Key Takeaways
- Cold calling and cold emailing both work, but in different ways: recent data shows average cold-calling success around 2-3% of conversations turning into meetings, while average cold email reply rates sit near 5-8%, with top campaigns hitting 15-25%.
- Treat it as cold emailing AND cold calling, not versus: multichannel outbound (email + phone + LinkedIn) consistently outperforms single-channel by 2-5x in engagement and conversions, so your SDRs should be working coordinated sequences, not isolated touches.
- Buyer behavior has shifted: B2B buyers complete ~70-80% of their journey before talking to sales, and 60-70%+ say they prefer to be contacted via email for first touch, making email the logical entry channel and phone the best follow-up and deal-accelerator.
- Cold email wins on scale and cost: email outreach typically costs pennies per send and can deliver $36–$40+ in revenue for every $1 spent when done right, while cold calling is more expensive per touch but produces higher-quality discovery and faster qualification.
- Cold calling shines for high-intent and higher-ACV deals: top-performing teams still book 4-10% of live conversations into meetings, especially when reps call mobile numbers, time calls well, and reference relevant triggers or prior emails.
- The biggest performance gaps aren't channel-based, they're execution-based: hyper-targeted lists, strong ICP definition, tight messaging, and 4-7 follow-ups drive the difference between <1% and 10%+ response, regardless of channel.
- Bottom line: most B2B teams should lead with personalized cold email to warm the prospect, then use well-timed, researched calls to convert interest into meetings-measuring both channels on meetings booked and pipeline, not vanity metrics.
Cold emailing vs cold calling isn’t a religious war-it’s a resource allocation problem. In 2025, average cold-calling success hovers around 2.3% of conversations booked into meetings, while cold email reply rates average 5-8% with top performers reaching 15-25%. B2B buyers now complete ~70% of their journey before talking to sales and increasingly prefer digital, especially email, for first contact. This guide shows B2B teams how to pick the right mix, build multichannel sequences, and turn both channels into predictable pipeline.
Introduction
Cold emailing vs cold calling. If you’ve been around B2B sales for more than five minutes, you’ve heard this debate. One side swears the phone is dead. The other side insists email is just glorified spam. Meanwhile, your pipeline doesn’t care who’s right-it just needs meetings.
Here’s the reality: both channels work. Both channels are failing for a lot of teams. And neither channel, on its own, is a silver bullet.
In 2025, the average cold calling success rate sits around 2.3% of conversations booked into meetings, down from about 4.8% in 2024. On the email side, average cold email response rates hover around 5-8%, with top performers pushing 15-25% or more. At the same time, most B2B buyers now complete roughly 70-80% of their buying journey before speaking with sales.
This guide breaks down what those numbers actually mean in the real world of SDRs, AEs, and pipeline targets. We’ll cover:
- How modern B2B buying behavior changes the cold email vs cold call equation
- Where each channel truly shines-and where it falls on its face
- A head-to-head comparison across cost, scale, and conversion
- How top outbound teams combine email and phone in multichannel cadences
- Practical steps to design the right channel mix for your team
And since this is written from the trenches, we’ll keep it practical. Less theory, more “here’s what to do Monday morning.”
The New B2B Buying Reality (And Why It Changes Everything)
Before arguing about channels, you have to understand the game you’re playing.
Buyers Are Doing the Work Without You
Multiple studies now show B2B buyers are self-educating long before you ever cold email or cold call them. A recent Gartner view of the buying journey found buyers spend only 17% of their total buying time with all vendors combined; the majority-around 80%-of their journey happens independently. Other research consistently shows buyers complete 60-70% of their evaluation before engaging sales.
Translation: by the time a prospect is “ready to talk,” they’ve already read your site (and your competitors’), scanned reviews, and probably formed a shortlist. Outbound isn’t about educating a blank slate anymore-it’s about inserting yourself into a conversation that’s already happening in their head.
Channel Preferences Are Real (But Not Absolute)
Let’s talk about how buyers want to be contacted.
- A broad look at cold email benchmarks shows about 60% of B2B decision-makers say they prefer email as the first contact channel.
- Hunter’s 2025 “State of Cold Email” found 61% of global decision-makers prefer cold email over phone or LinkedIn-and among US-based decision-makers, that jumps to 71%.
