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The Sales Evangelist

Cold Call vs. Cold Email: Which One Actually Works in 2025? | Matt Tharp - 1913

31 min episode · 2 min read
·
Matt Tharp

Episode

31 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Fundraising & VC, Leadership, Sales & Revenue

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • List segmentation performance: Email lists above 100 people show performance drops to nearly half effectiveness. Keep prospect lists under 100 recipients to maintain message relevance and enable proper personalization for each specific audience segment.
  • Decision maker preferences: Survey of 200 business decision makers reveals 61% globally prefer cold email over cold calling, with US market showing even stronger preference at 71% for email versus under 10% for phone outreach across all markets.
  • Email structure formula: Establish credibility within two to three seconds using recognizable domain, clear subject line addressing one specific problem, then deliver 30 to 40 word message explaining how you solve that problem with single easy call to action.
  • Domain strategy for deliverability: Use subdomain variations like gethunter.io instead of primary domain hunter.io for cold outreach to protect main domain reputation. Ensure subdomain redirects to primary site or hosts content so recipients can verify sender legitimacy instantly.

What It Covers

Matt Tharp, CEO of Hunter.io, explains why cold email outperforms cold calling in 2025, backed by data showing 61% of decision makers prefer email outreach over phone calls at less than 10%.

Key Questions Answered

  • List segmentation performance: Email lists above 100 people show performance drops to nearly half effectiveness. Keep prospect lists under 100 recipients to maintain message relevance and enable proper personalization for each specific audience segment.
  • Decision maker preferences: Survey of 200 business decision makers reveals 61% globally prefer cold email over cold calling, with US market showing even stronger preference at 71% for email versus under 10% for phone outreach across all markets.
  • Email structure formula: Establish credibility within two to three seconds using recognizable domain, clear subject line addressing one specific problem, then deliver 30 to 40 word message explaining how you solve that problem with single easy call to action.
  • Domain strategy for deliverability: Use subdomain variations like gethunter.io instead of primary domain hunter.io for cold outreach to protect main domain reputation. Ensure subdomain redirects to primary site or hosts content so recipients can verify sender legitimacy instantly.

Notable Moment

Tharp describes receiving a sub-40 word cold email asking if he was tired of doing forecasts in Google Sheets that immediately resonated, leading to instant demo request because it identified his exact pain point without unnecessary fluff.

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Episode Transcript

This episode is brought to you in part by the following TSC sponsors. It takes a lot to grow your business. A lot of audience attraction, a lot of lead scoring, and all the channel managing you can manage. Plus, a lot of long days, late nights, and weekends, a lot of wishing there was an easier way. But with Breeze, HubSpot new collection of AI tool, it's easier than ever for marketers to attract audiences, increase leads and score customers fast, which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit hubspot.com/marketers to learn more. This episode is brought to you in part by Blue Mango Studios. Imagine using a podcast as a lead generation source, not only attracting your ideal customer, but entertaining them and getting qualified leads. To find out more, go to bluemangostudios.com. If you're struggling to close deals, you need to try LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Get a sixty day free trial all on the house. Go to linkedin.com/tse. Again, linkedin.com for a sixty day free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Should I email the prospect or should I call the prospect? Like, that is the question. Which one is gonna be the most effective for the prospect you're reaching out to right now? Or in general, which one is best for sales cold outreach? We'll answer that one in this email. I mean, in this conversation. Check it out. Hey. Hey. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast. I'm your host, Donald c Kelly. The sales evangelist, and I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And on this episode, I'm calling, maybe. I'm talking to Matt Thorpe. He is the CEO of hunter.io. And if you don't know what Hunter is, I highly recommend you check it out. We're gonna talk a little bit more about him in this episode, but it's a great way to be able to find email addresses. And it's one of the things I recommend in our training programs to a lot of our clients as they're starting off doing outreach. Go ahead and check out Hunter. You can use a free version. You can get email addresses to get verified in a simple and easy to use. But hunter.io and there's at the end of this episode, I tell a story about how my wife used it and was able to land two clients for our podcast. If this is your first time listening to our show, this show is designed to do two things. One, teach you how you can build better pipeline with amazing episodes and guests like this one. And two, how to accelerate deals through our pipeline faster. As we dive into this episode in particular, you're gonna hear the idea of what works best, phone call or email. And how you go about utilizing that avenue so you can have better cold outreach. You're gonna love this …

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  • by HubSpot

    💼 SPONSORS [Sponsor: HubSpot Breeze]
  • Hunter.ioBy guest

    by Hunter.io

    Matt Tharp, CEO of Hunter.io, explains why cold email outperforms cold calling in 2025
  • by LinkedIn

    💼 SPONSORS [Sponsor: LinkedIn Sales Navigator]

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