Cold Email Audit Skill: Setup Guide

Audit any cold email in 30 seconds. Get a score out of 10, know exactly what's broken, and get specific fixes

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01What This Is

A Claude skill file trained on 10,102 positive replies from 1,000,000+ cold emails across 200+ campaigns. It audits your cold email copy across 8 categories, scores each one out of 10, and tells you exactly what to fix.

It covers:

• Subject line
• Opening line / trigger
• Personalisation quality
• Value proposition and offer strength
• Body length and brevity
• CTA quality
• Tone and human feel
• Spam risk (copy-level)

It does not cover technical setup, domain health, or sending infrastructure. Copy only.

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02Setup (One-Time)

Step 1: Open Claude
Go to claude.ai and start a new conversation.

Step 2: Create a Project
In the left sidebar, create a new Project. Name it something like "Cold Email Audit" or add it to an existing outbound project.

Step 3: Add the Skill as a System Prompt
Inside your Project settings, find the Custom Instructions or Project Instructions field. Paste the full contents of cold-email-audit-SKILL.md here. The file is included in the PDF download. Save it.

That's it. Every conversation you open inside this Project will now run the audit skill automatically.

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03How to Use It

Paste your email and ask for an audit.

You can be as brief or direct as you want. Any of these work:

Audit this.

Score my email.

What's wrong with this cold email?

Then paste your subject line + email body. That's the full input.

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04What You Get Back

The audit returns in a fixed structure every time:

COLD EMAIL AUDIT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OVERALL SCORE: X.X/10
[One-line verdict on the biggest lever]

1. SUBJECT LINE: X/10
2. OPENING LINE / TRIGGER: X/10
3. PERSONALIZATION: X/10
4. VALUE PROPOSITION: X/10
5. BODY LENGTH & BREVITY: X/10
6. CTA: X/10
7. TONE & HUMAN FEEL: X/10
8. SPAM RISK: X/10

PRIORITY FIXES (in order of impact):
1. [Highest-leverage fix]
2. [Second]
3. [Third]

For every failing category, you get the exact line that's broken and a specific rewrite or instruction. Not "improve your CTA," but "replace 'let me know if you have any questions' with 'Worth a brief call to walk through it?'"

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05Score Interpretation

Score	What It Means
8.5 to 10	Solid. Minor refinements only. Ready to test.
7.0 to 8.4	Good foundation. 1 or 2 clear fixes before sending.
5.5 to 6.9	Needs work. Multiple issues affecting reply rate.
4.0 to 5.4	Significant rebuild needed. Core structure is off.
Below 4.0	Start over. Issues are structural, not cosmetic.

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06What You Can Audit

Single email
Paste subject line + body. Works for templates, drafted emails, or real sends you want to check.

Template with variables
Paste it with the variables unfilled (e.g. {{firstName}}, [Company]). The skill audits the structure and logic, and flags whether your variables are doing real work or just sitting there.

Full sequence
Paste all emails in order (Email 1, Email 2, Email 3...). The skill audits each one individually, then adds a sequence-level note covering escalating value, delay structure, and whether follow-ups are adding something new or just repeating the pitch.

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07Tips

Be direct. No need to explain context or write a prompt. Just paste the email and say "audit this."

Paste the subject line too. Subject line scoring is one of the 8 categories. If you don't include it, that category gets flagged immediately.

Use it before launching, not after. The fastest way to improve reply rates is catching structural issues before a campaign goes out, not diagnosing them from the data after.

Run the rewrite back through. After fixing the priority issues, paste the updated version and ask for a re-score. Most emails move 1 to 2 points after applying the top fixes.

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