- SalesHive’s own analysis of B2B outreach in 2025 notes that around 80% of buyers prefer email over unsolicited calls, and 80% of decision-makers prefer email as their primary communication channel.
At the same time, phone is far from irrelevant:
- Cognism’s data shows 32% of prospects will answer a call from a company they haven’t spoken with before.
- Various studies report that 60-75% of decision-makers are at least open to cold calls, especially when they’re relevant and timely.
So yes, email clearly wins as the preferred first touch. But a meaningful chunk of buyers still take calls-and many large B2B deals still involve real-time conversations before anything closes.
The Multichannel Reality
Another important dynamic: buyers don’t live in one channel.
- Sopro’s State of Prospecting report found 75% of B2B companies see better results when email prospecting is combined with other outbound channels.
- Artemis’s 2025 benchmarks show that multichannel outreach (email + LinkedIn + other touches) can boost engagement by 287% and conversions by around 300% versus email-only outreach.
- SalesHive cites Martal data that blended campaigns can drive 4.7x higher engagement than single-channel efforts.
So this isn’t about picking a winner-it’s about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each channel so you can combine them intelligently.
Cold Emailing in 2025: Scalable, Cheap, and Brutally Competitive
Cold email has become the default outbound channel for a lot of B2B teams-for good reason.
What the Numbers Say
Let’s anchor the conversation in some realistic benchmarks:
- Average cold email open rates sit somewhere between 15-28%, depending on list quality, subject lines, and industry.
- Many B2B studies put “typical” reply rates in the 1-5% range, with broader averages around 5-8% in more recent 2025 datasets.
- Artemis’s massive 27-million-email analysis pegs the overall average response rate at 8.5%, with a lot of campaigns stuck at 1-5% and top performers hitting 15-25%+.
- SalesSo’s 2025 stats show cold email generating $36–$42 in revenue per $1 spent, making it one of the highest-ROI outbound channels when executed correctly.
Those are averages. Well-run B2B campaigns, with clean data and solid personalization, can and do outperform them regularly.
Strengths of Cold Email
1. Insane Scalability
You can send thousands of personalized emails per rep, per month. Tools for sequencing, deliverability, and personalization mean a small SDR team can reach a very large market without burning out.
2. Cost-Effective
When your cost per send is measured in pennies and average ROI can hit 40:1, email will almost always look better than phone on a pure cost-per-touch basis.
3. Asynchronous and Buyer-Friendly
Prospects can read and respond on their own time. Given that a majority of buyers prefer digital first contact and self-directed research, email meets them where they already are.
4. Easy to Test and Optimize
Subject lines, CTAs, messaging angles-you can A/B test all of it quickly. That feedback loop is a gift if you take it seriously.
5. Plays Nice With Other Channels
An email with a relevant case study or short video sets up a warmer follow-up call. A call referencing a recent email gets taken more seriously. Cold email is the glue of modern outbound.
Weaknesses of Cold Email
1. Crowded Inboxes and Low Signal
Decision-makers report getting dozens of cold emails per week, and only a fraction feel relevant. One study found only 24% of executives feel they receive a valuable cold email at least once a week; 20% say they never receive relevant cold outreach.
2. Deliverability and Reputation Risk
If you blast low-quality lists, your domain reputation tanks. Suddenly even your legit emails-pipeline updates, customer comms-are landing in spam.
3. Slower Feedback Loop
Even with tracking, you’re guessing why someone didn’t reply. With a live call, you hear the objection in real time.
4. Easy to Do Poorly at Scale
Tools make it simple to send more bad emails faster. That’s why so many campaigns sit in the 1-2% reply range while top performers are 5-10x higher.
What Actually Moves the Needle With Cold Email
Based on recent benchmark reports and what we see in the field, a few things consistently separate 1% reply rates from 10%+:
- Hyper-Targeted Lists, Top campaigns spend most of their time on ICP and data quality. One large study of 10,000+ B2B campaigns found winners spending ~80% of their effort on list building.
- Short, Clear Copy, Multiple analyses show emails in the 50-125 word range can see significantly higher reply rates-up to 50% better than long essays.
- Personalization That Actually Matters, Adding a name in the subject line boosts opens by ~20-26%, but using real, role-specific context and triggers can drive 2-3x more responses.
