Cold Calling, Cold Emailing — One, the Other or Both?

When you’re the one starting a conversation with a sales prospect, cold calls or cold emails are usually the way you get the ball rolling.

You may personally prefer one or the other but they’re both essential parts of the sales & marketing toolbox for anyone taking on the challenge of cold outreach.

Is one definitely more effective than the other? Should you always pick one or use both? Which one delivers a better return on time invested?

I’ve put together this comparison of the different elements involved in cold calling and cold emailing so you can decide if maybe one suits you better along with some tips to help get more out of your campaigns.

So is it going to be a keyboard or a phone? Typing or dialing? Both?

Let’s look at the options!

What is a cold email?

A cold email is an email sent to someone who has not previously heard from you.

You’re writing to them because, thanks to your research or a referral or some other method, you know that they’re dealing with an issue that can be solved by the product or service that you’re selling.

It’s a way to start a conversation and the point is to quickly address the issue being faced by the prospect and offer them a solution.

Cold emailing tips

Here’s a brief checklist of things you can do to get better results from your cold emails:

Define your ICP and stick to it

It doesn’t take long to create your Ideal Customer Profile (or buyer persona) and base outreach on it.

Know who your typical customer is and don’t waste time and resources sending your message to random people with zero chance of being interested. Many businesses fall into this trap and end up damaging their sales pipeline before it even gets going.

This is a great way to get labeled as a cold caller or worse — land in the spam folder. Don’t do it.

Personalization

You’ve probably heard about the importance of personalized cold emails a million times.

Let me make it a million and one.

Given the tools you have in modern cold emailing platforms, like mail merge and smart templates, there’s no reason you can’t easily craft highly personalized emails for every campaign. It’s not an option, it’s a sales technique.

Follow-ups

Again, cold emailing tools like Woodpecker make this easy too.

After sending your original email, you can set up automatic follow-ups based on open and response rates or simply after a certain number of days.

This helps keep you visible in the prospect’s inbox without having to manually chase many prospects. Don’t rely on one message to do all the work — many businesses don’t reply to the first email anyway.

Get inspired by email templates

Templates are a great way to kick off your campaigns without the blank screen struggle. They help you keep structure and flow consistent while making it easy to add a personal touch.

Woodpecker’s new template feature makes it easy to create, edit, save, and share emails across your sales team — but be careful. Templates are a starting point, not a shortcut to spam.

Copy-pasting the same message into every inbox is how you build a bad reputation and lose promising prospects.

Get your SPF and DKIM set up properly

These are the background tools that keep your emails trusted and visible. Without them, your emails are more likely to hit the spam folder instead of the potential client’s inbox.

If you’re part of a sales team trying to build a healthy sales funnel, skipping this step could cost you new leads before they ever see your name.

Learn more about the simple processes of setting them up here.

Show you’re human, not a robot

No, I’m not talking about CAPTCHA puzzles.

I mean writing like an actual person. A business owner or decision-maker on the other end wants to connect with someone real.

Would you rather get an automated blast or a thoughtful note that speaks to your world? There’s a big difference.

Do your research

This ties back to your target audience and buyer persona, but it’s also about relevance.

If your prospect got promoted last week, mention it. If their company just raised funding, bring it up.

These little cues signal that you’re not a cold caller with a script — you’re here with intent. That’s the flip side of automation: it only works if it doesn’t feel automated.

Always close with a clear CTA

The short answer here is: tell them what to do next.

You’re not writing just to say hi. You want more meetings, phone calls, or even a direct reply.

And no — most people won’t give you an immediate response unless you make it ridiculously easy. Drop a link, suggest a time, or ask for their phone number. Be direct. Don’t waste your own time or theirs.

Cold emailing mistakes to avoid

Now here’s a list of things that will prevent you from getting the best possible results from your cold email campaigns:

Now here’s a list of things that will prevent you from getting the best possible results from your cold email campaigns:

Using your main domain for cold email outreach

Short version: your main domain is too valuable to even risk getting banned from sending emails and it makes it easier to organize and manage replies that you know are coming in from certain outreach campaigns.

