Print this out. If your cold email fills a bingo card of "quick question," "just circling back," "let's touch base," and "hop on a call," congratulations, you have bingo, and your email has been deleted. Buzzwords are not a style problem; they are a targeting tell. A buyer reads them as proof the email was mass-sent, and mass-sent gets ignored. Here is the full card, why each square kills the email, and the plain line to use instead.
This one is for a laugh, but every joke comes with a real fix, because the phrases genuinely cost you replies. It sits next to our other roast, bad sales emails, lovingly roasted, and the serious version of why generic copy fails, why your cold email sounds generic.
The buzzword bingo card
Five in a row wins, and by wins we mean loses. Each of these phrases has been read so many times that it now signals 'template' to the reader before they finish the sentence. The fix is never a fancier phrase; it is a plain, specific one that names a real reason for the email.
| The buzzword | Why it kills the email | Say instead |
|---|---|---|
| Quick question, | It is never quick, and everyone knows it | Ask the actual question, plainly |
| I hope this email finds you well | Six words that say nothing and scream template | Start with why you are writing to them specifically |
| Just circling back | You mean the fourth follow-up they ignored | Add a new, relevant reason, or move on |
| Let's touch base | Corporate for 'I have no specific ask' | Propose a specific next step and time |
| Hop on a quick call | Asking for their time with none of yours invested | Give a reason worth 15 minutes, then ask |
| Synergy / leverage / align | Jargon that hides the absence of a point | Say the plain-English thing you actually mean |
| Thoughts? | A one-word close that puts all the work on them | Ask one specific, easy-to-answer question |
Notice the pattern in the right-hand column: every fix is more specific and more plain than the buzzword it replaces. That is the whole game. The templates that actually work, built on exactly this principle, are in cold email templates that work.
Why does buzzword-heavy email get deleted?
Because the reader has been trained to pattern-match it to noise. A decision-maker gets dozens of cold emails a week, and the ones that open with 'I hope this finds you well' and ask for a 'quick call to explore synergies' are, in their experience, always generic and always a waste of time. So they have learned to delete on the phrase, without reading further. The buzzword is not just weak writing; it is a trigger that ends the email before your actual point arrives.
The deeper problem is what the buzzwords are hiding. Reach for 'let's touch base' and it is usually because you do not have a specific reason to write, and 'touch base' papers over that gap. The reader can feel the absence of a real reason. Fix the reason, a specific, relevant trigger, and the buzzwords fall away on their own, which is the same root cause we diagnose in why your cold email sounds generic.
What do you say instead?
Say the plain, specific thing. If you have a real reason to email this person, state it in the first line, in the words you would use out loud. If you do not have a real reason, no phrase will rescue the email, and that is the actual signal to fix: the targeting, not the vocabulary.
- Lead with why them, specifically. A trigger, a role, a situation you can name. Specificity is the whole game.
- Write like you talk. If you would not say 'let's circle back to align on synergies' to a colleague, do not write it to a stranger.
- Make the ask concrete. 'Worth a 15-minute call Thursday to walk through X?' beats 'thoughts?' every time.
- Cut every word that is not doing work. Most buzzwords are filler. Delete them and the email gets shorter and stronger. The best subject lines follow the same rule, in cold email subject lines.
The serious point under the joke
Buzzword bingo is funny because it is true, and it is true because most cold email is generic. The phrases are a symptom; the disease is sending the same empty email to a big, loose list. If you have ever watched a sequence get zero replies, this vocabulary is usually part of the autopsy, alongside the bigger culprits in the seven stages of grief after zero replies.
MarginSales provides sales outreach services for companies that want to extend their outbound capacity without building the entire sales development function internally, and the first thing we do to a client's copy is strip the bingo card out and replace it with a specific reason for each email. It is not clever. It is just the difference between an email that sounds like everyone and one that sounds like it was written to one person.
Frequently asked questions
What words should you avoid in a cold email?
Avoid the filler that signals a template: 'quick question' (it never is), 'just circling back' (you mean the fourth follow-up), 'touch base', 'hop on a call', 'I hope this email finds you well', and 'synergy'. None of them say anything, and buyers have learned that emails full of them are mass-sent. Replace each with a plain, specific line that names a real reason for the email.
Why do buzzwords get cold emails deleted?
Because they are pattern-matched to spam. A decision-maker has read ten thousand emails that open with 'quick question' and 'I hope this finds you well', so those phrases now trigger instant deletion, the same way a subject line in all caps does. They signal that the email is generic and mass-sent, which is the opposite of the specificity that earns a reply.
Want your cold email to sound like a person?
Send us the sequence you are running now and we will mark up the bingo squares and rewrite the openers around a real reason, whether or not you work with us. Book a 20-minute teardown.