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Cold emailing VS Cold calling

by harro1
18 replies
Just wondering which of the 2 has brought more leads/sales for your business?
#calling #cold #emailing
  • Profile picture of the author WasifN
    Depends on the nature of the business and your target market. For example, I used to work for a call centre selling loft insulation it's target market was people aged 45-60 years. Most of the people I spoke to were 50+ and didn't have an email address so cold calling was obviously the most viable option.

    Basic salesman line "people buy from people" in a cold email you cant present your personality as much as over the phone (tone of voice etc).

    However, in my experience with cold calling the customers usually have to go through a few step process to get their product/service. If it's instantly available, emailing may be the way to go.

    A couple of points from my view although I have limited experience with cold emailing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Leadsupply
      I can help with this a little bit. So I have done both. The previous response is correct cold calling not only works but you are get a better response rate if you are good at it. That said it comes with some down sides as well. The first is bandwidth, how many quality calls can you make per day? Per hour? ect.

      With cold emailing it can be a little different, and difficult to set up, Ip's, accounts, and your lists then auto responders and the like if you decide to go that direction. The GOOD thing about email marketing is you are only limited on your bandwidth to how many emails you can send out or how large your list is. If you have a very large list then you can go with places like Get response or I contact or active campaign.

      To answer your question, we run a lead generation service for web designers and we do it via email marketing and it works well for us. Doing the same thing via cold calling would still work but the numbers would not add up as well.

      Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author RealCasher
    Tried both, cold emailing was much more better for me! more leads, and more sales.

    I outsourced cold calling and it was a bad experience
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  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    IMO cold calling is dumb. Just look it up and see what you find.

    However in my day job I do this a lot. I send out a cold email. About 2 to 6 days later I call that person and most often get to leave a message. Something like "this is just a courtesy call to follow up a recent email which pointed out..... I end by leaving contact info. Right after that I send a second email which is the original email that I forward to him. This way the "RE:" is now in the subject line of the email and he sees that I have really tried to get in touch with him. I will write that I left them a phone message and ask that they review the orignal email and let me know if they need my company's services.

    The call and the second email are the actions that prompt a response. Virtually no one ever calls. Everything is done via email.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    If you're about to get started and never did either one of these things before, cold calling wins 99.9% of the time and there is no arguing with that fact.

    Cold emailing is a more advanced strategy if done properly. People think manually emailing works because one person responds but it's not ideal. To be effective you need to email in bulk and you need to know your way around negative sender reputation, feedback loops (FBL) and how to get people to even read it.

    There comes a point when cold emailing is more profitable. If it is just you as a one man or one woman show, then both cold calling and cold emailing will generate about the same results assuming similar levels of skill once you're around 20-30,000 emails. Once you're around 40-50K emails that you send to weekly, email marketing turns into a more profitable tactic and it makes sense to hire people to do telemarketing for you at that point. However... if you hire two telemarketers then cold calling becomes the biggest revenue generator until you increase your cold email list to about 60-70k.

    There's a lot to it and what I find interesting is how many beginners are wanting to get into cold emailing, but it's not really a beginner strategy to REALLY get going with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author AmericanMuscleTA
    Definitely cold calling. Though, I'm not big on cold calling... I prefer direct mail. If I send you a bank bag in the mail are you going to open it?... That's what I though.
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    • Profile picture of the author qu4rk
      Cold Calling. Full Disclosure, I've only tried cold emailing manually and not on a scale enough to know if it works.
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  • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
    Originally Posted by harro1 View Post

    Just wondering which of the 2 has brought more leads/sales for your business?
    There is nothing to go on to give you a great answer. Are you just local?
    Do you sell a service that only a specific industry buys?
    Do you have contact names, or just company names?
    Do you have an e-mail list, are you scraping one?

    Is it just you?

    If it was me, and I needed a sale this week, I'd cold call.

    Over the next year? You just want it to stay, just you? I'd cold call, to ask if I could e-mail them. Once they say OK, ask a few questions to find out if they have an immediate need.
    That way, you'll be building a responsive e-mail list, and getting the immediate sales.


