Email vs Cold Calling for B2B Sales: Which Is Best?

Should you use email or cold calling to contact your B2B company's prospects and pitch your product or service? As you may already know, email involves the use of digital messages sent to a prospect's email address. These messages can range from full-length articles to one-sentence sales pitches. Cold calling, on the other hand, involves contacting a prospect with whom you've had no previous contact via phone. While both strategies can drive sales for your B2B company, there are subtle differences between the two.

Preferred Method of Communication

You'll typically experience higher conversion rates when contacting prospects via their preferred method of communication. Statistics show that email is the most preferred method of communication, with 81% of B2B customers preferring it over phone, online contact form, live chat, face-to-face meetings and social media. This shouldn't come as a surprise given that email is the least disruptive method of communication. Prospects can continue working and performing their own operations, even when you send them marketing or sales emails.

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Reaching Prospects

Just because you send a prospect an email, it doesn't necessarily mean that he or she will open it. And if the prospect doesn't open the message, it's not going to translate into sales or conversions for your company. According to Smart Insights, about one in four B2B emails are opened, and the average click-through rate (CTR) for these messages is about 4.75%.

Following that same principle, not every cold call you make will get you connected to a prospect. For every 10 cold calls you make, you might get two or three prospects on the line. To overcome this challenge, you should focus on volume. Whether you use email, cold calling or any other sales channel, you should increase the number of prospects whom you contact. The more prospects you contact, the greater your chance of generating sales.

Personalized Messages

With email, you can personalize your messages to achieve a stronger response by prospects. Statistics show that personalized B2B emails generate a 14% higher CTR and 10% higher conversion rate than generic, non-personalized emails. If you know the prospect's name -- hopefully, you know more than just his or her name -- you can include it in the message. When a prospect sees his or her name in the email's subject line and again in the greeting, they'll feel compelled to open it, which usually means a higher chance of converting that prospect into a customer. You can personalize cold calls also by addressing the prospect by his or her name, but this doesn't have the same impact as personalized emails.

Email Usage

Not only is it the preferred method of communication for B2B prospects, but it's also used more than any other method. A study conducted by researchers from the University of British Columbia found that the average person checks his or her email about 15 times per day. For B2B prospects, many of whom work in offices, this number is even higher. This means there's a good chance that a B2B prospect will see your emails. Whether you can convert him or her into a customer, though, relies on the quality of your subject line and message.

Automation

You can also take advantage of automation with email marketing. Manually creating every marketing email by hand is a tedious and time-consuming process. If you have 50 prospects whom you wish to contact, you'd have to create 50 emails. Thankfully, the right software can simplify this process by automating your email marketing strategy. Whether it's a dedicated email marketing program or customer relationship management (CRM) software with integrated email marketing tools, you should take advantage of automation.

Data Analytics

You'll have access to more data when contacting prospects via email as opposed to cold calling. Using this data, you can measure the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy and quickly make adjustments to gain even more attention. If a particular type of message is generating a strong response and attracting customers to your company, consider replicating this process. And if an email generates a poor response among prospects, try a different approach. You can easily measure the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy by tracking key performance indicators (KPI) like open rate, CTR, conversion rate and deliverability rate.

Reaching Decision-Makers

Cold calling still has its advantages over email, including the ability to reach the decision-makers of a prospect's company. The recipient of a marketing email may not have the authority to make purchases on behalf of his or her company. Cold calling, on the other hand, will give the opportunity to ask the prospect to connect you to the decision-makers of his or her company. Take the guess work out of finding the decision maker by using our Target Account Intelligence tool. It will give you the decision maker along with email address and direct dial for greater results.

More Than Just Text

Cold calling also allows you to convey more than just text in your marketing messages. It's a more genuine form of communication that allows prospects to hear your voice and tone. As a result, prospects tend to trust sales reps as there’s nothing like a one-on-one communication.