Key Takeaways
- Multichannel beats single-channel: sales teams that mix cold calling and email in a structured cadence see 25-30% higher response rates and up to 4.7x more engagement than email-only or call-only outreach.
- Design cadences, not one-offs: aim for 8-12 touches over 17-21 days, deliberately mixing calls and emails instead of sending three emails and hoping for the best.
- Cold email alone is getting tougher, with average reply rates dropping from about 6.8% in 2023 to 5.8% in 2024-2025, so layering in calls is now a necessity, not a nice-to-have.
- Use email to warm the call and the call to humanize the email: reference your prior email in opening lines, and always send a fast recap email after a live conversation.
- Measure by channel and by sequence: track dials, connects, email opens, replies, and, most importantly, meetings booked per complete cadence, not per isolated touch.
- Train SDRs to treat voicemail and short emails as a package; a tight voicemail plus a same-day follow-up email regularly outperforms either channel on its own.
- If you don't have the internal capacity to build and run multichannel cadences, consider an outsourced SDR model like SalesHive that bundles list building, cold calling, and AI-personalized email under one roof.
Single-Channel Outreach Isn’t “Dead”—It’s Just Outmatched
In B2B outreach, the real problem isn’t that cold calling is dead or that email “always goes to spam”—it’s that single-channel outbound can’t compete with modern buyer behavior. Prospects are juggling nonstop internal messages, vendor noise, and tighter inbox filtering, so one lonely email or one random dial rarely earns attention. If we want consistent meetings, we need a coordinated system where calls and emails reinforce each other instead of competing for a reply.
The data makes the trend hard to ignore: cold email response rates have slid from 6.8% in 2023 to about 5.8% in 2024–2025 as inbox competition rises. When reply rates drift below roughly 5%, it’s usually a signal that targeting, relevance, or deliverability needs work—and it’s also a sign you shouldn’t rely on email alone. Adding phone outreach gives you another path to create recognition and recover opportunities that would otherwise get deleted.
At the same time, calling still performs when it’s executed in a structured sequence: 82% of buyers say they’ve agreed to a meeting after a series of cold calls. The takeaway isn’t “call more” or “email more.” It’s to design an outbound motion where each channel sets up the next touch, making your team feel persistent and professional rather than repetitive.
Why Email and Phone Win Together
Most buyers still want email as the starting point—about 77% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted via email—because it’s easy to scan, forward, and respond to on their schedule. Email also gives you space to frame a problem clearly, attach proof, and document next steps. But email alone struggles with nuance and discovery, which is exactly where deals either get qualified or die quietly.
Phone fills that gap by creating a live moment where you can qualify quickly, test positioning, and handle objections in real time. A short call is not a full pitch or a demo; it’s a high-bandwidth filter for fit, urgency, and ownership. When a prospect says “just email me,” that’s usually soft interest—your job is to confirm what they want to see and then send a tight follow-up that references the conversation while you’re still top of mind.
When you combine channels intentionally, you don’t just add touches—you multiply recognition and engagement. In Salesloft’s large-scale analysis (as cited in our benchmarks), multichannel sequences produced 4.7x higher prospect engagement than single-channel outreach, and other multichannel research reports a 25–30% response-rate lift versus similar email-only sequences. The best cadences make email the “context layer” and calls the “conversion layer,” so you’re never forcing one channel to do the other’s job.
Design Cadences, Not One-Off Messages
A cadence is a planned conversation over time, not three emails and a hope. Modern benchmarks commonly recommend 8–12 touches spread across 17–21 days, with a deliberate mix of email and calls. Many teams push closer to 15 steps when they include light LinkedIn outreach services, but the goal stays the same: coordinated touches that earn a meeting, not isolated attempts that can’t build momentum.
Two principles matter most in cadence design. First, treat email and phone as one conversation: reference your last email in your call opener, and reference your last call in your follow-up email so the prospect experiences continuity instead of random pings. Second, front-load activity in the first 7–10 business days, because buyers forget quickly; after that, taper to lighter check-ins and a clean break-up touch so you stay persistent without crossing into “pest territory.”
