Cold Email Checker & Spam Word Highlighter

Cold email is hard to get right. The recipient does not know you, the message competes with everything else in the inbox, and a few careless choices make it look like bulk mail. This checker reads your email the way a careful editor would, scores it against a short rubric you can see, and highlights the specific words that cost points. It does not guess what a spam filter will do.

What you paste

Type or paste the subject line and the email body. The page works as you type: a score appears with a label (Excellent, Good, Needs work or Poor), the number of words, the reading grade, the count of trigger phrases and the count of placeholders left. Press Sample to see a good example, and Sample subject to add its subject line. The text stays in your browser’s memory and is not saved or sent.

The eight checks

Length gives 20 points for 50 to 150 words, 12 for 30 to 49 or 151 to 200, and 4 otherwise. Subject line gives 10: 6 for 60 characters or fewer, 4 if it has no trigger words. Trigger words give 15 for none, 8 for one or two and 0 for three or more. Readability gives 15 for a reading grade of 8 or lower, 10 for 10 or lower and 4 above that. Filled-in details give 10 if no placeholder such as a double-braced name, a name in square brackets or the word FirstName is left. One clear ask gives 15 for exactly one question mark, 8 for several and 6 for none. Tone and formatting start at 10 and lose 4 for two or more words in capitals, 3 for more than one exclamation mark and 3 for more than one link. Opening gives 5 unless it starts with a stock phrase. An empty email scores 0.

The highlights

In the body, spam-style phrases are shaded, words in capitals of four or more letters have their own colour, and unfilled placeholders are marked in a third. A legend shows how many of each were found. A warning above the text tells you to fill in any placeholders before you send, because a visible one is the quickest way to look like a mass mailing. Phrases are matched as whole words, longest first, so “guarantee” inside “guaranteed” is not counted twice.

How readability is computed

The tool counts words and sentences, estimates syllables from groups of vowels, and applies the Flesch reading ease formula, 206.835 minus 1.015 times words per sentence minus 84.6 times syllables per word, and the Flesch-Kincaid grade, 0.39 times words per sentence plus 11.8 times syllables per word minus 15.59. A grade of 8 or lower reads easily for most people.

A worked example

The sample email is to Priya at Brightwave about her new self-serve onboarding, with the subject “Quick question about your onboarding”. It has 58 words, a reading grade of 4.0 and a Flesch reading ease of 87, no trigger words, no placeholders and one question, “Would a 15-minute call next week be useful to see if it fits?” It scores 100 out of 100. Replace the body with a greeting that still has a double-braced first-name placeholder, followed by “ACT NOW for this LIMITED TIME free offer!” and the placeholder, the capitals and the trigger phrases are highlighted, and the score falls sharply.

What a good score does not mean

A high score means the writing passes eight checks. It does not mean the email will reach the inbox, be opened or get a reply. Delivery depends mainly on your sending domain, its authentication, your history, the list quality and the recipients’ behaviour, and filters weigh many signals other than the words used. Personal relevance, a real reason to contact this person and a clear ask matter more than any score.

Limits

The trigger list is a general heuristic and knows nothing about your industry. The syllable count is an estimate, and the rubric is this tool’s own. Use it to catch avoidable mistakes before you send, not as a guarantee.

Related tools

• Email Subject Line Tester compares several subject lines and previews how they are cut off.
• Copywriting Framework Builder helps structure the message before you check it.
• SPF Record Checker looks at one part of the authentication that deliverability needs.
• DMARC Checker examines the policy that tells receivers how to treat your mail.