Cold email is dead. What works in 2026 for Belgian B2B?

1.5%. That is the median reply rate of B2B cold email, measured by Woodpecker across 56,614 campaigns (2025). Every new benchmark comes in lower than the one before it. The graph points one way only.

If you are reading this, you probably know it already. Your outbound sequence sends 200 mails a week and you get three replies, if you are lucky. Two of them say "remove me". The third is a prospect who once spoke to your colleague.

The question is no longer whether cold email works. The question is what you do with the time you free up by sending less of it.

What the numbers say, and what they do not

Cold email is not entirely dead. But it still works for one type of company only: businesses that can run volume. 50 000 contacts a month, an infrastructure team for deliverability, their own warming domains. If that is not you, you are running a race you are guaranteed to lose.

The numbers themselves:

• Median B2B cold email reply rate: 1.5% (Woodpecker 2025)
• Top 10% of campaigns: 8-12% (Belkins benchmarks)
• Best in class (advanced personalisation, tight ICP): 15-25% (Belkins benchmarks)
• Gifting-augmented outbound: 18-26% (Sendoso, US data)

Two things stand out. One: the top still reaches reply rates an ordinary B2B team never will, because the top works in a fundamentally different way (see below). Two: gifting-augmented sequences reach comparable numbers on a fraction of the volume.

Why B2B in Belgium is harder

Three Belgian realities the American data does not see:

1. The market is small. 50 000 contacts sounds like a lot until you try to scrape them in a country of fewer than 12 million people. For an ICP of CRO or Head of Sales at SaaS companies with 50-500 employees in Belgium you end up with a list of roughly 600 names. Your entire addressable market fits in one spreadsheet. Mass cold email burns that market down in six months.

2. The NL/FR split. A Flemish CEO does not open an English mail starting with "Hey {{first_name}}". A Walloon CIO does not read a Dutch subject line. Your effective market halves itself.

3. The buyer is wary. Belgian B2B buyers are on average less receptive to American-style outreach. No "Quick question" subject lines. No "circling back" follow-ups. No 7-step sequence. It simply does not land.

The combination means that the cold email model which works in San Francisco flops in Antwerp.

What does work: three alternatives, compared honestly

Alternative 1, referrals

The oldest and the best. A warm intro almost always gets an answer, and more often than not it becomes a meeting. The problem is that you cannot scale it. You have 12 referrals a quarter, not 120. For early-stage B2B in Belgium this is still the best channel, but it is an addition, not a full outbound strategy.

Alternative 2, account-based outreach with a physical touch (cake, gift, direct mail)

This is what made Sendoso and Reachdesk big in the US, and what ColdCake does for Belgium. Reply rate: 18-26% according to Sendoso data, depending on the segment; the same data puts conversion from reply to meeting at 30-40%.

It works for three reasons:

• You delete a mail in two seconds. A cake on your desk cannot be ignored, colleagues see it, they ask about it, and the recipient has to react.
• Reception accepts the delivery. Your gatekeeper becomes your amplifier.
• A cake opens a conversation and carries something in it. "I saw you just closed your Series B, congratulations, here is a cake" reads as sincere. The same line by mail reads as a bot.

ColdCake puts one more layer on top: your design, your logo and a QR code sit in edible ink on the cake itself. Whoever scans it sees the cake come to life in AR with your video, and then lands on a personal page: who the cake is from, your message if you wrote one, the details, and your own button if you added a link. No separate card goes with it, so there is nothing that can get lost. The cake itself is the opener.

The QR code in that layer opens AR, short for augmented reality: your phone lays an image over what its camera sees of the real world. In practice it goes like this. Your prospect scans the QR code on the cake with their phone’s regular camera. A page opens in the browser, they allow camera access and point the phone at the cake. Then the cake comes to life on their screen, with your video: one you upload yourself, or a short video ColdCake makes of your design. Your message is not printed on the cake: the recipient reads it after the scan, on the same page. No app, no account, and it works on iPhone and Android.