Longer, coordinated follow-up also solves a common execution gap: roughly 80% of sales require at least five follow-ups, yet 44% of reps stop after one attempt. The difference between a “bad list” and a “bad cadence” is often simple persistence with smart spacing and fresh angles. If you want a fast win, audit your last 60 days of activity and check whether more than 80% of touches were email—if so, you don’t have a multichannel strategy yet.
How to Build a 17–21 Day Email + Calling Sequence That Converts
A practical structure for most mid-market B2B teams is a combined sequence of 12–15 steps across 17–21 days, anchored on one clear problem and one clear next step. Email should do the heavy lifting on clarity—what you help with, why it matters, and what you’re asking for—while calls focus on qualifying and booking the meeting. If your message shifts every touch, prospects feel like they’re being pitched multiple products instead of being guided toward one decision.
We also recommend standardizing voicemail + email pairings instead of leaving voicemails in isolation. A short voicemail can create curiosity, but the follow-up email (sent the same day) gives the prospect something concrete to reply to, forward, or reference later. Over time, you can test these pairings head-to-head—especially by role and segment—and keep the combinations that reliably produce callbacks and replies.
To keep your cadence from feeling spammy, every touch should add something new: a different proof point, a sharper question, or a more specific insight tied to the prospect’s role. Keep most emails under 100–150 words, space touches roughly every 2–3 business days during the active phase, and make sure calls are concentrated early when you’re most memorable. The goal is to be consistently relevant, not consistently present.
Email opens the door, but a well-timed call turns recognition into a real conversation—and real conversations book meetings.
Best Practices: Use Email to Warm the Call, and Calls to Humanize the Email
The highest-performing teams train SDRs to connect the dots for prospects. On a call, reference the subject line or the core idea from your prior email so the prospect can instantly place you; in email, reference the call attempt and why you reached out by phone. That “one-thread” approach reduces resistance because it feels like a single ongoing conversation, not two disconnected channels fighting for attention.
Calls should be used to qualify, not to pitch a full solution. Aim for a quick discovery: confirm whether the problem exists, whether it matters now, and who owns it—then use email to deliver tailored proof like a one-pager or a short case study aligned to what you just learned. When a prospect says, “Just email me,” treat it as a directional signal; ask what they want (overview, relevant case study, pricing range), send it within an hour, and continue the cadence at a slightly lighter call rhythm.
The fastest way to increase meeting quality is the “recap email” habit. After any live conversation—whether you booked a meeting or not—send a short summary that captures their goal, what you shared, and the proposed next step. It’s simple, but it creates clarity, reduces ghosting, and gives you an easy reason to follow up later without sounding like you’re repeating yourself.
Common Mistakes That Kill Response Rates (and How to Fix Them)
One of the most common mistakes we see is calling an email-only sequence a “cadence.” With average cold email reply rates around 5.8%, relying on inbox placement alone puts your pipeline at the mercy of filters and mass deletion. The fix is straightforward: rebuild the sequence as a true multichannel plan where calls are not an afterthought but a scheduled amplifier, especially for your highest-value accounts.
Another mistake is blasting the same message to huge, unsegmented lists. Generic outreach tanks replies, increases spam complaints, and wastes call time on companies that were never a fit; that’s true whether you’re running cold calling services internally or through an outsourced sales team. The solution is to tighten your ICP, invest in verified data and list building services (including direct dials where possible), and tailor your first touches by segment—industry, role, and trigger—so your outreach sounds like it was meant for them.
Finally, many teams give up too early or split email and calling across uncoordinated groups. Quitting after one or two touches ignores the reality that follow-up is where outcomes happen, and separating teams breaks message continuity so prospects get conflicting “why you” stories. Assign one owner (or pod) responsibility for the entire sequence, commit to the 8–12 touch baseline, and standardize voicemail + same-day email pairings so execution is consistent across reps.
