What is cold email?
Cold email is an unsolicited sales email sent to a prospect who has no existing relationship with the sender.
Why it matters for sales teams
Email is cheap to send and easy to scale, and it lets a prospect respond when it suits them. A short, relevant cold email can earn a reply, set up a call or warm up a prospect before a phone touch. It is often one step in an outbound sales sequence.
The risks are low relevance and poor deliverability. Generic messages get ignored or marked as spam, and sending high volumes from a new domain can hurt inbox placement. Cold email is also regulated. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act sets the rules for commercial email and gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them. The FTC says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email. Rules in other countries differ.
Example
A rep writes four sentences to a VP of finance: a specific observation about the company, the problem it suggests, a one-line example from a similar customer, and a simple question asking whether a short call is worth it. Two days later, the rep follows up with a call.
Cold email vs email marketing
Cold email is one-to-one outreach from a salesperson to a chosen prospect. Email marketing goes to a list of subscribers who opted in, usually as newsletters or campaigns.
This is a general definition, not legal advice.