Cold Email Outreach in DACH: The Compelling Guide

Law, domains, DNS, warm-up, volume and cadences: how B2B teams set up cold email outreach in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. With capacity math and benchmarks.

Jonas EhrensteinUpdated 14 min read

At a glance

Law: In Germany and Austria, marketing emails sent without prior consent are unlawful, B2B included. In Switzerland, sending them in an automated way is even a criminal offense. The risk grows with every recipient, and once a competitor has sent you an Abmahnung (a formal cease-and-desist letter), every further cold email can trigger a contractual penalty.

Domains: Never send from your primary domain. Buy satellite domains with the TLD of the country where your company is registered (.de, .at, .ch) at least one month before the first send.

Mailboxes: Two to three per domain, directly through Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, matched to the recipients’ provider.

DNS: SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every sending domain. Start DMARC at p=none and tighten it to p=quarantine.

Warm-up and volume: Four to six weeks of warm-up, then no more than 30 emails per mailbox per working day, roughly 630 a month.

Bounce rate: Below 2 percent, with 3 percent as the ceiling. Avoid catch-all addresses.

Format: Plain-text emails with no links, images or tracking pixels. Offer the opt-out in a PS instead of an unsubscribe link.

Metrics: Measure positive reply rate, not open rate. The average reply rate today is closer to 7 to 8 percent.

This guide explains how outbound via cold email works in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), both technically and in terms of content. It brings together what we at Compelling have learned from our own campaigns and from working with customers: from the legal framework through targeting, domains, DNS and warm-up to cadences and metrics.

Whether to send cold emails without consent is a risk decision every company has to make for itself. Section 1 shows how large that risk is in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The sections after that follow the order in which you actually set up a campaign. The guide is written for B2B teams that are building email outbound or want to improve an existing setup.

No. In Germany, marketing emails to businesses are unlawful without the recipient’s prior express consent, and the same applies in Austria. In Switzerland, this covers any automated sending. If you send cold emails anyway, you take on a legal and financial risk that grows with every campaign. This section describes the legal position, how things work in practice and the possible consequences. It is not legal advice.

Two laws apply to cold email, and they are often confused. The GDPR (DSGVO in German) governs whether you may process personal data. The UWG (German Unfair Competition Act) governs whether you may send someone advertising by email.

GDPR: processing the data. In a B2B context, processing contact data for prospecting can rest on legitimate interest under Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. If you do not collect the data directly from the person concerned, Art. 14 GDPR also requires you to inform them about the processing. Compelling collects and processes all data in a GDPR-compliant way and can show the source of every piece of information.

UWG: sending the email. Legitimate interest under the GDPR does not permit sending marketing emails. Under § 7(2) no. 2 UWG, advertising by email without the recipient’s prior express consent is an unreasonable nuisance. This also applies in B2B, and an email aimed at initiating a business relationship already counts as advertising. A narrow exception exists for existing customers under the conditions of § 7(3) UWG. There is no gray area for cold prospecting by email.

Austria. Under § 174(3) TKG 2021 (Austrian Telecommunications Act), direct marketing by email requires prior consent, including toward businesses. The exception for existing customers (§ 174(4)) only applies if the recipient is not registered in the opt-out list under § 7(2) of the E-Commerce-Gesetz (Austrian E-Commerce Act). Violations are administrative offenses with fines of up to EUR 50,000 (§ 188(4) TKG 2021).

Switzerland. Swiss law applies to recipients in Switzerland, because what counts is the market where the advertising takes effect (Art. 136 IPRG, the Swiss Private International Law Act). Under Art. 3(1)(o) of the Swiss UWG (Federal Act against Unfair Competition), mass advertising by email without prior consent is unfair. Mass advertising here means automated sending, not a large number: according to the Swiss Fairness Commission (Schweizerische Lauterkeitskommission, SLK), just a few automatically sent emails are enough, and a personal salutation does not change that (decision no. 172/20 of August 3, 2021). A sequence from a sending tool therefore falls under it. An intentional violation is a criminal offense prosecuted on complaint, punishable by imprisonment of up to three years or a fine (Art. 23 UWG).

