Take a look online and you’ll see several posts discussing which is the best tactic for boosting sales– cold calling or cold emailing.
But pitting them against each other might be short-sighted. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses. The best option depends on your particular audience and your business objectives. So, what about merging cold calls and cold emails together?
Combining the power of cold calls and cold emails maximizes the potential of your sales teams’ efforts to gain new leads, boost conversions, and increase your bottom line.
Quite simply, why use one when you can use both?
In this guide, we’ll take a look at cold calls vs cold emails: how to up your sales game by merging both.
Cold calls vs cold emails: the debate
In the age of the internet, many believe that cold calling is dead and has been replaced by newer techniques like cold emailing. On the other hand, however, others would argue that cold emailing is spammy and ineffective because it’s not as instant as calling and hardly anyone opens them.
With such differing opinions, how can we say which is best?
Well, it doesn’t need to be a choice between the two. Both cold calls and cold emails have a role to play in your outbound marketing strategies to increase sales and leads. Cold calling is when a salesperson (the caller) contacts someone (the prospect) in the hope of initiating a sale. Before the internet, cold calling was the most direct and reliable method for sales teams trying to acquire leads and make conversions.
The term ‘cold calling’ is used because the recipient of the call hasn’t had prior contact with the business. It is the job of the sales team to ‘warm’ the prospect up with a friendly chat and value proposition. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of cold calling
Cold calling Pros:
1. Cold calls have an instant response
No one wants to wait days for a response only for the prospect to say they’re not interested or nothing at all. Cold calls give you an instant response and sometimes one call is enough to close a sale.
2. Speaking to another human is more personal
Cold calls let your business connect with prospects on a more personal level. With a good sales team in place, you’ll be able to build relationships with prospects and convert them into customers. This is where a good VoIP system will be beneficial to you. It lets you call someone from computer workstations as well as a range of other devices, while keeping the experience cohesive for the person you’re contacting. With the right VoIP solution on tap, you will be better able to make that all-important human connection during cold calls, without the administrative hassle. (What does VoIP do?)
3. You can tailor the call towards the prospect’s needs
Cold calls let you tailor the conversation around your prospect’s needs to keep them engaged and satisfied. For example, you may be offering a VoIP service, but the customer might need some extra information regarding a non fixed VoIP number. (What is a VoIP number?) With a phone call, you can naturally tailor the call towards providing added support and guidance.
4. Cold calls can be made from anywhere
Not in the office? Gone hybrid or fully remote? With cold calling, it doesn’t matter where you are. All you need is a phone and a list of numbers.
Cold calling Cons:
1. Prospects can become annoyed
A common cause of annoying customers with cold calls happens when companies don’t do their research first. For example, a task management software company randomly phoning a stay-at-home mom who has no need for it. It’s crucial to ensure your cold calls are reaching prospects with an interest in your products or services.
2. Sales teams can lose motivation
For sales teams, this can make it hard to stay motivated and make the next call (let alone the next 100) when they are being repeatedly hung up on and having to repeat the same opening phrase about business continuity management systems. This is bad news, especially when your sales team needs to maintain positivity and enthusiasm for each new call.
3. Cold calls only target one customer at a time
One cold call can only land you one new customer. This limited reach of cold calls makes them quite narrow in scope and therefore inefficient. Emails, on the other hand, can target multiple people at once (more on this later).
4. Obtaining phone numbers can be tricky
Your contact list for cold calling doesn’t just appear from nowhere. And with new privacy laws protecting people’s personal data, it’s even more difficult to obtain numbers.
We don’t recommend random number generators or obtaining numbers via third parties. These techniques can be unethical and are unlikely to lead to good results.
5. Cold calling can make your business appear spammy/unprofessional
Irrelevant or poorly timed cold calls can leave a negative impression of your business. With word-of-mouth potentially affecting your brand’s reputation, it’s important to avoid this.