    And it's far easier to get a Yes, to accepting e-mails.

    Full disclosure. I never cold e-mailed anyone. They were all opt-ins.
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    • Profile picture of the author CLSVentures
      I think it also depends heavily on the pitch you are making and who the audience is. In my realm of JV brokering I have good luck with reaching CEO/VP Marketing/CFO/Founder type of folks with cold email regularly and then followed up with a call after a second email. In the B2B world I personally prefer that system and have had open-door responses and invitations to phone calls from owners and CEO's of $200 million dollar companies simply from one cold email.

      But........it takes a considerable amount of time and tricks to dig those emails up. And the subject line and body (pitch) have to be truly exceptional.

      I can talk about 40 different things that I legitimately SUCK at and be the first to admit it. But crafting the pitch copy etc is not one. Love it and excel at it.

      It's opened doors at very large companies. Doors that never could have been opened by simply cold calling. I have found that an email followed by a call does two things:

      - If the recipient saw/read it you already have an element of association or knowledge that you don't have to overcome (they might know who you are or remember something about the email)

      - Even if they didn't see/read it, you can refer to it and it nudges the call in the "warm" direction instead of being dead cold.
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground
    Have gotten about 15- 30% consistent response rates with cold email, but I don't try to sell, just get a simple micro-yes to advance to the next stage rather than vomit all over them. Brian Kuerzberger, who's great course I picked up a few weeks ago and will be implementing shortly, states a 90% response rate, but he has an involved strategy of targeting 4 high-up people in a certain corporate company. With cold-calling, I've got zero response ringing up like a twat trying to sell there and then.

    When I thought a better strategy would be to simply get a commitment on sending info that makes a great sales case, my positive responses rivalled cold email and were very high.

    I was just going through an ebook by Joe Polish and he also got 10 times better response rates seeking permission to send them more material after qualify them. Jordan Belfort's company also did this.

    There's a right way to do cold emailing and cold calling, and a wrong way (or atleast far more laborious and way less effective).

    Here's the first part Joe Polish's take on telemarketing. it's aimed at Carpet Cleaners and consumers hence the geo-targeting aspect, so no gatekeepers, but targeting doesn't have to be on that basis.

    Marketing Strategy #59 Telemarketing.

    Telemarketing can be very profitable if done correctly. I admit it is a lot of work but the benefits are wonderful.
    Most people who try telemarketing or cold calling fail. They don’t implement it correctly.

    First of all, it is usually a waste of time to try to ‘close’ anyone on the phone. People don’t like it and it is very hard on telemarketers.

    Never try to get an appointment on the phone.

    What I’ve found to be 10 times more efficient is to just offer to send information. Then only mail to interested prospects. The key to making this successful is to ONLY mail to truly interested prospects.
    This does several things for you:

    1. It lowers the cost of mailing. It is too expensive to mail to everyone.

    2. It makes the telemarketer the rejecter not the rejected. Most telemarketers quit because they get tired of being rejected. But with this system, they get to choose whom they are going to mail to. It is extremely important that they only mail to interested prospects.

    Since telephoning is free if you already have a phone, this is a very cost effective way to ‘qualify’ your leads before you mail to them.

    This telemarketing program is one of the most powerful ways you can ‘jump-start’ your business.
    The main reason this works is that it is non-threatening. There is no pressure or objection. There is no price involved, only information.

    The question should be how to telemarket not whether to telemarket.

    This system is solid. It works. You just have to implement it, as is.

    You should start out with one caller. Hire one. DO NOT DO THIS YOURSELF!

    Carpet cleaners make lousy telemarketers. You will not be able to keep up with this rigorous schedule. The key to making this work is to do it consistently. You just won’t do it so hire someone to do it.

    If you try to do this yourself, you’ll be making up a million and one reasons why you can’t do it. You’re too busy. You’re too tired. You have to get ready for your daughter’s Birthday party. I know I couldn’t do it.

    Trust me, it’s too difficult to do yourself.