Overview:

  • Germany: Marketing emails without consent are unlawful. Consequences are an Abmahnung, an injunction and a contractual penalty. B2B phone calls are allowed with at least presumed consent.
  • Austria: Marketing emails without consent are unlawful, with administrative fines of up to EUR 50,000. B2B phone calls only with prior consent, otherwise up to EUR 100,000.
  • Switzerland: Automatically sent marketing emails without consent are unlawful and a criminal offense on complaint, punishable by imprisonment of up to three years or a fine. B2B phone calls are allowed, except for numbers marked with an asterisk in the directory (do not call) or not listed in a directory at all.

In practice. Even so, many companies in Germany run email outreach, including large corporations with their own legal departments. That does not change the law and does not make the risk any smaller. It only shows that many companies take this risk deliberately. If you do, you should know exactly how large it is.

Who can send an Abmahnung in Germany:

  • Any individual recipient (§§ 823, 1004 BGB, the German Civil Code): an injunction only toward that recipient, plus legal fees. According to the case law of the BGH (Federal Court of Justice), a single unsolicited marketing email is enough.
  • Competitors (§ 8(3) no. 1 UWG): the injunction usually covers any further sending of unsolicited marketing emails, to any recipient. Legal fees are higher.
  • Qualified trade associations (§ 8(3) no. 2 UWG): the same as for competitors.

Costs grow with every recipient. An Abmahnung from a single recipient often costs a few hundred euros in legal fees on its own. But a cease-and-desist declaration toward that recipient does not protect you against claims from other recipients. In a campaign with hundreds or thousands of recipients, every one of them can send an Abmahnung, and a few hundred euros quickly turn into several thousand.

After an Abmahnung from a competitor or association, every further email gets expensive. If you sign a cease-and-desist declaration backed by a contractual penalty toward a competitor or association, it usually covers the sending of unsolicited marketing emails as a whole. Every further cold email can then trigger a contractual penalty, in practice often several thousand euros per violation. The law requires an appropriate amount (§ 13a(1) UWG). It is capped at EUR 1,000 only for minor violations by companies with fewer than 100 employees (§ 13a(3) UWG). So right after the first campaign, every further cold email can cost a contractual penalty.

Suppression list. Contacts who have sent an Abmahnung or asked for their data to be deleted belong on a permanent suppression list.

Legally safe routes:

  • Emails to contacts with prior express consent, for example after a trade fair, a webinar or a download with opt-in
  • Emails to existing customers about your own similar products under the conditions of § 7(3) UWG
  • Phone calls to businesses: in Germany with at least presumed consent (§ 7(2) no. 1 UWG), in Switzerland except for numbers marked with an asterisk or not listed in a directory (Art. 3(1)(u) UWG), in Austria only with prior consent (§ 174(1) TKG 2021)
  • Direct mail by post, as long as the recipient has not recognizably objected (§ 7(1) UWG)

The domain, DNS, warm-up, verification and format guidance in this guide applies to any email sending, including emails sent with consent.

2. Targeting and list quality

The list decides whether a campaign succeeds. Clean infrastructure and good copy do not make up for a weak list.

ICP and personas first. Every list starts with a definition of the ideal customer profile. Different ICPs often call for different channels, and within one ICP we approach different personas differently. Plan for this variance deliberately instead of putting every contact into one campaign.

Quality means more than valid email addresses. A good list answers three questions:

  • Are these the right people at the company?
  • Is there a need that can at least plausibly be inferred, or even proven?
  • Is the contact data current and verified?

Compelling researches company and contact data live and uses it to generate lists automatically, filtered by ICP, persona and signals. That creates the foundation for every step that follows.