For a Belgian sales team, what counts is what you get out of it. After delivery you get a photo of the cake by email, and ColdCake records the scan. Ask us and we will tell you whether your cake was scanned. What the scan looks like for your prospect is in what they see on their screen.

Cost per touchpoint: €160 to €460 for the cake, delivery in Flanders and Brussels included. Next to cold email (€0.02 per mail) that looks absurd. But if your goal is meetings and not open rates, the sum is simple: 100 mails at 1.5% reply (Woodpecker) = 1.5 replies, and if a quarter of those become a meeting you strand at 0.4 meetings. 5 cakes at 18 to 26% reply (Sendoso) = 0.9 to 1.3 replies, and at 30 to 40% conversion that is 0.3 to 0.5 meetings. Per euro gifting is not better yet, but per hour of your own time it is, and the meetings you do get are warmer.

The Belgian tax picture is worth a look as well, though it usually lands differently from what sellers claim. Business gifts are 50% deductible, and the VAT is not deductible once the gift itself costs €50 excl. VAT or more. The exception that reaches 100% is narrow: article 53, 8° of the Belgian income tax code asks for advertising items that conspicuously and lastingly carry the name of the giving company, and the administration adds a small value and a very wide distribution on top (source). A cake carries your name and your design conspicuously, but it gets eaten and it is not cheap, so plan for the 50% route. This is not tax advice, put your own situation to your accountant. We worked the full sum out here.

Alternative 3, LinkedIn paid (sponsored InMail)

Works for some niches, mostly senior leadership and enterprise sales. Reply rates sit clearly above ordinary cold email and well below gifting, at €0.80 to €2 per InMail sent. It asks for tight ICP targeting and good copy, otherwise you are simply sending expensive cold email.

The comparison, in one table

The practical order for a Belgian B2B team in 2026

1. Maximise referrals. One hour a week asking existing customers for a referral brings in more pipeline than five hours of cold email. Almost nobody does it.
2. Keep cold email for tier 3. Long list, low ICP fit, high volume. Expect 1.5% reply (Woodpecker) and plan accordingly.
3. Invest in gifting for tier 1 (the top 20 dream accounts). 15 to 20 cakes a quarter. One by one that costs €160 to €460 each; an Eerste Oven campaign (5 rectangular cakes a month for €825) costs €100 less than the same cakes ordered separately. On the Sendoso numbers you count on 3 to 5 replies and 1 to 2 meetings a quarter, and those meetings are warm.
4. LinkedIn paid for tier 2. Mid-quality list of roughly 200 accounts. Sponsored InMail, not ordinary connection request spam.

Nothing revolutionary. But most Belgian sales teams still lean almost entirely on cold email today, with some LinkedIn next to it and referrals as an accident instead of a system, and are surprised that their pipeline is falling.

Why this matters for ColdCake

We make the third alternative practical. You pick a cake, your design goes onto the cake in edible ink, and we deliver to your prospect’s office in Flanders and Brussels. Two flavours, three sizes, two shapes, and a partner bakery in Belgium bakes everything fresh. Your cake can be on your prospect’s desk in 48 hours. The QR code with the AR layer is on there as standard, with your own button if you add a link. No Sendoso annual contract, no platform licence. One cake, one delivery, one conversation that would otherwise never have happened.

Our plans start at €160 for a single cake (M round, running up to €460 for an XL rectangle). An Eerste Oven campaign (5 rectangular cakes a month) sits at €825 a month, €100 less than the same cakes ordered separately, prices incl 6% VAT and delivery included. Anyone thinking bigger will find Volle Bak and Hele Bakkerij on the same page. Target: ±40% reply to a cake. We are open, and we measure from the very first cake.

Cold email is not dead. But it is dead for the large majority of Belgian B2B companies that do not have the volume to live off 1.5%. For the rest there is a better option. And it fits on a desk.

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