- Follow-Ups, Follow-up emails can increase response rates by 20-65%, yet nearly half of reps never send a single follow-up.
- Mobile Optimization, Roughly 55% of all emails are opened on mobile, and 40-50% of users will delete non-mobile-optimized messages on sight. If your formatting breaks on a phone, you’re burning leads.
If you’re going to lean on email in your outbound strategy, these aren’t nice-to-haves-they’re survival.
Cold Calling in 2025: Harder Than Ever, Still Hugely Valuable
Cold calling has taken a beating in the narrative, but the data paints a more nuanced picture.
What the Numbers Say
- Cognism’s 2025 cold calling data puts the average success rate at 2.3%-that’s the share of conversations that become booked meetings.
- Their 2024 report showed a 4.82% success rate, indicating the bar has risen and buyers are more selective.
- It typically takes about three call attempts to connect with a prospect, and 93% of conversations happen within the first three calls.
- Connection rates (dials that reach a human) can sit around 13-17% with good mobile data; in many orgs, that means 18+ dials just to reach one person live.
Those numbers sound brutal-until you realize a single well-qualified meeting might justify dozens of dials.
Strengths of Cold Calling
1. Real Conversations and Discovery
On the phone, you’re not guessing. You can hear tone, ask follow-ups, and uncover the “real” problem in minutes. That’s why so many B2B sellers still rely on calls for complex or high-ACV deals.
2. Faster Qualification
A 90-second conversation can tell you more than ten back-and-forth emails. In markets with noisy signals (think crowded SaaS categories), calls cut through the fog.
3. Higher Conversion From Engagement
While overall call success rates may hover around 2-5%, top-performing reps with the right data and coaching often see 5-10% of conversations turn into meetings. That’s hard to match with a single email touch.
4. Less Saturated Than Email
Executives get buried in email. A well-timed, relevant call-especially referencing something specific about their company or a previous email-still stands out.
Weaknesses of Cold Calling
1. Labor-Intensive and Hard to Scale
Every call takes time, and quality calls require prep. If your ACV is low, you can easily overspend on phone time.
2. Low Connect and Answer Rates
Depending on your data quality and market, 80-88% of calls may be ignored or go to voicemail. That’s demoralizing for reps and expensive for you.
3. Perceived Intrusiveness
Plenty of buyers see unscheduled calls as disruptive-especially if you’re not clearly relevant in the first 15-20 seconds. Mishandled calls can hurt your brand more than help.
4. High Skill Requirement
Great cold callers are rare. You’re asking reps to manage timing, objection handling, tone, and talk tracks in real time. Without strong enablement and coaching, most calls will underperform.
What Actually Moves the Needle With Cold Calling
The same themes from email show up with the phone:
- Good Data, Especially Mobile Numbers, Calling verified mobile numbers can dramatically increase connect rates versus dialing main lines and switchboards. Cognism’s data highlights mobile-first calling as a core driver of higher connection rates.
- Timing Windows, Best-practice call windows (often early mornings and late afternoons) consistently show higher connect and conversation rates than random times.
- Tight Openers, You have seconds to prove you’re not a waste of time. Reps who open with clear relevance (role, problem, trigger) dramatically outperform those who sound like generic telemarketers.
- Persistence With a Ceiling, Calls beyond 5 attempts per prospect show diminishing returns; about 98% of conversations occur by the fifth call. The game is smart persistence, not endless harassment.
- Coach, Don’t Just Count Dials, Teams that listen to recordings, drill objection handling, and refine scripts weekly almost always beat teams that only manage via “dials per day.”
Cold Email vs Cold Call: Head-to-Head for B2B Outbound
Let’s put the channels side by side.
1. Scale and Speed
- Cold Email: You can easily hit thousands of prospects a month per SDR, especially with sequencing tools and AI-assisted personalization.
- Cold Calling: Even with a power dialer, you’re limited by time-maybe 60-100 dials a day, with a fraction turning into conversations.
Winner: Email for scale. Not even close.
2. Cost per Touch
- Cold Email: Cost per send is tiny, and ROI can hit $36–$42 per $1 when done well.
- Cold Calling: Cost per call includes salary, telephony, data, and overhead; per-touch cost is significantly higher.
Winner: Email, especially for low- to mid-ACV plays.