3. Domains

We never send cold emails from the primary domain. Instead, we buy separate satellite domains so that deliverability problems do not affect the primary domain or regular company communication.

Naming. Satellite domains should be recognizably tied to the brand. For Compelling, that could be hey-compelling.de or be-compelling.de.

Lead time. Buy a domain at least one month before the first send. The older a domain, the better suited it is for sending. A domain bought today that sends a thousand emails tomorrow quickly gets flagged by spam filters.

Number. How many domains you need follows from the planned volume. The math is in section 7.

Country-specific TLDs. We recommend the TLD of the country where the company is registered: .de for a German, .at for an Austrian, .ch for a Swiss company. The TLD then matches the Impressum (the legally required company imprint) and the signature, and recipients place the sender correctly. Using the TLD of a different target market only makes sense if you have a legal entity or branch there. The common advice to send from .com domains comes mostly from the US market. In our campaigns sent from Germany, .de domains perform significantly better.

Redirect to the primary domain. Every satellite domain should point to the main website with a 301 redirect. Anyone who opens the domain from the email in a browser then lands on the real website instead of an empty or parked page.

However, the redirect also makes the link to the primary domain visible to blocklist operators and spam filters. Spamhaus explicitly classifies cold emails sent in bulk from domains that resemble the primary domain as spam, and reviews such senders for a listing when they hit spam traps. The URI blocklist SURBL treats multiple subdomains pointing to the same landing page as a known spammer pattern. In our observation, blocklist and anti-spam providers now draw conclusions about the primary domain from such connections. Satellite domains therefore do not fully protect the primary domain. That is one more reason clean lists, moderate volume and quickly parking domains that show problems remain important.

4. Mailboxes and providers

Mailboxes should come directly from Microsoft or Google, meaning through Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Provider matching. We send to Microsoft recipients from Microsoft mailboxes and to Google recipients from Google mailboxes. The ratio between the two providers therefore depends on the target market:

  • The established Mittelstand (Germany’s small and mid-sized companies) mostly uses Microsoft, so more Microsoft mailboxes.
  • Startups and younger companies use Google more often, so more Google mailboxes.
  • For mixed target markets, an even split makes sense.

Two to three mailboxes per domain. If a domain gets blocked or loses its reputation, every mailbox on it is affected. Two mailboxes per domain spread the risk more widely, three save on domains.

Be careful with cheap third-party providers. Alongside authorized resellers that pass on regular licenses at a discount, some providers sell mailboxes at a fraction of the regular price. Some of these offers are based on licenses for educational or non-profit institutions that are resold as business mailboxes. These licenses are not meant for commercial use, and since fall 2025 Google has been specifically blocking such mailboxes. We advise against them. The same goes for done-for-you packages where domains and mailboxes come preconfigured: you hand over control of your own infrastructure and cannot verify where it comes from.

5. DNS: SPF, DKIM and DMARC

Every sending domain needs fully configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. SPF defines which servers may send on behalf of the domain. DKIM signs every email cryptographically. DMARC defines what happens to emails that fail these checks.

DMARC reporting. The reporting address in the DMARC record should belong to a service that analyzes the machine-readable reports, for example Valimail. Without analysis, the reports are of no practical use.

Tighten the policy step by step:

  1. Start with p=none: emails that fail DMARC are still delivered, but reported.
  2. As soon as the reports show that all legitimate emails pass the check: p=quarantine. The policy then applies to all emails that fail DMARC.

The pct=100 tag that used to be common has been obsolete since DMARCbis (RFC 9989) was published in May 2026. Existing records keep working, new records no longer need the tag.

6. Email warm-up

New mailboxes run in warm-up for at least four, ideally six weeks before the first campaign starts. During warm-up, mailboxes automatically exchange emails with other mailboxes and build up a sending history.

Volume. We start with a few warm-up emails per day and gradually increase to five to ten.