To ensure your outreach remains professional and well-received, tools like a spam detector can help identify and prevent potential pitfalls before they harm your brand image
Cold emailing Pros:
1. Cold emails are cheap, efficient, and easy to scale up
You can send the same email to thousands of prospects at once with no additional expense on time or cost. And with dedicated email marketing management software, you can personalize each email to increase its potential.
2. Cold emails are visually appealing
Emails provide a better canvas to work with. A well-written email that is also well-designed and appealing on the eye becomes a more valuable proposition to prospects right away. The more attractive something is, the less likely prospects are to instantly reject it (as with phone calls).
Interactive emails are a great way to boost engagement.
3. Cold emails can contain lots of information
It’s hard to cram everything in during a rushed phone call. But emails go beyond by letting you add paragraphs of text, images, videos, and links to FAQ pages. Prospects also get longer to absorb the information and make a final decision without feeling pressured or being interrupted in the middle of the day with an unsolicited phone call.
4. Cold emails can be automated and monitored
Today’s emailing tools let you automate emails and track important metrics to determine their effectiveness. For example, you can automatically schedule emails, integrate them into CRMs and other software tools to automate personalization, use proven sales templates, and more.
Importantly, you can also track key metrics like the number of open rates, click-through rates, and other user behaviors that you deem valuable to the campaign.
Today’s emailing tools let you automate emails and track important metrics to determine their effectiveness. For example, you can automatically schedule emails, integrate them into CRMs and other software tools to automate personalization, use proven sales templates, and more.
Importantly, you can also track key metrics like the number of open rates, click-through rates, and other user behaviors that you deem valuable to the campaign. To ensure utmost security and protect sensitive data while utilizing these tools, it is advisable to employ the services of a most secure VPN, which encrypts your internet connection and safeguards your communications from potential threats.
Cold emailing: Cons
1. Cold emails don’t give you an immediate response
Communicating via email is not instantaneous. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee the recipient will reply at all (that’s if your email even made it past their spam filter!)
2. Written emails might not be a strength of your sales team
Cold calling is all about having great interpersonal skills. Emails are all about having great written skills. This might suit copywriters more than it suits sales teams.
3. Cold emails have higher competition
Emails are fast to make and easy to send. While this is good news, it also means your prospect’s inboxes will already be saturated with sales emails. This makes it more difficult for yours to stand out above the rest.
Cold Calls vs Cold Emails: How to up Your Sales Game by Merging Both
As we have seen, both cold calls and cold emails have their own strengths and weaknesses, but combining the two could be the best way to up your sales game.
For example, using an email as the initial point of contact is less intrusive and can heighten the chances of sparking a customer relationship with content that’s better targeted and more exciting. From here, you could follow up the initial contact with a cold call to get a more one-to-one dialogue flowing with the prospect.
You should use this initial contact to gain more information about prospects too, for example:
- Their name.
- Their contact information.
- Their interests.
- Their location.
Armed with this data, cold calls and emails become warmer and prospects are more likely to engage with your offerings. Innovative tools like Microsoft direct routing are great for bringing your phone book into other communication channels.
By combining cold calls and emails, you’ll also unlock a new level of data analysis to track metrics like open-rates, click-through-rates, call to email conversions, and more.
And if you’re using a calling ID, prospects may be more likely to engage with your call if they recognize your brand’s name from an email.
When following up a cold email with a call, you should always start by asking the prospect if they received your email and have any initial questions to begin with. This’ll give them a chance to outline their thoughts without you appearing too salesy from the off.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to cold calls and cold emails, it doesn’t need to be an either/or approach. What they don’t tell you about a good sales strategy is that both emails and calls have real value in your outbound sales strategy for contacting new leads and striking up relationships. For example, an initial email campaign could cast a wide net before your follow-up cold calls narrow down the focus on those who have shown an interest.
By creating a strategy that merges cold calls and cold emails, you’ll be better equipped to turn prospects into loyal customers and reach out to them across multiple communication channels more organically. Hopefully, this guide has given you some ideas on how to up your sales game by merging the two.
