, weird capitalization, too many emojis, "Hope you're doing well!!!"
Real cold emails don't sound like marketing copy. They sound like one professional reaching out to another professional because they genuinely think they can help them.
Short. Direct. Specific. No BS. That's it.
When you write about something you know about (their business, their industry, their actual situation), people can tell. When you're generic, they can tell that too.
A lot of people think cold email is broken because they're sending from Gmail accounts or cheap email services with no authentication, no warmup, and no monitoring.
The moment you hit deliverability issues - SPF records aren't set up, DKIM isn't configured, your domain reputation is tanked - you're not failing because cold email doesn't work. You're failing because your emails never arrive.
You can write the perfect email and it doesn't matter if it lands in spam.
Most people send one email and wait. Reddit sees people complaining about response rates, and they don't realize the person only sent one attempt per prospect.
A proper cold email sequence is 3-5 touchpoints spaced out over 2-3 weeks. Not spammy. Not aggressive. Just enough to actually get in front of someone.
People are busy. They miss emails. A second or third touchpoint isn't rude - it's how real sales works.
If you're selling a service - whether that's consulting, agency work, coaching, implementation, anything - cold email that's done properly is one of the fastest ways to generate predictable revenue.
But it requires:
That's a lot of moving parts. And most people get one or two of these wrong, which makes the whole thing fall apart. Then they post on Reddit and say "cold email doesn't work."
It does work. They just weren't doing it right.
Here's what I'd be honest about: cold email takes work. It's not magic. You can't just hit send and expect clients to appear. You need to think about your list, write actual copy instead of using templates, set up infrastructure properly, and commit to a process.
If you're not willing to do that, then yeah - cold email probably won't work for you.
But if you're running a service business or agency and you want a reliable way to generate 5-20+ clients per month, and you're willing to do the work properly, cold email is one of the most predictable channels available.
The people saying it doesn't work on Reddit are usually the ones who did it wrong once and gave up.
If you want to actually implement this - handling the list building, the research, the copy, the infrastructure, the follow-up sequences, and the reply handling - instead of figuring it all out yourself, that's what we help service businesses and agencies do at BEC Growth. We run the whole thing, and our clients sign 5-20+ new clients per month. But the foundation is always the same - doing cold email right, which means doing all of these parts properly.
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