Reply share during warm-up. By default, we have about 30 percent of warm-up emails answered. If you expect a low reply rate for the later campaign, you can raise the reply share during warm-up considerably, up to 100 percent. This partly offsets the weaker signals from the campaign.

Tools. For warm-up we use platforms like Instantly or Smartlead, which cover infrastructure, warm-up and sequencing in one place. You usually do not need separate, warm-up-only tools.

7. Volume and capacity planning

We send at most 30 emails per mailbox per working day. With an average of 21 working days a month, that comes to roughly 630 emails per mailbox per month. Whether you also send on weekends depends on the market and the target persona; by default, we only send on working days.

You work out the infrastructure you need backward from the campaign:

Mailboxes = (contacts × steps) ÷ (30 × sending days in the period)

Example: A campaign with 1,000 contacts and three steps should be fully sent within one month.

Step Value
Total emails 1,000 × 3 = 3,000
Capacity per mailbox per month 30 × 21 = 630
Mailboxes needed 3,000 ÷ 630 ≈ 4.8, so 5
Domains needed at 2 to 3 mailboxes per domain 2 to 3

Calculator: mailboxes and domains. Enter your campaign. The calculation follows the formula above.

Period
Mailboxes per domain
Total emails
3,000
Mailboxes
5
Domains
3
Capacity: 30 × 21 = 630 emails per mailbox in the period.

If you want to get through the campaign faster, you need correspondingly more mailboxes. Section 15 covers building in a buffer for outages.

8. Email verification and bounce rate

The bounce rate should be below two percent, with three percent as the ceiling. High bounce rates are among the strongest warning signals for spam filters and quickly damage a domain’s reputation.

Catch-all addresses. On catch-all domains, the mail server accepts every address, so an individual address cannot be checked reliably. As a rule, we advise against including such addresses in campaigns. If you still have room on your bounce rate, you can mix them in carefully.

Compelling only delivers verified addresses. Compelling only returns email addresses that could be fully verified. We do not deliver addresses with the status “risky” or “catch-all”. That removes the need for a separate verification step before sending.

9. Technical email format

We send plain-text emails. Every additional element increases the risk of landing in the spam folder.

  • No HTML, no images. A cold email should look like an email a person typed by hand.
  • As few links as possible. This includes the signature. If it lists a website, we put the dot in parentheses, for example compelling(.)ai, so that no hyperlink is created.
  • No tracking pixel. Without a pixel, open rates cannot be measured. That is acceptable, because open rates say little anyway (see section 14).

Opt-out. Instead of a technical unsubscribe link, we offer the opt-out in a PS at the end of the email, for example: “PS: If this isn’t relevant for you, just let me know and I won’t reach out again.” The email stays link-free, and the recipient still has an easy way to stop further contact.

The PS also meets a requirement of § 7(2) no. 3(c) UWG: every marketing message needs a valid address to which the recipient can send a request to stop receiving messages. Replying to the email covers this. It does not make a marketing email without consent lawful.

Mandatory details in the signature. In Germany, business emails count as business letters. Merchants and commercial companies must therefore include certain details in every email, depending on their legal form. For a GmbH (German limited liability company), § 35a GmbHG requires the company name with its legal form, the registered office, the registry court, the commercial register number and all managing directors. In addition, § 6 DDG (German Digital Services Act) requires that commercial communication clearly shows on whose behalf it is sent, and that the sender and the commercial nature are not disguised in the header and subject line. This also applies to emails from satellite domains. The details fit into the signature as plain text:

Example signatureCopy

Max Mustermann Head of Sales | Beispiel GmbH beispiel(.)de

Beispiel GmbH | Sitz: Köln | Registergericht: Amtsgericht Köln | HRB 000000 Geschäftsführer: Erika Musterfrau, Max Mustermann

10. Copy: relevance over personalization

The goal of a cold email is relevance. Personalization is a means to that end and only makes sense if it makes the email more relevant to the recipient.

