Cold Emails

How successful are cold emails? I imagine the success rate of cold emailing depends on the content of the emails, but just generally how often do people actually secure a contract from a cold email? I’ve read in several articles that cold emailing is dead, although I bet it’s different for small and large businesses. When I think about my own typical reaction to a cold email, I would have to say that it’s usually negative. If the email doesn’t automatically end up in my spam folder, I’ll give it a read and then quickly dismiss it. This could be because I’ve never received an out-of-this-world pitch from anyone, but I feel that more likely it’s because it’s difficult to convey reputability through a cold email. How do you affect this?  How do you sound like someone to take seriously, and not like some spammy figureless message? When I look up stats it seems like people respond better to short specific subject lines, personalization, and some kind of social proof or credibility (i.e. “I heard about you through blank”, something along those lines). Subject lines are easy enough, but personalization and social proof becomes difficult though when you’re expected to send at least a hundred emails a day.