Cold Emails vs Cold Calls: Which Is Better for Sales?

Cold emails and cold calls are two of the most widely used outreach strategies in sales. Both involve contacting leads with no preexisting relationship, but they differ significantly in cost, scalability, analytics, and how recipients experience them.

Here is a direct comparison of cold emailing and cold calling, including the advantages of each, what the statistics say, and the factors that determine which one works best.

What Is Cold Outreach and Why Does It Matter for Sales?

Cold outreach gets its name because there is no existing relationship with the people you contact. When you reach out to these leads for the first time, you face an uphill battle: you must introduce yourself and your brand from scratch, you have no rapport on which to build, and your chances of closing compared to a warm lead are lower.

Despite these challenges, cold outreach remains essential. It allows you to reach far more people than warm relationships and inbound sales alone can generate. Cold outreach strategies are faster and more scalable than most alternatives because they can be largely automated and streamlined.

The question is not whether to do cold outreach, but which method to use — or whether to combine both.

What Are the Advantages of Cold Emailing Over Cold Calling?

1. It is more cost efficient. You can send thousands of emails for cheap or free and automate the sending so you spend minimal time on the project. You can automate some aspects of cold calling as well, but it is tough to beat email’s inexpensiveness.

2. It is easier to scale. If you want to make more cold calls every day, you need to hire new people and purchase more equipment. If you want to send more cold emails, you only need to adjust settings in your email outreach software.

3. It automatically documents everything. Every email conversation is logged semi-permanently. Phone calls can be recorded and transcribed, but email makes documentation effortless. Your salespeople and analysts can trace the path of every conversation and draw insights to boost future performance.

4. It offers stronger tracking and analytics. Cold email lets you track performance more consistently and objectively at a larger scale. With the right platform, you can measure delivery rate, open rate, conversion rate, and average email response time. Cold calling has its own metrics, but email analytics are more comprehensive.

5. It is less invasive for recipients. Calling someone may interrupt their workday and annoy them. Email can be opened and reviewed at the recipient’s discretion — as long as your email reaches the inbox. See our guide on email warmup for help with deliverability. Starting the conversation through a less invasive channel often builds a stronger foundation for the relationship.

What Are the Advantages of Cold Calling Over Cold Emailing?

1. You leverage the human element of conversation. It is much harder to have a personal conversation over email. With cold calling, you talk directly with someone and build human rapport. You get to know your lead on a deeper level and can build a stronger relationship before moving to close the sale.

2. You qualify leads faster. Is a lead truly interested, or just being polite? It is hard to read tone in an email or in the absence of a reply. Skilled salespeople can pick up on subtle verbal cues during a phone call and adjust their approach in real time.

3. Phone calls are harder to ignore. Many people spend part of every day mass-deleting emails they never considered reading. But when someone calls from an unrecognized number, curiosity often wins — people answer to find out who is calling.

What Do the Statistics Say About Cold Emails vs Cold Calls?

It is difficult to compare cold calling and cold emailing directly, but several data points help illustrate the relationship:

The average cold email response rate is approximately 1 percent. 60 percent of cold calls go to voicemail. Only 2 percent of cold calls result in an appointment. The average salesperson makes 8 dials per hour and prospects for 6.25 hours to set just 1 appointment. Email marketing has 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking, or trade shows. By some estimates, cold calling can cost 60 percent more per contact than cold emailing.

That said, the numbers change dramatically based on circumstances. High-quality, personalized strategies always outperform low-quality, mass-marketed ones, regardless of whether your medium is calling or emailing.

What Factors Determine Whether to Use Cold Emails or Cold Calls?

1. The goal and call-to-action (CTA). Your results depend on what you are asking the lead to do next. The lower the stakes — lower dollar value, lower commitment — the more effective cold emailing becomes. The higher the dollar value and the bigger the commitment, the more favorable cold calling becomes.

2. The target audience. B2B sales environments tend to lean toward cold calling while B2C environments lean toward cold emailing. Older populations often prefer phone calls, while younger populations tend to prefer email. The only way to know for certain what works best for your audience may be to test both methods.

3. Timing. The timing of your messaging matters regardless of method. Cold calls tend to increase in effectiveness later in the standard 9-to-5 workday, while cold emails perform better when sent 10 minutes before or after the hour. The ideal timing depends heavily on your product and target audience.

4. Familiarity with your brand. Although cold outreach targets unfamiliar leads by definition, some prospects may have encountered your brand before. Greater familiarity increases receptivity to both channels, but also increases the likelihood of carrying on a phone conversation. If leads have never heard of you, cold emailing may be more effective as a first touch.

Should You Choose Cold Emails or Cold Calls — or Both?

For most businesses, cold emails and cold calls both offer distinct advantages. Instead of choosing one over the other, the most successful sales teams implement a multi-channel approach that leverages cold emailing, cold calling, social selling, SMS outreach, and other strategies together.

For example, you could start by cold calling a lead and follow up with an email if they do not answer. Conversely, you could start with an email and call people who open it without responding or taking action.

No matter what, cold emailing should be part of your sales strategy. But the email component is only as effective as your ability to analyze your efforts. If you have no way to measure response time, email volume, and other metrics, you will have a hard time improving. EmailAnalytics gives you crucial insights into your entire team’s email habits — including number of emails sent and received, busiest times and days, and average email response time. Sign up for a free trial today to see how it works.