Measurement and Optimization: Track Performance at the Cadence Level
If you only measure email open or reply rates, you’ll miss what actually matters: meetings and qualified opportunities generated per completed sequence. A multichannel cadence can “win” even when email replies look average, because calls create connects that turn into meetings—and those meetings are the outcome that funds your outbound program. This is where a strong sales development agency or outbound sales agency approach becomes a competitive advantage: the process is measurable, repeatable, and improvable.
A simple reporting view should show activity by channel and outcomes by cadence, broken down by persona, segment, and rep. You want to see where the leverage is: which call step drives connects, which email step drives replies, and which combination produces booked meetings most reliably. When multichannel is working, you should also see lift versus your email-only baseline—research commonly reports a 25–30% response improvement when email, phone, and social are coordinated.
Use the table below as a practical starting point for what to track and how to interpret it, then iterate one variable at a time—step order, call times, or proof points—so you’re learning instead of guessing.
| Metric to Track | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Email reply rate (by step and by cadence) | Whether messaging, targeting, and deliverability are strong enough to earn responses; in 2025 benchmarks, 5.8% is average, and sustained under ~5% usually signals a fix is needed. |
| Dials, connects, and disposition rates | Whether your b2b cold calling services motion is reaching the right people and whether your opener is earning conversation versus immediate rejection. |
| Meetings booked per 100 accounts (by cadence) | The clearest health metric for combined outreach; it captures the compounding effect of calls + email instead of rewarding isolated touches. |
| Meeting-to-opportunity conversion (by segment) | Whether your calls are qualifying correctly and whether your emails are delivering the right proof after calls. |
Next Steps: Build, Pilot, and Scale a Multichannel Outbound Motion
Start with a pilot you can measure: choose one primary ICP, build a combined 17–21 day sequence, and run it with consistent execution for a few weeks before making big changes. Train reps to treat each call and email as connected steps, and coach toward short, outcome-driven calls that qualify quickly rather than long pitches that drag. If you’re hiring internally, make sure you’re not just trying to hire SDRs—you’re building a system they can succeed in.
Scaling requires alignment between marketing and sales development. Marketing should arm the team with a consistent narrative, proof points, and usable assets, while the SDR function owns day-to-day cadence execution and iteration. Review results monthly by segment and persona, then update the playbook so your best-performing patterns become the default instead of tribal knowledge.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to build and run this in-house, sales outsourcing can be a smart way to move faster—especially when you need list building, cold email agency support, and a trained cold calling team under one roof. At SalesHive, we operate as a b2b sales agency and sdr agency focused on coordinated calling and email, so teams can compare cost-per-meeting and speed-to-pipeline against their internal motion without committing to a long rebuild. Whether you run it internally or through a cold calling agency, the play is the same: one conversation across two channels, measured by meetings booked, and improved every cycle.
Sources
- SalesHandy – Cold Email Statistics 2025
- Belkins – Cold Email Response Rates 2023–2024
- Belkins – B2B Cold Email Statistics
- Revli – Cold Calling Statistics 2025
- SalesHive – Email Cadence Benchmarks (citing Salesloft/Forbes)
- Growleads – Optimizing B2B Sales Outreach Cadence
- SuperAGI – Multi-Channel Sales Cadence Guide 2025
📊 Key Statistics
Expert Insights
Treat Email and Phone as One Conversation, Not Two Channels
Your cold email and your cold call should feel like two sides of the same conversation. Reference your last email in your opener, and reference your last call in your follow-up email. This continuity dramatically increases recognition, lowers resistance, and makes you sound like a real person trying to help-not just another random interruption.
Front-Load Activity in the First 10 Days
Buyers forget you quickly. Put more touches-email plus phone-in the first 7-10 days of your cadence while you're still top of mind. After that, taper into lighter check-ins and nurture touches so you stay persistent without crossing into pest territory.
