A cold email to a head of growth is read by someone who A/B tests their own email copy and can spot a sequence step by its rhythm. They run experiments for a living, so any claim without a denominator is noise, and any pitch that sounds like marketing copy confirms you have not done the work. That sounds hostile; it is actually an opening. A head of growth is one of the few buyers who will reply to a stranger who noticed a real change in their funnel: a new free tier, a pricing page test, an onboarding flow that changed last week, a growth engineer job posting that hints at what they are about to build. They respect evidence of attention because it is the same thing they do to their users. The three templates below are written for that reader: an observation only a careful visitor would catch, one testable idea, one soft ask. The Claude prompt underneath does the careful visiting.
What a Head of Growth is measured on, and what they delete
A head of growth is measured on activation rate, conversion at each funnel step, payback period, and how many experiments the team ships and learns from in a quarter. They read email at odd hours, often on a laptop with a dashboard in the next tab, and they read like an analyst: what is the claim, what is the sample, where is the denominator. Nobody filters for them, but their own skepticism does the job. They delete anything that uses a percentage without a base, anything that promises growth as a noun, and any email that could have been written without looking at their product. A screenshot-level observation about their signup flow gets read to the end. A vague pain about 'scaling acquisition' gets archived in the time it takes to read the preview.
Cold email to a head of growth: the three templates
Sign up for their product before you send any of these. The trigger-led template needs a step number you actually saw, and the other two are stronger when you can mention one.
Subject: the new {{free tier / trial}} flow
{{First name}}, ran through the new {{free tier / trial}} signup on {{company}} yesterday. Step {{n}} asks for {{field}} before showing any value, which is usually where the drop is.
One test that has worked at similar stages: {{one-line experiment}}.
If you already ran that and it lost, I would love to know. If not, I can send the setup and the result from {{customer}}.Subject: activation, not signups
{{First name}}, guessing from the {{growth engineer / lifecycle}} role you posted that signups are fine and activation is the problem, because that is the hire teams make when the top of the funnel stopped being the bottleneck.
Most fixes at that point are onboarding rewrites. The ones that actually moved the number at {{customer}} were {{one-line change}}.
Worth a short reply on where your activation step is defined today?Subject: {{customer}}'s experiment log
{{First name}}, {{customer}} ran a {{motion, e.g. self-serve}} motion at your stage with a {{team size}}-person growth team.
Over {{timeframe}} they moved {{metric}} from {{before}} to {{after}}. The write-up includes the experiments that lost as well as the ones that won, which is the part most vendors leave out.
Want the log? No deck, just the table.the new {{free tier}} flow
activation, not signups
{{customer}}'s experiment log
step {{n}} of your signup
what your pricing page test is telling you
the denominator on {{metric}}Offer the losing experiments alongside the winning ones every time; a head of growth trusts a vendor who shows the failures far more than one who only shows the lift.
Personalize these to the account, not just the persona
A head of growth answers emails that prove you walked their funnel. Walking it takes twenty minutes per account: sign up, note every field, screenshot the pricing page, check what the careers page says they are about to build. The prompt below has Claude read what it can read and hands you the checklist for the rest.
You are writing a cold email to the Head of Growth at {{company}} ({{company URL}}).
Read the homepage, pricing page, signup or trial flow as far as you can, the changelog if there is one, and open roles on growth, lifecycle, or product. Identify one concrete funnel observation: a field asked for too early, a plan change, a new self-serve tier, a role that reveals the next bottleneck. Say what you could not see because it requires an account.
Rewrite the three templates below around that observation. Each body under 90 words, one idea, one testable suggestion, one soft ask. No percentages without a base. No 'growth' as a noun. Mark inferences as [INFERRED].
Then list the two subject lines you would A/B and the metric you expect this persona to reply about.
MY PRODUCT: {{one-line description}}
PROOF: {{customer, metric, before, after, timeframe}}
TEMPLATES:
{{paste the templates above}}Write cold email at scale with Claude
- B2B cold email templates skill →The Claude skill that writes cold email in your brand voice with the banned-word list and the one-idea rule baked in.
- Cold email from a value prop prompt →The copy-paste prompt version: one value prop in, one specific email out.
- Personalize cold email with Clay and Claude →The use case that runs these templates across a whole list with real enrichment data.
Frequently asked questions
How do you write a cold email to a head of growth?
Walk their funnel first and open with what you saw: a field the signup asks for too early, a pricing page that changed, a new tier. Then propose one experiment rather than a platform, and ask a question they can answer in one line. Every number needs a denominator or it counts against you. A head of growth reads like an analyst and writes email copy for a living, so the only thing that earns a reply is evidence you paid attention to their product the way they pay attention to their users.
Why do growth leaders ignore most cold email?
Because most of it makes claims they would never accept from their own team. 'Increase conversion by 40 percent' with no base, no segment, and no timeframe reads as a red flag to someone who lives in experiment logs. They also see through sequence mechanics: the fake reply thread, the 'bumping this up', the break-up email. Skip all of it. Send one specific observation, one idea, and offer the losing experiments alongside the winning ones; that honesty is unusual enough to get a reply on its own.
What is the best subject line for a head of growth?
Something that names a specific element of their funnel: 'step 3 of your signup' or 'the new free tier flow'. It reads like a bug report from a user, which is exactly the kind of email they open first. Avoid 'growth', 'scale', and any percentage in the subject line; the persona has trained themselves to filter those. Lowercase and under five words tends to win, because it looks like it came from a colleague or a customer rather than a sequence tool.