Long version: Read it here.

Using misleading subject lines

You might be proud of yourself for inventing the catchiest subject line ever but if it’s not related to the subject matter in the email, you will be labeled as a spammer.

Was it really worth improving your open rate by 2%? No, it wasn’t, because now you can’t send any emails at all.

No personalization.

Ok, what is this, one million and three? Do I even have to explain it again?

Using some variation of “the 30-minute call request”

“Hi, you don’t know me but I’m trying to sell something to you. You wanna talk for 30 minutes about it?”. How would you reply to that? That’s what we thought.

Make sure your request fits where you are in your relationship with the prospect.

Not sending follow-ups

Above we said that follow-ups were good because they keep the conversation going. So not sending follow-ups means not keeping the conversation going, which means nothing will come from your efforts.

Also remember that most prospects reply to a follow-up, not the initial email, so send follow-ups to increase your chances of getting that reply.

Talking about yourself and not focusing on the prospect

If 100% of the focus of your cold email pitch isn’t about the prospect and the problems that they are facing, then you’re doing it wrong.

The only role you play is as the person who can deliver the solution. Keep it that way.

When to send cold emails

This is a common question but in fact there is no one-size-fits-all answer for this. Everything depends on your address database, the nature of your market, even time zones. All you can do is use testing and your own data feedback to see when you get the best results.

That being said, there are some common sense points that will help you decide when to send your emails. Ask yourself how likely you are to open an email from someone you don’t know:

• First thing Monday morning, when there are likely much more important things waiting
• At some late hour — how serious are you as a business partner if you send emails at 10 pm?
• At the weekend

But remember those aren’t set in stone – the bulleted times might work with some audiences. So test it out and see what works best. When you’re sending any message to large numbers of recipients, no rule will apply to everything, all the time. Again, testing will reveal a lot about your audience, including when they like to open their emails.

What is a cold call?

This is a common question but in fact there is no one-size-fits-all answer for this.

Everything depends on your address database, the nature of your market, even time zones.

All you can do is use testing and your own data feedback to see when you get the best results.

That being said, there are some common sense points that will help you decide when to send your emails. Ask yourself how likely you are to open an email from someone you don’t know:

• First thing Monday morning, when there are likely much more important things waiting
• At some late hour — how serious are you as a business partner if you send emails at 10 pm?
• At the weekend

But remember those aren’t set in stone – the bulleted times might work with some audiences. So test it out and see what works best.

When you’re sending any message to large numbers of recipients, no rule will apply to everything, all the time. Again, testing will reveal a lot about your audience, including when they like to open their emails.

What is a cold call?

The same idea expressed above for cold emails, but done by VoIP phone system and live conversation.

Again, the prospect has not had previous contact with you but you’re calling because you have some information or have done some research about them.

Cold calling tips

If cold calling is going to be your path to developing prospects, here’s how you can make things easier while getting better results:

Prepare for any possible objections the prospect might have

This is an absolute must. You have to know your product well and know the questions and objections the prospect will have when you’re explaining why you think it’s a good fit.

Some will come from experience but you should be able to figure most out on your own.

Be sure to handle objections with respect, these are legitimate concerns from the prospect’s point of view so don’t dismiss them lightly. Use your knowledge and sales ability to address their worries.

Leave a voicemail

People are busy. Many don’t like to answer calls from numbers they don’t know.

Believe it or not, some people don’t carry their phones with them all the time. Weird, right?

The point is that you won’t always get through when you call and when this happens be sure to leave a voicemail every time.

It makes you look professional and shows you’re ready to talk. Be sure to mention that you will try again later at a better time.

Be persistent

If you don’t get through the first time, try again. If you get an objection, address it and explain why it shouldn’t be a concern.

