Marketers and salespeople often face this dilemma. What’s the best way to prospect via email or cold calling? They also dislike both of these strategies for good reasons. Nobody wants to be intruded upon and reach out to people they don’t know, but to grow your business, you have to clench your teeth.
Both are the most appropriate answers to this question!
A combination of cold calling and cold emailing can be used to break the ice with prospects and get them on your radar.
Which Is Better, Cold Calling or Cold Emailing a Prospect?
Each strategy has its pros and cons, and the key is identifying when it is more appropriate to pick up the phone and when it is appropriate to hit the send button.
Email, in general, is preferred by some because it gives people more time to think things through and to organize their thoughts. Another advantage is that there are no gatekeepers who stand in the way of getting to a decision-maker.
Cold calling, however, is still a common practice despite its poor success rates. Cold calling has an average conversion rate of less than 2% according to surveys. Another problem is that salespeople often get cold feet when they have to make cold calls.
But what’s the catch?
When should you call?
There’s one thing we all should agree on: unsubscribing from emails is a lot more effective than sending them. You likely have a ton of promotional and sales emails in your inbox that you have yet to open.
Your email may be ignored or sent to the trash if you send it. Even though a killer subject line greatly reduces this possibility, once you send your email, you never know when you will hear back. We also need to remember that an average business person sends and receives a lot of emails daily. Radicati Group, Inc. reports an average of almost 130 a day.
Calling allows you to be more in control of your conversation, so you can adjust it depending on who you’re talking to. Your aces are all at your disposal and you can use all of them. The telephone can be very effective when it comes to scheduling meetings, obtaining referrals, or establishing a deeper connection with prospects.
Whenever you expect that there will be many questions, a phone call is the better choice. If you wish to discuss something complex, real-time communication is more efficient and effective than email. As an alternative to taking mental notes, grab a pen and write down the essential points and conclusions, if you’re worried you’ll forget something important.
When Should You email?
One of the most effective marketing methods is email marketing, which generates $38 in ROI for every $1 spent.
In a survey by McKinsey, it was reported that emails have a three-to-one order value advantage over social media. A personalized message can be sent to several thousand people at the same time through email.
Before you cross your fingers and wait for conversions to pour in, however, you should ensure that your contact information is relevant, accurate, valid, and updated. As a result, all your efforts are in vain, as your carefully crafted emails won’t be received.
Cold emailing is more complicated than other types of communication because it is sent to a person without any prior contact, but if you employ the proper tactics, your efforts can pay off very well. Your email marketing should focus on identifying your target audience, segmenting it, and personalizing it. For this strategy to be successful, you must use marketing automation software.
Getting a meeting with a decision-maker can be extremely difficult, and before you can even reach them, you need to get past the gatekeeper. That’s one of the biggest issues with cold calling. Cold email offers you the opportunity to carefully assemble it and test its effectiveness, unlike cold calling where you must be quick-thinking, engaging your prospect, and capturing their attention.
Last but not least, there is something that you should always emphasize, since it is, focuses on the success in email marketing – if you only send one or two emails, you will not achieve much. Even if your recipients intend to reply, that will create only a small ripple, and there’s a great probability that they will forget.
When making a decision, what are the factors you should consider?
Here are some guidelines to follow before you decide which of these sales strategies to use:
- Understand your target audience, and determine how you can communicate with them most effectively.
- You can call them if you’re just starting your business and your goal is to schedule appointments with 50-100 people. However, contacting your prospects via email is more time and cost-effective as your business grows.
- You should send an email to the top management of a company if you want to get in touch with them. It’s much easier than calling them.
- Determine whether the initial outreach is a weak or a strong ask based on your objective. Examples of weak objectives are asking for referrals and feedback. A strong ask involves the prospect’s commitment. It is best to call them if you want to schedule a meeting with them or convince them to start a trial, since that way you can handle and overcome any objections immediately. Alternatively, if your ask is weak, then a cold email will suffice.
- This is where timing plays an important role. As the day and week progress, your prospects are more likely to answer their phone. After 2 p.m. is a good time to call prospects, especially on Thursdays and Fridays. It is also an effective method to leave a voicemail since people typically check their phone inbox when they are wrapping up their day. You can use a simple trick to make sure your message shows up in your prospects’ inboxes when you send out emails.
- People check their email 15 to 10 minutes before meetings since they usually begin on the hour. If you schedule your email outreach 10 minutes before or after the hour, your prospects will be more likely to notice it before they enter or leave a meeting.
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