Goal of the first email. Many teams overload the first email with the goal of booking a meeting right away. It is enough for it to open a conversation.

When personalization is needed. That depends on the list:

  • With a very homogeneous, well-qualified list, the same message fits almost every recipient. Additional personalization adds little.
  • With a heterogeneous list, you need personalization so the message fits each recipient.

The question is always whether the personalization targets the company or the person. Both have their place, depending on the offer and the audience.

Coming across more naturally. Regardless of personalization, we vary the greeting and sign-off by day of the week and time of day. This makes the emails feel more organic.

With Compelling. The research Compelling produces on every company and contact can be used directly in the copy: as variables or as the basis for AI-generated text snippets per contact.

11. Cadences

In our view, there is no universal cadence. The number of steps, the spacing and the thread structure depend on who receives the email, what offer it carries and what purpose it is meant to serve.

Choose and test these levers deliberately:

Lever Typical options
Number of steps 2 to 4 emails; 3 steps are a good starting point
Spacing between steps around 7 days for short sequences, up to 14 days with fewer emails
Thread structure all follow-ups in the same thread, or a new thread with a new subject line from a later step onward (for example the third)

Two examples: One campaign might consist of three emails seven days apart. Another, for example to a very senior audience, may work better with two emails 14 days apart.

12. Handling replies

Positive replies are handled first and within 24 hours, and fast teams manage it within an hour. Ideally, the person who owns the campaign takes care of them.

One central inbox. Tools like Instantly (Unibox) or Smartlead (Master Inbox) collect the replies from all mailboxes in one place. That keeps handling manageable even with hundreds of mailboxes.

Negative replies. Here the content decides:

  • For “Not interested, please delete my data”, we briefly confirm the deletion, remove the contact from all campaigns and add them to the suppression list (section 1). The confirmation is mandatory: under Art. 12(3) GDPR it must be given within one month. The suppression list only keeps what is needed to exclude the contact in the future, such as the email address.
  • For “Interesting in principle, but not right now for these reasons”, objection handling can make sense, or the contact goes back into a campaign at a later point.

Booking links. Some campaigns work with a link to book a meeting, even though links can hurt deliverability. Prospects then book directly, and handling positive replies largely goes away.

13. Multichannel based on lead scoring

We decide which channels a lead gets based on its quality. Phone and LinkedIn often work better than email, but they are scarce. Email scales almost without limit with the infrastructure.

Channel Limiting factor
Email only the number of mailboxes and domains
Phone the time of the people making the calls
LinkedIn a limit on connection requests and messages per account

Approach: With Compelling, you can score leads based on signals and Insights. We work the highest-scored leads across several channels, for example in this order:

  1. Call
  2. If you can’t reach them: connection request and message on LinkedIn
  3. No reply on LinkedIn: first email
  4. After that, LinkedIn again and another call attempt

Leads with a lower score go into a classic email campaign. In some markets, phone or LinkedIn work poorly for specific reasons. Email is the channel that works in the vast majority of cases.

14. Metrics and benchmarks

The most important metric is the positive reply rate, meaning the share of positive replies across all contacts emailed. Alongside it, we track the overall reply rate.

Reply rate. If you get replies, you know the emails are landing in the inbox. The reply rate therefore also serves as an indicator of deliverability.

Positive reply rate. It shows whether list, offer and message fit together.

We don’t measure open rates. They require a tracking pixel, which hurts deliverability. The numbers are also unreliable, because many email clients preload or block images.

Benchmarks. Reply rates have dropped significantly over the past year, because there is much more outreach overall. In the campaigns we see, the average reply rate a year ago was about 15 percent and today it is closer to 7 to 8 percent. The specific number depends heavily on the market and above all on the quality of the offer.

15. Monitoring and contingency plan

The best protection against outages is redundancy: more domains and mailboxes than the campaign immediately needs.