    Hire someone as soon as possible. Each telemarketer will be working part time - three hours, four days a week. This will cost you $500.00 a month for each caller. That includes everything - their pay, printing and postage.
    You should administer the program only. Eventually you’ll want to have the best telemarketer become the ‘head telemarketer’. When this happens you’ll have forgotten what it was like to worry about money! Who To Call?
    You don’t need to go to a list broker to get a list but you do need to do a little bit of research. Use a phone book that has a criss-cross directory. This is a phone book organized by streets.

    Pick specific areas that you want to target. Break them up into 3 or 4 large groups. The first month target group one, the second month target group two, etc. In the fifth (or fourth) month go back to group one.
    The areas you want to target should be middle to upper class homeowners. If you don’t know your city well, a few drives should cure that problem.

    This makes sure you don’t ‘burn out’ an area. By hitting them again in 4 to 5 months, you will increase response.
    Make sure each telemarketer is calling different people in the group that you are targeting that month.
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelWinicki
      I agree with the thought the initial call should only be to ask if they would like more information and shouldn't be a pitch... even though some have said that going about it this way is wasting time/opportunity.
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground
    Just to add, to get to pitch enough people a day without getting a gate keeper or answer phone:

    You can use linkedin to find direct email and mobile numbers of the people you want to speak to, decision makers.

    It's work in itself, but if you can hand that list to telemarketers everyday, speak to the right people right away, and get permission to send your material to qualified and interested prospects and permission to follow up.

    Polish send a very decent and education mail piece. It's a very effective system and easy to hire people to put in a few hours a day creating leads.
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  • Profile picture of the author dwall
    I have done lots of cold emailing and Facebook marketing through messaging–– it works wonders... I have probably a 5% responses/action rate.
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  • Profile picture of the author TeKn1qu3z
    it depends on how will you handle your calls and your script by sending emails...
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    • Profile picture of the author CLSVentures
      Completely agree. The first email or even call isn't the offer. 3 things that have significantly helped me:

      1) start to finish, it has to have the vibe that you are both playing and comfortable at their level (with regards to CEOs, EVPs, etc) and and that you understand brevity.

      2) It is 0% about the close and 100% about taking the next step, which is getting them some cookie crumbs of information that opens the doors, be it a PDF, video slide presentation of the pitch, or an actual phone call.

      3) there has to be some significant USP or benefit that is dangled with amazing copy so that they simply are intrigued to find out more (Subject Line is massive here). II got an email within one hour of a cold email last week with the personal cell of a Pres of a $40mil company saying "Give me a call, let's talk"
      The copy is king
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  • Profile picture of the author benjamenjuan
    cold call, followed by or in conjuncture with social media connections [like and follow them]. if there is a conversation, I'll send a VERY IMPRESSIVE email [cover letter and full fledged online digital video resume with video references and proficiencies related to and customized to their niche.]

    works like a charm, the key is I keep saying it looks like they could use some help [in one particular area], and i have a plan specifically for businesses like theirs. I'm also sure compliment them on what I see that is good, like if they have a well designed logo or website.

    usually something like, "I stumbled across your website, it looks really good!"

    this is all done so I can set an appointment with a presentation. I don't really mess with email since it usually goes to an admin anyway. If I do speak to an admin/office person, I make them promise that theyll make sure the owner gets the message or the email, or whoever would be interested in speaking about promotional services to help grow their business.
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  • Profile picture of the author eccj
    Would it be better to email the information or mail it generally? I am flirting with going to this model vs closing on the phone because 1. I think my long term closing rate/cross sell rate could be higher 2. It would be easier to train someone to do the initial call vs trying to train someone to close on the phone thus allowing future expansion.
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  • Profile picture of the author internetmarketer1
    Cold calling CAN work, but there are people who will find that they may not able to convey their message that effectively when trying to speak to different business owners. This is when cold emailing is the only way to go. You can also get their attention in all sorts of ways without having to call them personally.

    Cold emailing can be profitable as well, but only if you pitch to them in an effective manner. The right approach increases your chances on landing the client.
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