3. Buyer Preference (First Touch)
- Majority of B2B buyers-60-70%+ in multiple studies-prefer email as their first contact channel.
- A meaningful minority, though, are still open to cold calls when they’re relevant and concise.
Winner: Email, but it’s not unanimous.
4. Depth of Engagement
- Cold Email: Great for information sharing, light engagement, and async conversations.
- Cold Calling: Superior for discovery, qualification, and real-time objection handling.
Winner: Phone for depth; email for breadth.
5. Conversion to Meetings
- Cold Email: Average reply rates ~5-8%; meeting rates on total sends can be 0.2-2% depending on targeting and offer.
- Cold Calling: Average call-to-meeting conversion ~2-3%, with top performers at 5-10%+ from live conversations.
Winner: Phone on a per-engagement basis; email wins on volume.
6. Data and Optimization
- Cold Email: Easy to track opens, clicks, replies, and run multivariate tests.
- Cold Calling: Harder to instrument, but call recordings and structured disposition codes give rich qualitative insight.
Winner: Email for fast A/B tests; phone for richer qualitative intel.
So… Which Should You Choose?
If you absolutey forced a choice, most B2B teams with limited budget and a need for scale should start with cold email and sprinkle in very targeted calling.
But that forced choice is artificial. The teams consistently winning in 2025 are the ones running phone-led, email-supported or email-led, phone-supported cadences based on account size and buyer behavior-not betting everything on one channel.
Multichannel > Single Channel: How Top Teams Blend Email and Phone
Here’s where things get interesting. When you stop pitting email and phone against each other and start orchestrating them, results jump.
Why Multichannel Works
Three big reasons:
- Multiple Chances to Catch Attention, Prospects are busy and distracted. A single email or call is easy to miss; a series of thoughtful touches across channels is harder to ignore.
- Respects Buyer Preferences, Some buyers never answer cold calls; others hate email. Multichannel gives each persona a way to engage on their terms.
- Builds Familiarity and Trust, By the time you call after a couple of emails (or vice versa), your name and brand feel less random.
We’ve already seen the data:
- Sopro reports 75% of B2B companies see better results when email is combined with other channels.
- Artemis found multichannel outreach can boost engagement by 287% and conversions by around 300% compared to email alone.
- SalesHive cites data showing blended campaigns achieving 4.7x higher engagement than single-channel.
If you’re still running email-only or phone-only outbound, you’re actively handicapping your team.
Sample Multichannel Cadence (Mid-Market SaaS ICP)
Here’s a simple 12-day, 8-touch cadence you can steal and adapt:
Day 1, Email #1 (Problem & Relevance)
Short note (80-120 words) calling out a specific, role-based problem and a relevant trigger (e.g., hiring SDRs, new funding, tech stack signal). No links, just a clear, soft CTA.
Day 3, Call #1 + Voicemail
Call in your best connect window. If no answer, leave a tight, 20-30 second voicemail referencing the email: who you help, one outcome, one way to respond.
Day 4, Email #2 (Value Add)
Follow up referencing your voicemail, share a 2-3 sentence insight or mini-case study that proves you understand their world. Again, short and skimmable.
Day 7, Call #2 (Different Time Window)
Try a different time of day. This time, if you get voicemail again, consider a no-voicemail approach to avoid clutter; log the attempt and move on.
Day 8, Email #3 (Social Proof / Offer)
Highlight one crisp before-and-after story or metric from a similar customer. Tight CTA like “Worth a 15-minute chat to see if this applies to you?”
Day 11, Call #3 + Voicemail
Last proactive call in this sequence. If no answer, leave a “permission to close the loop” message.
Day 12, Email #4 (Breakup / Open Door)
Be human. Acknowledge they’re likely busy, restate the value in one sentence, and give them an easy out or a simple reply like “not now” or “talk in Q3.”
You can layer LinkedIn connection requests and comments on their content into this, but even this basic structure will outperform one-off emails or random dial blocks.
Role of AI and Automation
Modern outbound has another lever: AI.
- On email, tools like SalesHive’s eMod can ingest signals (role, industry, news, tech stack) and generate personalized, on-brand messaging at scale, so SDRs can focus on strategy and conversations instead of writing every email from scratch.
