KEY SUMMARY
Cold email still works in B2B, but only when other channels give it a reason to exist. Most decision-makers still say they prefer to be approached by email, yet most cold emails get no reply. Run email underneath a webinar, a conference, a small hosted event and steady LinkedIn posting, so every email refers to something real and lands with someone who already knows your name. Protect your domain, write the first emails yourself, and score every contact on every touch. A small team can run this in 12 weeks for under $1,000 a month in tools.
Every few months someone announces that cold email is dead. Then you ask buyers how they'd like to be approached, and most of them still say email.
Email isn't dead. Email on its own is.
A webinar gets you a hundred people who've heard of you. A conference gives you a reason to write. A dinner puts twenty buyers in one room. LinkedIn means they recognise your name before any of it lands. Each of those is a reason to send an email. The brand gets built on the other channels. The reply happens in the inbox.
Buyers still want email. They ignore most of it
Both of these are true at once. In Hunter's 2025 State of Cold Email report, 61% of decision-makers said they prefer to be approached by cold email, against 29% for LinkedIn and 10% for a phone call. The same report found the average cold email gets a reply 4.1% of the time.
So the inbox is still where buyers want the conversation to start. They just don't answer strangers.
The reason is that nobody buys from one channel any more. In McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse survey of nearly 4,000 decision-makers, buyers used an average of ten channels while buying, up from five in 2016. An email from a company the buyer has never seen anywhere else is one touch out of ten, and it's the weakest one.
Every other channel is a reason to write
The fix isn't a better cold email. It's giving every email something real to point at.
A webinar. Nobody shows up for a company they've never heard of. They show up for the speakers. Invite two or three people your buyers already follow, and when they post about it, their audience becomes your warm list. Every registration, attendance and no-show is a reason for the next email.
A conference. It gives you the most natural cold email there is: "Will you be there?" Even the people who aren't going often reply. On one campaign, a vice president wrote back that they couldn't attend, then asked for reference customers. The conference was only the excuse to write.
A small hosted event. A dinner or happy hour for 20 to 25 buyers, near that conference. The invite is an email nobody minds getting, and the follow-up refers to a night they were part of.
LinkedIn. Three posts a week, running the whole time. It does nothing directly for email, and everything indirectly: by the time your message lands, the buyer has seen your name and your thinking.
None of these replace email. They make it worth opening.
Every channel gives the email something real to point at.
The 12 weeks in one picture
This is the sprint I run when a company is starting from close to zero. No agency, one or two people doing the work, and under $1,000 a month in tools, plus one event budget.
Weeks 1 to 2: set up sending domains and let them warm up. Build two lists: the people you sell to, and the people your buyers listen to. Read what your buyers read.
Weeks 2 to 3: your first five to seven LinkedIn posts. Connect with the people your buyers follow. Invite speakers for the webinar.
Weeks 4 to 6: the first real email send is the webinar invite. Run the webinar, then follow up with attendees and no-shows separately. Turn the recording into posts and blogs.
Weeks 7 to 10: email everyone relevant who's going to the conference. Attend it, and host your dinner there or at the next one.
Weeks 11 to 12: score every contact on every touch. Measure how far and how deep you've reached. Then start sprint two, which begins warmer than the first.
By day 90 you'll have run one webinar with outside speakers, attended one conference with meetings booked, hosted one room of 20 to 25 buyers, and published about 36 LinkedIn posts. Email runs underneath all of it.
Twelve weeks, one or two people, and email running underneath everything.
Protect the inbox first
The fastest way to kill outbound is to burn your domain in the first week.
Never send cold email from your main company domain. Buy a few lookalike domains, set up two or three inboxes on each, and let them warm up for two to three weeks before a single real email goes out. Building your lists takes about two weeks anyway, so by the time they're ready, your inboxes are too. A three-day-old domain sending at full volume is how teams lose their sender reputation, and it doesn't come back.
The lists need the same care. Your ideal customer isn't who you think should buy. It's who has bought: pull the job titles of the people who were actually involved in your past deals and renewals, and build from there. When in doubt, remove a contact. A smaller clean list beats a bigger doubtful one, because your domain's reputation is the real asset.
Write the first ones yourself
One rule for the whole sprint: don't use AI to write your first emails or your first posts. Write two or three versions yourself, in different styles, and see which ones get replies. Then teach AI to write like those. Skip this step and everything you send reads like everyone else's.
A few principles hold across every email that works:
Write like a colleague, not a vendor. The subject line should read like a one-liner from someone you know, not an announcement.
One idea, one number, one ask per email.
Ask for a reply, not a click. "Reply 'in' and I'll register you" beats a link in a first email.
Social proof goes in the PS, not the body.
Follow-ups get shorter, never longer.
None of this is clever. It's what makes an email feel like it came from a person who had a reason to write.
Score every touch
After 90 days, every contact has touched you in different ways. Some opened an email. Some registered for the webinar. Some sat at your dinner. Give each of those a score and keep it next to the contact. It compounds.
The exact points don't matter much. The order does: meeting someone in person counts more than a reply, and a reply counts more than an open.
Then look at two numbers:
Coverage: how many of your target accounts you've reached with at least one contact.
Depth: how far you've gone with the accounts that matter most. Watch the top fifth closely.
Run the sprint again with a new webinar topic, the next conference and the next city. Both numbers should go up, because sprint two starts with people who already know you.
In person beats replied. Replied beats opened.
Where to start
This week, buy your sending domains and start warming them up. While they warm, pull the job titles of everyone involved in your last ten deals; that's your real buyer. Then pick one webinar topic and invite two speakers your buyers already follow.
Most teams send more email when replies drop. The ones that get replies give people a reason to recognise the name before the email arrives.
The full sprint, including the stack and costs, list-building steps, every email template and follow-up, and the scoring sheet, is in The 90-Day GTM Sprint to Make B2B Outbound Work.
FAQs
Does cold email still work in B2B?
Yes, but rarely on its own. Most decision-makers still say email is how they prefer to be approached, yet the average cold email gets few replies. It works best when other channels, such as webinars, events and LinkedIn, give each email a real reason and make your name familiar first.
What is a multichannel outbound strategy?
It's running cold email alongside other touchpoints, so a buyer meets you in several places before and after the email. A simple version combines a webinar with outside speakers, a conference you attend, a small event you host and regular LinkedIn posts, with email connecting all of them.
Should you send cold email from your main domain?
No. Use separate lookalike domains with two or three inboxes each, and warm them up for two to three weeks before sending. If a sending domain's reputation is damaged, your main company email stays safe.
How long should you warm up a new email domain?
Plan for at least two to three weeks before sending real cold email. Building and cleaning your contact lists usually takes about as long, so the two can run in parallel.
Should AI write cold emails?
Not the first ones. Write a few versions yourself, see which get replies, then use AI to produce more in that style. Emails written by AI from scratch tend to sound like everyone else's.
How do you measure outbound beyond reply rate?
Score each contact on every touch across channels, weighting in-person meetings above replies and replies above opens. Then track coverage, meaning how many target accounts you've reached, and depth, meaning how engaged your most important accounts are.
AUTHOR
Builds and runs go-to-market motions for B2B companies rather than advising from the sidelines. First hire and zero-to-scale operator across HR, legal, and sales tech, with a track record of taking businesses from early customers to 200-plus in North America.
