Cold email vs cold cake: a fair comparison with numbers

We make cakes for B2B prospecting. So yes, this article is self-serving. But we're going to compare honestly, with numbers, not anecdotes. By the end, you'll know exactly when cold email is better, when a cake is better, and when you should combine the two.

One thing upfront: this is not a "cold email is dead" article. It's a "how to choose between the two" article. For some companies, cold email remains completely the right choice.

The basic figures (2026 industry data)

What cold email yields in 2026, averaged across the B2B market:

• Open rate: 35-45% (down from 50%+ in 2022)
• Reply rate (all replies): 3.4% (down from 5.1% in 2024)
• Positive reply rate: ~1.7% (half of replies are "remove me" or "not the right person")
• Meeting booking rate: ~0.5% of emails sent
• Cost per send: €0.02 including tooling

What gifting-augmented outbound yields, according to Sendoso, Reachdesk, and Belkins data:

• Reply rate: 18-26% depending on segment
• Positive reply rate: 65% of replies are positive (Sendoso Timeline-hook data)
• Meeting booking rate: ~6-10% of physical touchpoints
• Cost per send: €70 to €460 (in BE with ColdCake, after tax optimization)

Two orders of magnitude differences stand out. Reply rate is 5-8× higher with gifting. But cost per send is 3,500-23,000× higher. That difference is large enough that the math is fundamentally different, depending on your goal.

For every €1,000 budget, what do you get?

Suppose you have a €1,000 outbound budget for one month. What is the output of each strategy?

Strategy	Touches	Replies	Positive replies	Meetings
Cold email (average)	50,000 emails	1,700	850	250
Cold email (top 10%)	5,000 emails	500	250	75
Gifting (ColdCake €99 SKU)	10 cakes	2.5	1.6	1
Gifting (ColdCake €459 SKU)	2 cakes	0.5	0.3	0.2

Cold email absolutely wins every column if your goal is pure volume. 250 meetings vs 1, no comparison.

But this is misleading for two reasons.

Reason 1, Not all meetings are created equal

The 250 cold-email meetings come from a pool of 50,000 prospects. Statistically perfectly random, usually Tier 3 fit, mid-market sweet spot, average ICP match. Conversion from meeting to deal is ~5% in B2B. Result: 12.5 deals.

The 1 cake-meeting comes from a list of 10 dream accounts you specifically selected. Tier 1 fit. Conversion from meeting to deal: in our experience (and in Sendoso data) ~30-40%. Result: 0.3-0.4 deals.

At first glance, cold email wins: 12.5 vs 0.4. But:

• Cold email deal: average ACV €12,000. Total revenue: €150,000.
• Cake deal (Tier 1 dream account): average ACV €45,000 (3.75× higher because better-fit). Total revenue: €13,500-€18,000.

Cold email still wins, but the difference is now 8× instead of 30×. And that's before we look at operational costs.

Reason 2, Operational cost of 50,000 emails is high

Someone has to build and maintain the cold email machine. List-scraping (€200/mo Apollo or €500/mo for BE-specific data). Inbox warming (€100/mo per inbox, and you need 5 of them). Deliverability monitoring (€150/mo). SDR time for reply-triage (40 hours per month, at €40/hour = €1,600). Tooling subscriptions (€200/mo Lemlist or Instantly).

Total actual cost: €2,250/month additional, on top of the "€500 cold email budget". Plus 40 hours founder/SDR time.

Cake approach: 30 minutes ordering, no tools, no warming, no deliverability. Time cost: 1 hour per month.

The real comparison

If we include time-cost and take LTV-corrected deal values:

Strategy	Total cost (€)	Closed revenue (€)	ROI
Cold email (€1,000 budget, average)	€3,250	€150,000	46×
Cold email (top 10%)	€3,250	€90,000	27×
Gifting (€1,000 budget, €99 cakes)	€1,040	€18,000	17×
Gifting + LTV-correction	€1,040	€31,500	30×

Cold email remains the ROI champion if you can build the machine. But that's a big if.

When cold email is better

1. You have an ICP of >5,000 addressable accounts in Belgium (typically SMB SaaS, low-ACV).
2. You have a team of 2+ SDRs and a €3,000+ tooling budget per month.
3. Your product has an average ACV of <€10,000 (the math doesn't work with gifting).
4. Your market doesn't require a warm intro, accounts believe cold email if ICP-fit is clear.

When gifting is better

1. You have an ICP of <500 dream accounts (typically mid-market and enterprise).
2. Your average ACV is >€20,000.
3. You don't have an SDR team, you do outbound yourself or with 1 assistant.
4. Your product/service requires trust (consulting, custom dev, high-stake B2B services).
5. You are in a Belgian market with <5 real competitors where relationships matter.

The optimal combination

For most Belgian B2B companies with <50 employees, the answer is not "choose one". It is:

• Tier 1 (top 20 dream accounts, 5% of pipeline-time): ColdCake or similar gifting. €99 to €459 per touch. Expect 25% reply, 30% close-rate, €45k+ ACV.
• Tier 2 (next 200 accounts, 30% of pipeline-time): LinkedIn paid + warm-intro pursuit. Cold email as secondary touch.
• Tier 3 (long tail of 2,000+ accounts, 50% of pipeline-time): Cold email volume play. Expect 3.4% reply.
• Tier 0 (existing customer base, 15% of time): Referral asks + relationship cakes (€99 thank-you cakes to existing customers, Sendoso data shows 5× ROI on retention).

Nobody in Belgium is doing this stack today. There's an edge there.

What is a ColdCake in this stack?

We do Tier 1 and Tier 0. Not Tier 3.

For individual Tier 1 movements: a single cake from €99 (S round) to €459 (XL rect). For consistent Tier 1 cadence: Test Kitchen subscription (€549/month, 5 cakes).

For Tier 0 retention: a one-time "thank-you cake" to a customer who has just renewed. One of the highest-ROI things in B2B.

What we do not do: build outbound machines, scrape lists, set up sequences. There are other tools for that.

Conclusion

Cold email is not dead. Gifting is not a silver bullet. The right choice depends on ACV, team size, and the size of your addressable market.

The biggest mistake we see in Belgian B2B: choosing one strategy and hanging everything on it. Cold-email-only teams hit a wall at 10,000 emails per month. Gifting-only teams cannot scale beyond 30 deals per year. The combination wins.

Our role is to help with the cake layer. Here's how it works. For the rest of your stack, cold email tooling, LinkedIn, CRM, there are better solutions. The whole point is: don't try to hang everything on one channel.

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Questions about how ColdCake fits into your outbound stack? Send us an email at info@coldcake.be. Or view our plans if you just want to get started.