- On the phone, AI can help surface intent signals (funding, hiring, technology changes) and recommend call priorities and talk tracks based on what’s working across thousands of calls.
Use AI to amplify the fundamentals, not replace them.
How This Applies to Your Sales Team
Theory is cute, but you’ve got numbers to hit. Here’s how to turn all of this into a concrete plan.
1. Start With Your ICP and Deal Economics
Ask a few blunt questions:
- What’s our average contract value today-and what do we want it to be?
- Who is our core ICP by industry, company size, and role?
- How many deals can we realistically close per month per AE if pipeline shows up?
If your ACV is sub-$5k and you’re selling to time-poor SMB owners, you’ll lean heavily on email and automation. If you’re selling $50k+ deals into enterprise buying committees, you’re going to need meaningful phone time in the mix.
2. Audit Your Current Channel Performance
Pull the last 60-90 days of data and normalize it:
- Emails sent → replies → meetings → pipeline
- Calls made → connects → meetings → pipeline
Convert that into simple ratios: meetings per 1,000 emails and meetings per 100 dials. That’s your starting baseline. (Most teams skip this step and then wonder why they’re arguing with opinions instead of data.)
3. Define Your Default Cadences by Segment
For each major ICP segment (e.g., SMB vs. mid-market vs. enterprise), define a default cadence:
- Email-led (e.g., 70% email, 30% phone) for lower-ACV or hard-to-reach personas
- Phone-led (e.g., 50-60% phone, 40-50% email) for high-ACV or phone-friendly industries
Codify:
- Number of touches
- Channel mix per touch
- Timing windows
- Triggers that move someone into a more call-heavy or email-heavy track
4. Equip SDRs With the Right Tools and Coaching
Minimum stack for serious outbound in 2025:
- A sequencing platform for email
- A power dialer and call recording
- A quality data provider with verified emails and mobile numbers
- A CRM that can actually report on channel-level performance
Then make coaching non-negotiable:
- Weekly review of call recordings
- Review of email replies (good and bad) in team meetings
- Playbooks of winning subject lines, openers, and objection handles
5. Iterate Quarterly Based on Pipeline, Not Feelings
Every quarter, look at:
- Meetings and qualified opportunities sourced by channel
- Show rates and opp conversion by channel (are phone-booked meetings “better”?)
- Close rates and ACV by channel
Use that to adjust your channel mix, cadences, and even staffing. For example, if you see phone-heavy segments consistently delivering larger deals, you might allocate more SDR time there and rely more on email automation for smaller segments.
Conclusion + Next Steps
The cold emailing vs cold calling debate is mostly a distraction. The real question is: how do you turn both into a predictable, scalable pipeline engine for your ICP and your economics?
Email is cheaper, more scalable, and buyers clearly prefer it as a first touch. Average open rates in the 15-28% range and reply rates in the 5-8% bracket prove it can work-especially when you layer in strong personalization and follow-ups. It’s also one of the highest-ROI channels in B2B when done well.
Cold calling is harder than ever, but far from dead. With success rates around 2-3% of conversations turning into meetings-and much higher for top reps-it’s still one of the best ways to quickly qualify interest and move serious buyers forward, especially in complex or high-ACV sales.
The teams that win in 2025 aren’t purists. They:
- Lead with email to warm the prospect and align with buyer preferences.
- Use the phone to have real conversations, handle objections, and book serious meetings.
- Orchestrate both inside thoughtful multichannel cadences that reflect how buyers actually behave.
- Relentlessly test and tune based on meetings and pipeline-not just opens, clicks, or dials.
If you have the internal team, use this guide as your blueprint: tighten your ICP, build multichannel sequences, and instrument everything. If you don’t-or you’d rather have a specialist own the grind-this is exactly where an outbound partner like SalesHive can help, by running the cold calling, cold emailing, and list building for you so your closers can focus on what they do best.
Either way, stop asking “email or phone?” and start asking “how do we make both channels work together to hit our number?” That’s the question that actually moves pipeline.
📊 Key Statistics
Expert Insights
Lead With Email, Close With the Phone
Use cold email as your low-friction first touch to get on the prospect's radar, then pivot to phone once there's even a hint of engagement-opens, clicks, or web visits. This mirrors buyer preferences for digital-first contact while still leveraging the phone where it shines: live discovery and objection handling.
