Over the years there’s been a huge debate on the most efficient way to attract new clients to your business.

While both cold emailing and cold calling carries their positives, in the end, it all boils down to your business goals and the kind of people you’re trying to reach. 

The goal of outbound outreach is to make it as efficient and streamlined as possible – finding a system that enables you to scale your company. 

So, with that being said, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of cold emails and cold calls.

Cold Calling Pros

1) Reach New Customers & Build Relationships Straight Away

With cold emails, there’s no need to wait for a positive or negative response – this is probably the fastest way to find out whether your prospect is interested in what you’re selling or not.

Talking on the phone allows for you to make a more unique way of connecting with a prospect than online.

2) You Can Make it More Personal

Talking on the phone with your prospect allows you to easily change your tone to whoever it is you’re speaking to. 

Unlike online methods, you’re able to build a meaningful relationship right from the start by having more meaningful, one-to-one conversations.

3) Good For Training New Team Members

Cold calling is a great way to help new members of your team learn more about your company, and how you communicate with your potential customers.

It also helps them build their confidence, and can help them build a solid mindset by getting over the fear of rejection. 

Cold Calling Cons

1) Gatekeepers and Business Owners Find It Annoying and Intrusive

If you haven’t done proper research on your prospect, they will find your call quite annoying and maybe even a waste of time.

You may even catch your prospect at the wrong time which can result in them being permanently put off by your offer.

Long story short, people like to view stuff in their own time.

2) The Conversion Rate is Very low

You might have a list of hundreds of ideal prospects, but the reality is that conversion rates with cold calls are very low compared to many other methods of marketing.

The reason is that businesses receive hundreds of calls every day so they might not have time to hear what you have to say or just aren’t interested. Furthermore, it’s very difficult to catch any decision-maker at a time when he or she isn’t busy.

3) Time-Consuming and Hard To Scale

Unlike email, you can’t connect with multiple prospects at once unless you have a full sales team in place. So really the person you’re speaking to is the only person you can focus on.

Once you get to a point where you can hire a team to do cold calls for you – it’s hard to find really good salespeople, and if you do, they won’t come cheap. 

Cold Emailing Pros

1) Cheap, Efficient Way to Scale Outbound Marketing

Cold emails are a cheap and effective way to find new customers for your business.

The magic of cold email is that you’re able to send a message to a list of your ideal clients in less time than having to sit on one cold call.

2) You Can Make Them More Informative

With cold calls, you have to make sure you can get your information across as quickly as possible before your prospect loses interest.

One of the great things about cold email is that you’re able to send links and attachments which allows you to tell a better story about your brand and what value you’re able to bring.

3) Your Prospects Can View in Their Own Time

We’ve talked about people finding cold calls intrusive, and while cold emails can sometimes get a bad rep, they’re a lot less intrusive.

Your readers can view your content at any time they please, so when they’re too busy to respond to you, they’re able to come back, take a closer look and get back to you with a decision.

4) They Can Increase Brand Awareness

A lot of people seem to think that not responding to an email is a negative outcome. 

But in fact, a lot of decision-makers might not need what you’re selling at that very moment. With cold emails, your prospect can keep you in mind for the future, or better yet, forward your email to someone who might be interested in what you’re selling.

5) Can Be Easily Tracked and Measured

The beauty of cold emails is the amount of data you’re able to retrieve from campaigns – data that you can tweak to your future campaigns in order to increase performance.

And the time it takes to get this data back can be over the course of a few days or weeks, while cold calling is a much slower process.

In all marketing efforts, looking at your data is crucial. With cold emails, you can learn everything you need to know about optimizing your campaigns with just a few simple tests.

Cold Emailing Cons

1) You Don’t Get Instant Feedback

Unlike cold calls, you’re unable to get instant responses with email. Instead, you normally find that you’ll get responses after a couple of days or after sending more follow-up emails.

Some emails may be replied to immediately, while others can get buried in your prospect’s inbox.

2) Need Good Copywriting Skills

There’s no need to make the design of your email overly appealing, but what’s important is how you get across what you want to say.

Most cold emails are boring, bland, generic and they offer no value to their prospects. 

For you to be able to create high-performing cold emails you need to understand your reader and be able to craft a message that suits them.

3) A Lot of Competition

With cold emails being such a fast, easy method of marketing – it brings with it a good amount of competition for emails to actually be seen by prospects.

Anyone with an email account and internet connection can start sending cold emails which makes it harder to grab attention.

But if you’re able to effectively craft a message that’s relevant to your prospects, then you shouldn’t have to worry about competition.