Use Phone Time to Qualify, Not Pitch
Your cold call is not a full demo-it's a live, high-bandwidth discovery tool. Use calls to qualify pain, timeline, and authority, then use email to deliver proof (case studies, one-pagers) tailored to what you just learned. That pairing dramatically improves your meeting quality and close rates.
Measure at the Cadence Level, Not Just the Email Level
If you only look at email open or reply rates, you'll miss what actually matters: meetings and opportunities created per completed cadence. Track performance across the full sequence by persona and segment, then iterate on step order, messaging, and channel mix instead of obsessing over a single subject line.
Standardize Voicemail + Email Combos
Don't leave voicemails in isolation. Build a library of voicemail scripts that always pair with a specific follow-up email template sent the same day. Over time you can test these pairings head-to-head and double down on the ones that consistently generate callbacks and replies.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Running email-only sequences and calling it a 'cadence'.
With inbox competition rising and reply rates slipping, relying on email alone leaves you at the mercy of spam filters and mass deletion, choking your pipeline.
Instead: Design true multichannel cadences that deliberately mix email, cold calls, and (where relevant) social touches, and compare performance against your current email-only baseline.
Blasting the same message to huge, unsegmented lists.
Generic, untargeted outreach tanks reply rates, gets you flagged as spam, and wastes call time on accounts that were never a fit in the first place.
Instead: Invest in tight ICP definition and list building, then tailor messaging by segment (industry, role, trigger event) so every call and email sounds like it was meant for that prospect.
Giving up after one or two touches.
Most prospects are busy, not hostile; stopping early means you're quitting right before the majority of replies and meetings are typically generated.
Instead: Commit to at least 8-12 touches over 3-4 weeks for each prospect, mixing emails and calls, and coach SDRs that 'no response' after two touches is not a real signal yet.
Separating phone and email into different, uncoordinated teams.
When one group runs emails and another group runs calls with different messaging and timing, prospects get confused, and you lose the compounding effect of channel reinforcement.
Instead: Give one owner (or pod) responsibility for the entire cadence, from first email to last call, with a single playbook and shared targets for meetings created.
Not tracking outcomes at the touchpoint level.
If you don't know which specific steps-day 2 call, day 5 email, day 10 voicemail-actually drive meetings, you'll keep guessing about what works and what doesn't.
Instead: Use your CRM or engagement platform to log every email and call step with dispositions, then regularly review which touches and sequences produce replies and meetings by segment.
Action Items
Audit your current outreach to see how 'multichannel' it really is.
Pull the last 60 days of outbound activity and categorize touches by channel. If more than 80% of activity is email, you've got a single-channel problem; set a target mix and rebuild your cadences accordingly.
Build a 15-touch combined email + phone cadence for your primary ICP.
Design a 17-21 day sequence that includes at least 7-8 emails and 5-7 calls, front-loaded in the first 10 days, and align all messaging around one clear problem and offer.
Standardize call scripts that reference specific emails (and vice versa).
For each major cadence step, write a corresponding call opener and voicemail that references the email subject or big idea you sent, then train SDRs to use these pairs consistently.
Tighten your lists and apply basic personalization at scale.
Work with ops or a partner like SalesHive to build verified ICP-specific lists with direct dials, then use light but real personalization (role, recent trigger, or company-specific hook) in your first two emails.
Install a simple reporting view for cadence performance.
In your CRM or sales engagement tool, create a dashboard showing meetings booked, reply rate, and connect rate by cadence, segment, and SDR so you can double down on the highest-performing patterns.
Pilot outsourced SDR support for one segment or region.
If your internal team is bandwidth-constrained, test an outsourced SDR pod (e.g., SalesHive) on a clearly defined ICP to run multichannel outreach and compare their cost-per-meeting and speed-to-pipeline against your in-house motion.
