Do you open cold emails, still ?

Basically yes, because reading such emails takes virtually no time and if nothing else you can usually learn from them. These emails provide a very quick glimpse into what's important or coveted by users, salespeople, peers, etc. For example, as soon as SoLoyal launched its blog we started getting tons of reach outs for guest post offers and the like. We realized 99.9% of these were garbage, but it caused us to really explore the potential effects of guest posting. We researched best practices and eventually crafted our own strategy for doing so properly. If we hadn't understood the demand in the first place, we might not have conducted that research and reached the correct conclusions about how to make it work for us. In another example, SoLoyal routinely gets emails from loyalty program members who have questions about their accounts on various brands' websites. This caused us to launch the SoLoyal Community, which has become a resource for answers to questions about various loyalty programs. So, in sum, while a very tiny percentage of cold reach outs actually provide some empirical or immediate value, they can certainly lead to positive outcomes for your business by providing deeper insights.

No, do open and do not plan.

I rarely get any, so getting them is more of a compliment. So I do open a fair bit of them.

I don't open all of them, but my trigger to open is more based on the sender and subject line.

Only if it has a catchy headline

Only when they seem genuine. I mean, when it is obvious the other party took his time to write to me.

Always, because I'm interested in seeing what other people come up to. I like learning about new approaches etc