Let Deal Size Dictate Channel Investment
For low-ACV or high-volume offers, make email and automation do the heavy lifting and reserve calls for hand-raisers or top-tier accounts. For enterprise or complex deals, expect to invest more SDR time on the phone early, using email as context and air cover rather than your primary driver.
Measure Channels on Meetings, Not Vanity Metrics
Open rates and connect rates are directional, but what matters is meetings and qualified pipeline per rep-hour. Track metrics like 'meetings per 100 emails' and 'meetings per 100 dials' so you can compare email vs. phone on equal footing and reallocate time based on actual yield.
Design Cadences Around Buyer Behavior, Not Rep Convenience
Most replies and conversations happen after multiple touches, yet most reps quit after one or two. Build sequences that reflect reality—4-7 touches across email and phone over 2-3 weeks-and enforce completion before a lead is marked 'unresponsive' or goes back to marketing.
Use Data and Triggers to Make Cold Feel Warm
Whether you're emailing or calling, reference real triggers-funding, hiring sprees, tech stack changes, or content consumption. Trigger-based messaging can dramatically lift both call conversion and email reply rates, and it's exactly where AI-powered intent tools and good list building pay off.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Treating cold email and cold calling as an either/or decision
This forces your team into a single-channel box and ignores the fact that most buyers respond only after multiple touches across different channels, not one perfect email or one perfect call.
Instead: Design standard multichannel cadences where email and phone support each other-email to warm up, phone to convert, then back to email for nurturing if timing isn't right.
Spray-and-pray cold emailing to massive untargeted lists
You end up with low reply rates, domain reputation issues, and a burned TAM; you might book a few meetings, but you destroy long-term deliverability and credibility.
Instead: Spend more time on ICP and list quality than on copy; build smaller, tightly segmented lists and personalize around role, industry, and trigger events so your 1-2% reply rate jumps closer to 8-15%.
Dialing without context or preparation
Generic, scripted calls lead to fast hang-ups and reinforce the idea that cold calling is annoying and low-yield, which in turn kills rep morale.
Instead: Require 60-90 seconds of research per target account or persona cluster and arm SDRs with 1-2 relevant insights or questions they can drop in the first 20 seconds of the call.
Judging channels on the wrong metrics or too small a sample
Teams call 30 people in a week, send 200 emails, and then announce 'cold calling doesn't work' or 'email is dead,' which is just noise statistically.
Instead: Run properly sized tests-thousands of emails and hundreds or thousands of dials across multiple reps over at least a few weeks-and evaluate on meetings booked, not just raw replies or conversations.
Not adjusting channel mix by segment or buying stage
Using the same 80/20 email/phone split for SMB and enterprise, or for net-new vs. open opportunities, ignores how different buyers want to engage and leaves pipeline on the table.
Instead: Define clear rules of engagement by segment (e.g., enterprise = more phone and LinkedIn; SMB = more email and automation) and by stage (e.g., calls for active evaluations, email-heavy for early education).
Action Items
Audit the last 90 days of outbound performance by channel
Pull data on emails sent, calls made, connects, replies, meetings booked, and pipeline generated. Normalize it to 'per 100 emails' and 'per 100 dials' so you can see which channel is truly producing more meetings for your ICP.
Define a standard multichannel cadence for your top ICP
Build a 10-14 day sequence blending 4-6 emails and 2-4 calls, plus optional LinkedIn touches, and roll it out as the default for SDRs instead of letting everyone freestyle their own reach-outs.
Tighten your ICP and list-building process
Document firmographic, technographic, and trigger criteria for 'good fit' accounts, then adjust your data providers and enrichment tools so every email and phone number your SDRs touch is high-probability, not just high-volume.
Upgrade call and email coaching
Review call recordings and reply threads weekly to spot patterns, refine openers, and improve objection handling. Pair new SDRs with top performers and give them specific micro-skills to practice for each channel.
Set channel-specific KPIs tied to meetings and pipeline
For example, target 1 meeting per 40-60 dials and 1 meeting per 200-400 cold emails, then iterate. Use these guardrails to decide if you should shift more SDR time toward phone, email, or a partner like SalesHive.
Decide what to outsource vs. keep in-house
If your core team is better at running deals than generating them, consider outsourcing cold calling, cold email, and list building to a specialist while your AEs focus on late-stage conversations and closing.
