In the last two years I have sent more than 80000 cold DMs on Telegram. Some personal, some via agency clients, some in test mode. Average reply rate across all that is somewhere in the 18-22% range. Bad templates get 3-5%. Good ones get 30+. The difference is not magic, it is a handful of very concrete decisions.
What a good cold DM does
A message that:
- Gets delivered (not cut by flood or anti-spam).
- Gets read (notification opened and not dismissed in 2 seconds).
- Does not trigger instant disgust (recipient does not block).
- Triggers some kind of reply.
Four checkpoints, you can lose 50% of the audience at each.
Common mistakes in the first line
You have about 3 seconds for the recipient to decide «this is spam» or «interesting, keep reading». Telegram shows the first 2-3 lines in the notification preview. Any of these in those lines and it is over:
- «Hello!» or «Greetings!» in the first line.Pure trigger. No real person starts a real conversation that way. Mass outreach does.
- Full intro about you and your company. «My name is Alex, I work at marketing agency Y» = automatic -70% interest.
- Emojis at the start. 👋😊✨ burns trust in the first second.
- Link in the first message. Telegram is especially sensitive to this. A link in DM #1 flags the account.
- ALL CAPS or excessive exclamation. «FREE!!!» works for dropshipping in Instagram. On Telegram it gets you blocked instantly.
What works in the first line
Structures I have tested that hit 25-40% reply rate:
Hook through context
«saw your comment on <topic> in @<channel>, really agree with that»
Works because it shows you actually read what the person wrote. The substitution with real context is what matters, not a generic phrase.
A pointed question
«hey, have you been using that thing for a year? is support actually any good?»
Direct question, zero self-pitch. The person thinks «well, let me say how it has been» and replies.
Admit a struggle
«been trying to figure out how you get <X> to work. mind sharing how?»
Very human. Flattery without naked flattery, plus an ask for help (people enjoy helping).
Structure of a good cold DM
I usually write to this structure:
line 1: hook through context (where you found them, what you saw) line 2: your take or pointed compliment (not generic) line 3: a question OR a short self-context line 4: one concrete ask OR nothing that is it, 4 lines max. no emojis, no links, no signature.
Usually under 200 characters. Telegram shows around that much in the notification preview, so the whole message is visible.
Real example
Bad
Hello! 👋 My name is Alex, I work at Sndwich. We help agencies automate social media. Want to know more? Link: https://sndwich.app
Reply rate for this kind of message: 2-3%.
Good
saw your comment on warming accounts in @growthchat. been fighting the same thing where after 5 days of warmup the fwd-to-saved still flags. how do you bypass?
Reply rate around 25-35%. Because:
- Specific channel and context (their actual comment)
- Personal pain (not «we help»)
- A concrete question that is easy to answer
- Zero self-promotion
When to mention the product
Most common mistake: trying to sell in the first DM. It does not work. Ever. Even if you are a great copywriter. A cold recipient is not ready to evaluate your product on first contact.
I run outreach like this:
- Day 1: hook + question. No company or product mention. Goal: get a reply of «yes I do X» or a question back.
- Day 2-3: after a reply you can say «hey, I work on something similar, we built <brief>. you have the same problem too?»
- Day 5-7: if the convo is moving and they are asking questions, then offer a call or demo. Only then.
Technical bits
Just as important as the text.
Do not send on Sunday night
Best time on Telegram is Tuesday through Thursday, 10:00-13:00 and 18:00-20:00 in the recipient's timezone. Reply rate at those hours is 2-3x higher than weekends.
Daily DM limit per account
After 14 days of warmup, the safe ceiling is 25-30 DMs per day per account, gradually growing to 40. More = rising risk of a pirate-flag and ban.
Pause between sends
Do not blast 10 DMs in a row. Random 3-8 minute delays between messages mimic a real human.
What to do when they reply
Reply within 1-3 hours. Wait longer and interest decay is exponential. AI auto-reply is a lifesaver at volume, but the first response is one a human needs to see fast.
How Sndwich automates this
Drip sequences with per-step settings:
- Step 1: opener, send window 10:00-13:00 in recipient TZ.
- Step 2: 24-48 hours later, follow-up if no reply.
- Step 3: 5-7 days later, last touch.
Per step you can enable AI rewrite (optional). When enabled, Claude rewrites your template through the sender persona and the lead context we collected during parsing. This adds +30-40% reply rate vs plain template.
More on warming the accounts before outreach in a separate post.
Bottom line
Cold DM is not a volume game. It is a context game. If you parse the audience right (see this), write a specific context in the first line, do not try to sell on first contact, and reply fast to inbound, your reply rate will sit at 20-30%. That is normal, that is the working model.
Anything under 10% is either a bad template, a bad audience, or your accounts are already burned and Telegram is throttling delivery.