Narrow down why the reply rate is dropping. A falling reply rate can come from weaker leads in part of the campaign or from a domain whose deliverability is slipping. Instantly and Smartlead show deliverability and the health of individual domains. It is also worth checking whether a domain is on a spam blacklist.

Park affected domains. If a domain has deteriorated, we take it out of rotation. There are specialized services for recovery.

Plan a buffer. Domains are cheap, so we buy more than we need from the start. Agencies often also keep extra mailboxes in warm-up that can step in immediately when one fails. This is less common on the client side, but it pays off above a certain volume.

16. The four most common mistakes

  1. Underestimating the legal risk. Many teams assume cold emails are allowed in B2B as long as they comply with the GDPR. But sending is governed by the UWG, in Austria by the TKG 2021 and in Switzerland by the Swiss UWG (section 1). If you send cold emails, you should know the risk and decide deliberately.
  2. Cutting corners on setup. Many teams skip the lead times for domains and warm-up and start too early. They then blame the poor results on the channel instead of the setup.
  3. Confusing personalization with relevance. Mentioning the recipient’s sports club or school makes an email personal. It does not make it relevant to the recipient.
  4. Judging too early. Whether a campaign works only becomes clear with enough time or volume. After a thousand emails or two weeks, you often cannot yet judge it reliably.

Frequently asked questions

No. Under § 7(2) no. 2 UWG, advertising by email without prior express consent is an unreasonable nuisance, B2B included. In Austria, the same applies under § 174(3) TKG 2021. Every recipient can send an Abmahnung individually. A cease-and-desist declaration toward a competitor or association usually covers any further sending, so further emails can trigger contractual penalties. This is not legal advice.

In Austria, direct marketing by email requires prior consent under § 174(3) TKG 2021, including toward businesses. Violations carry fines of up to EUR 50,000. In Switzerland, automated sending of marketing emails without consent is unfair under Art. 3(1)(o) UWG, even with a personal salutation, and an intentional violation is a criminal offense prosecuted on complaint. This is not legal advice.

How many cold emails should you send per mailbox per day?

We send at most 30 emails per mailbox per working day. With 21 working days a month, that is roughly 630 emails per mailbox per month.

How many mailboxes and domains do I need for a campaign?

Mailboxes = (contacts × steps) ÷ (30 × sending days in the period). For 1,000 contacts with three steps in one month, that is 3,000 ÷ 630 ≈ 4.8, so 5 mailboxes. At two to three mailboxes per domain, two to three domains are enough, plus a buffer for outages.

How long does warm-up for new mailboxes take?

At least four, ideally six weeks. Warm-up starts with a few emails per day and rises to five to ten; about 30 percent of warm-up emails get a reply.

What bounce rate is acceptable for cold emails?

Below 2 percent, with 3 percent as the ceiling. Higher numbers are among the strongest warning signals for spam filters and quickly damage a domain’s reputation.

Do I need SPF, DKIM and DMARC for cold emails?

Yes, on every sending domain. DMARC starts at p=none and is tightened to p=quarantine once the reports show that all legitimate emails pass the check. The pct=100 tag has been obsolete since DMARCbis (RFC 9989, May 2026).

Should I send cold emails from a .com or a .de domain?

From the TLD of the country where the company is registered: .de for a German, .at for an Austrian, .ch for a Swiss company. The TLD then matches the Impressum and the signature. In our campaigns sent from Germany, .de domains perform significantly better than .com. The common .com advice comes mostly from the US market.

What reply rate is realistic for cold emails?

In the campaigns we see, the average reply rate a year ago was about 15 percent and today it is closer to 7 to 8 percent. The number depends heavily on the market and the quality of the offer. The positive reply rate matters more.

Should you measure open rates for cold emails?

No. Open rates require a tracking pixel, which hurts deliverability, and the numbers are unreliable because many email clients preload or block images.

Sources

JEJonas EhrensteinCo-Founder & CEO Compelling

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