Partner with SalesHive
SalesHive’s SDR outsourcing model lets you plug in US-based or Philippines-based SDR teams who live in the trenches of cold outreach every day. On the email side, their AI-powered tools like eMod personalize messaging at scale, pulling in role, industry, and trigger-based insights so your campaigns land above the noise instead of in the spam folder. On the phone side, SalesHive’s cold calling teams use proven scripts, intent data, and mobile-first dialing strategies to turn more conversations into booked meetings.
Because there are no annual contracts and onboarding is designed to be low-risk, you can test a fully integrated cold email + cold calling program without overcommitting headcount or budget. If you want a partner that knows how to make email and phone work together-not fight each other-SalesHive is built for exactly that.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Which is more effective for B2B lead generation: cold emailing or cold calling?
Effectiveness depends on how you define it. On a per-touch basis, cold calls can have higher meeting conversion from conversations-recent benchmarks put cold-calling success around 2-3% of conversations booked into meetings. Cold email, meanwhile, reaches far more prospects at much lower cost, with average reply rates around 5-8% and top campaigns hitting 15-25%. For most B2B teams, email is the best first-touch and the phone is the best conversion tool, so the real win is using both together in a coordinated cadence.
How many cold emails or cold calls does it usually take to book a meeting?
Data shows most outbound wins come after multiple touches. On the phone, it typically takes about three call attempts to connect with a prospect, and 90%+ of conversations occur within the first five calls. On email, many studies show that a majority of replies come after at least the second or third message in the sequence. In practice, plan for at least 4-7 touches-across email and phone-before deciding a prospect is truly unresponsive.
Is cold calling dead in 2025?
Not even close-but bad cold calling should be. While the average cold-calling success rate has dropped to roughly 2.3% of conversations turning into meetings, top-performing teams still see 5-10% call-to-meeting rates by using high-quality mobile data, tight ICP targeting, and strong coaching. Many buyers still say they're open to relevant, well-timed calls, and a large share of high-value B2B deals still involve live phone conversations at some point. The channel isn't dead; lazy scripts and random dialing are.
If I have a small sales team, should I prioritize cold emailing or cold calling?
If you're resource-constrained, start with cold email because it scales better and costs less per touch. Use it to identify warm interest-opens, clicks, replies-and then reserve cold calls for your highest-fit accounts and the most engaged prospects. As you grow, you can layer in more phone-led outreach, especially for higher-ACV segments where a few extra minutes on the phone per account pays off in bigger opportunities.
How should SDRs split their time between cold email and cold calling?
A healthy baseline for many B2B teams is something like 50-60% of prospecting time on email and research, and 40-50% on the phone, but the right mix depends on your ACV and audience. Higher-ACV enterprise plays might flip that ratio with more time on phone and LinkedIn, while transactional SMB plays might go email-heavy. The key is to track meetings per rep-hour for each channel and adjust the split quarterly based on what's actually generating pipeline.
What metrics should we track to compare cold emailing vs cold calling?
At a minimum, track: touches per prospect, connect/open rates, conversations/replies, meetings booked, and pipeline generated by channel. Normalize results to something like 'meetings per 100 dials' and 'meetings per 1,000 emails' so you can compare apples to apples. Over time, also watch downstream metrics like show rates, opp creation, and win rates by channel to see if phone-sourced vs. email-sourced meetings differ in quality.
What about compliance for cold outreach—does it change the channel decision?
It should absolutely influence how you execute, especially for US outbound. For cold email, you need to respect CAN-SPAM and local equivalents-honest sender info, clear opt-out, and reasonable relevance. For phone, pay attention to TCPA, DNC lists, and local regulations around dialing mobile numbers. Compliance doesn't mean you can't cold outbound; it just means you need good data hygiene, clear processes, and sometimes a partner who already has compliant infrastructure in place.
How long should we test a channel mix before deciding to change it?
Avoid snap judgments based on a week or two of activity. For most B2B teams, you'll want at least one full sales cycle's worth of data-often 60-90 days-at a reasonable volume (thousands of emails and hundreds or thousands of calls) before you draw conclusions. Use that window to A/B test scripts and sequences within each channel, then adjust your email/phone mix based on statistically meaningful differences in meetings and pipeline.