You won’t always get a hard “no” or definite “yes” to mark success or failure — wouldn’t that be nice? — but you have to approach the task knowing that it requires some determination to keep going.

Don’t give a generic sales pitch

Just as we discussed personalized emails above (one million and four…) the same idea applies to cold calls. You might work with something like a script for the body of your pitch, but other parts, especially the beginning, should be spontaneous and genuine.

The ability to chat casually is essential here, don’t sound like you’re reciting anything.

Do your research

You’re not selling, you’re solving problems.

If you don’t know what problem you’re helping to solve, the conversation is not going to have a good ending for you.

Cold calling mistakes to avoid

Every sales process has a right way and a wrong way to do it — sales calls, personalized cold emails, even traditional cold calls.

Here are some tips if you want to explore the wrong way to do cold calling:

Waste time calling people not in your ICP

The whole point of building an Ideal Customer Profile is to focus your lead generation efforts on the right person — someone who actually matches what you’re offering.

Cold calling prospects who aren’t a fit is not just a waste of effort — it’s time consuming and kills your success rate.

Don’t listen to your prospect

Your job is to get the potential customer talking — about their needs, goals, problems, or what’s already working.

If you bulldoze ahead with a rigid pitch, you’ll miss the chance to build a stronger rapport and uncover actual buying signals.

If someone brings up price again and again, and you’re stuck explaining product features, then you’re not really having a sales conversation — you’re just talking at them.

Don’t be clear on the solution you can offer your prospect

So…what’s your point?

If your prospect doesn’t understand who you are and how you help within the first minute, then sales reps like you are wasting a good opening.

Be clear. Make it obvious why the conversation matters — that’s how you earn qualified leads and keep the sales funnel moving.

Try selling on the first call

The best sales reps know the goal isn’t to close on the first try.

The first call is about listening and finding out if there’s a fit. Don’t rush it. The win here is earning a second call, or getting permission to share personalized cold emails or a follow-up resource.

That’s how you lay the foundation for more sales.

Ask closed questions

“Do you have five minutes?” “No.” Great — call over.

That’s the risk of asking closed questions too early. You put the control in the prospect’s hands before you’ve built any context.

Instead, use open-ended questions to guide the discussion and learn whether they’re even a match. The key difference between a good cold call and a bad one is how well you keep the conversation moving.

When to make cold calls

Just as with cold emailing, there’s no one correct answer and your best results will be revealed over time as you gain experience.

Good tips for cold calling include:

• Don’t call after business hours. Just don’t.
• You probably want to avoid lunchtime hours as well.
• Don’t let it ring forever. People are in meetings, etc. and if no one answers by the fourth ring, they probably won’t answer by the fourteenth ring.
• When you get an answer, identify yourself first and confirm that the person on the other end is the person you’re trying to reach

So which one should you choose for cold outreach – cold calls or cold emails?

The answer to this question is hard because much depends on your business’s nature and other things beyond your control.

However, it also depends on your skill set, your own preferences and which one feels more natural to you.

Everyone knows that you will be more successful at something you feel that you’re good at.

If you only want to send cold emails then Woodpecker Cold Email will help you do this.

But we recommend trying both channels – cold emails and cold calls.

The good news is that you can do both of these things in Woodpecker by using manual tasks in Woodpecker Cold Email or Woodpecker Sales Assistant.

Using a multichannel mix puts you in the best position to interact at whatever touchpoints help to move the conversation forward.

Cold emails and cold calls complement each other and allow you to expand your reach and connect with more people. This isn’t about some rivalry between phones and email, it’s about running successful cold outreach campaigns!

Start your sales strategy and improve response rate now

So there you have it, the ups and downs of both cold emails and cold calls.

Maybe one suits you better than the other or maybe you’re a pro at both. Or maybe you’re new to both and don’t know where to start.

Whatever path forward is best for you, just remember to stick to the basics, do them well and slowly expand your activities with the little extras that help to get results.