MCP

Length, readability, formatting

TL;DR

  • Write 25-100 words at roughly a 5th-grade reading level, and judge every draft on a phone screen (Lavender benchmark, N=231,818, n.d.).
  • The only live debate is short versus ultra-short. No major corpus has produced a data-backed case for long cold emails.
  • Single-column plain text, one- to two-sentence paragraphs, no images or attachments in a first touch.

The schools

Short and scannable (Will Allred's team at Lavender, 231,818-email benchmark, n.d. [1]; Gong × 30MPC, ~2024 [2]) — The Lavender benchmark puts the working band at 25-100 words [3], written at about a 5th-grade reading level, and reports that emails earning its top writing grade lift reply rates from 3.4% to 4.3% (n.d.). The Gong × 30MPC analysis of 304,000 cold emails (~2024) agrees from the meetings side: 50-100 words booked the most. Short is not a stunt — it is simply the band the data keeps finding.

Fits when: nearly everything; treat it as the default operating band. · Avoid when: a regulated or deeply technical offer truly needs one more sentence of context — and only that sentence.

Recognizable by: three to five paragraphs of one or two sentences each, fully readable on one phone screen without scrolling.

Ultra-short (Justin Michael with Tony Hughes, Tech-Powered Sales, 2021) [4] — The dissent from below: two to three lines total, engineered as a pattern interrupt for saturated senior inboxes, with visual assets held for later touches in the sequence (2021). It trades context away for the certainty of being read in full.

Fits when: senior targets; heavily saturated inboxes; sequences with strong later-touch assets. · Avoid when: the offer needs any explaining at all.

Recognizable by: the entire email fits above a phone keyboard; clipped sentences; no pleasantries.

There is no third school. Across the major published corpora, "long" shows up only as the thing that underperforms — no credible, data-backed case for long cold emails exists.

Default if the user has no preference: short and scannable (25-100 words) — it is the consensus band across the two corpora above (n.d.; ~2024).

Formatting: mobile decides

Format for the phone [5], because that is where most first reads of B2B email happen: single-column plain text, paragraphs of one or two sentences, generous line breaks, and no images or attachments in a first cold touch — they add spam-filter weight before any trust exists (the deliverability mechanics are in Deliverability and compliance essentials). The same mobile logic makes your first sentence double as preview text — see Opening lines.

References

  1. Lavender — The cold email benchmark report (data report, N=231,818, n.d.)
  2. Gong × 30MPC — The Ultimate Cold Email Data Report (PDF report, ~2024)
  3. Lavender — Best length for a cold email (data blog, n.d.)
  4. Justin Michael & Tony Hughes — Tech-Powered Sales (book, HarperCollins Leadership, 2021)
  5. Lavender — Mobile matters (blog, n.d.)