Partner with SalesHive
On the phone side, SalesHive’s SDRs run high-volume, high-quality cold calling programs using a proprietary dialer that tracks every dial, connect, and disposition. On the email side, campaigns are powered by eMod, SalesHive’s AI personalization engine that uses public prospect and company data to turn templates into highly customized cold emails that actually get replies. Under the hood, SalesHive’s strategists handle the heavy lifting: defining ICPs, building and validating lists with direct dials, designing 8-12+ step multichannel cadences, and iterating based on performance data.
Because SalesHive operates on flexible month-to-month terms with no annual contracts, you can plug in a fully managed SDR pod-cold calling, email outreach, appointment setting, and list building included-without the cost and risk of building an in-house team. For B2B organizations that know they need tighter, more effective combined calling and email outreach but don’t have the internal capacity to build it, SalesHive offers a proven, scalable path to more qualified meetings and pipeline.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Is cold calling still worth it when email is the preferred B2B channel?
Yes-as long as you treat calling as part of a coordinated cadence, not a random dial fest. While roughly three-quarters of B2B buyers prefer email as an initial contact, data also shows that a large majority have agreed to a meeting after a series of well-executed cold calls. Email gets you recognition and context; phone gives you bandwidth to qualify and build trust quickly. The combination is what moves real pipeline, especially on higher-value deals.
How many touches should a combined cold calling and email cadence have?
Most modern benchmarks land in the 8-12 touch range over about 17-21 days, but many top outbound teams are pushing closer to 15 touches when you include social. The key is balance: front-load more activity in the first 7-10 days, mix email and phone, and then taper into lighter touches and a break-up step. What matters more than the exact number is that your touches are coordinated, value-adding, and aimed at booking a clear next step.
What's the right ratio of calls to emails in B2B outbound?
A common pattern for mid-market B2B is roughly one call for every 1-2 emails, with calls concentrated around your highest-intent signals (opens, clicks, or form fills). For example, in a 15-step cadence you might run 8-9 emails and 6-7 calls, plus a couple of social touches. Early-stage teams with smaller lists may lean more heavily on calls, while volume-heavy motions may rely more on email with strategic calling on key accounts.
How should SDRs handle prospects who say 'Just email me' on a cold call?
Treat that as soft interest, not a brush-off or a win. Confirm what specifically they'd like to see in that email-case study, quick overview, pricing range-then send a tight follow-up within an hour that references the call. From there, continue them through your cadence, using both email and a lighter call schedule, until you either book a meeting or get a clear 'no'.
How do I keep multichannel outreach from feeling spammy to prospects?
Relevance and spacing are everything. Keep each touch under 100-150 words, lead with the prospect's world (pain, trigger, role), and space emails and calls 2-3 business days apart unless they engage. Make sure every message adds something new-a different angle, proof point, or question-instead of repeating the same ask. When a prospect clearly isn't interested, respect that and exit them from the sequence or move to a long-term nurture track.
What metrics should I track to judge if my combined calling and email strategy is working?
At the top of the funnel, monitor email open rate, reply rate, and call connect rate. More importantly, track meetings booked per 100 accounts or per completed cadence, plus conversion from meeting to qualified opportunity by channel mix. Over time, compare multichannel cadences to email-only and call-only tests; if your combined strategy isn't clearly beating single-channel in meetings and pipeline created, something in the cadence design or targeting needs attention.
When does it make sense to outsource cold calling and email outreach?
Outsourcing is worth considering when you need to scale quickly, your AEs are starved for meetings, or you don't have the bandwidth to hire, train, and manage SDRs. A specialized partner can bring tested multichannel playbooks, trained callers, list-building capacity, and platform tooling you'd otherwise have to assemble yourself. Many B2B teams start by outsourcing one ICP, territory, or product line, then scale up once they see reliable meeting volume and ROI.
How should marketing and sales collaborate on multichannel cadences?
Marketing should own the core narrative, proof points, visual assets, and enablement content, while sales development owns the day-to-day cadence design and execution. Get both groups in the same room to define ICPs, key problems, and offers, then build email templates and call scripts off that shared foundation. Review performance together monthly and iterate messaging by segment instead of each side guessing in isolation.
