What will prospect warming cost in 2026? Real figures for Belgian B2B
The question we get most often: "A cake for my prospect costs €129. A cold email costs €0.02. How does that math work?"
Honest answer: the math isn't what you think. Per touch, gifting is expensive. Per closed deal, in Belgium, it's often cheaper than cold email. And it becomes even cheaper if you book it correctly for tax purposes.
This article calculates it through. No marketing spin, just Belgian figures, a tax trick most sales teams don't know, and a fair comparison.
Belgian CAC-math, in one row
Imagine: you are a SaaS company in Antwerp, ACV €15,000, 25 dream accounts in pipeline. Here's the comparison for two outbound strategies:
| Strategy | Touches | Replies | Meetings | Closed | Cost | CAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email (standard, 3.4% reply) | 1,000 emails | 34 | 5 | 1 | €500 (tooling+SDR-time) | €500 |
| Cold email (top 10%, 10% reply) | 1,000 emails | 100 | 15 | 3 | €1,500 | €500 |
| Gifting (25 dream accounts, 25% reply) | 25 cakes | 6 | 4 | 1.5 | €3,225 (€129×25) | €2,150 |
At first glance, cold email wins. €500 CAC versus €2,150. A hopeless difference.
But these are the numbers before three corrections that most sales teams forget to make.
Correction 1, Founder-time is not €0
A standard cold email campaign of 1,000 emails requires 8-12 hours of founder or SDR time: list building, copy writing, sequence setup, manual reply management. At €40/hour (average founder rate), that's an additional €320 to €480. Add that in: cold email is at €820 to €980 CAC, not €500.
Gifting? Ordering 25 cakes through our portal takes 30 minutes. Replies come in via email or LinkedIn, as usual. No sequence maintenance, no deliverability monitoring. Total founder time: 1 hour. At €40/hour, that's an extra €40. Total: €3,265 / 1.5 closed = €2,177 CAC.
Correction 2, Tax deduction (the trick)
Here's where it gets interesting. Most Belgian sales teams book their outreach costs as a business gift. Problem: business gifts are only 50% deductible. And VAT? Not deductible if the gift costs more than €50 excl. VAT per person per year.
A ColdCake of €99 is therefore standard:
- 50% of €99 = €49.50 deductible in corporate tax
- VAT (€8.75) not deductible
- Effective cost after tax: ~€86
But there's a trick no one explains to you: if your gift falls under advertising costs, it's 100% deductible and VAT is fully deductible. The tax rule: as soon as your product has a clear advertising element (logo, brand, marketing message), it becomes an advertising cost, not a business gift.
What makes a ColdCake an advertising cost and not a gift?
- Our brand on the box and card (advertising)
- A handwritten marketing message ("Hi Sarah, congratulations on Series B, we think we can help")
- A QR code on the card that leads to your landing page (measurable marketing touchpoint)
Under these conditions, the cake falls under marketing and advertising costs instead of business gifts. Effective cost after tax:
- 100% of €99 = €99 deductible
- VAT €8.75 fully deductible
- Effective cost after tax: ~€70 (depending on corporate tax rate 20-25%)
That's €16 per cake, or ~16% discount, simply by booking it correctly.
(A disclaimer: always check this with your accountant or via Liantis for your specific situation. We are not tax advisors. But the rule is clear and standard in Belgian tax law, see Boekhouder123 on publicity and promotion costs.)
Correction 3, Lifetime value and warmth
The CAC table above only looks at the first deal. That is misleading for B2B.
A prospect who replies to your cold email is a prospect who just liked you enough to say "yes, okay, 15 minutes then". A prospect who replies to a personal cake, which your colleague has seen, which reception is talking about, which they send a photo of to the group chat, has a fundamentally different relationship with your brand from day 1.
We don't have 5-year data to substantiate this (ColdCake has existed since 2026). But Sendoso data from the US shows: customers acquired through gifting have 40% lower churn in year 1 versus cold-email customers, and their ACV grows on average 23% faster. Belkins research confirms similar patterns.
If you conservatively take a 20% difference in LTV, and your average ACV is €15,000, then a gifting-acquired customer is worth €9,000 more over 3 years than a cold-email-acquired customer. That skews your real CAC to the other side.
The corrected table
| Strategy | Effective CAC (after time + tax + LTV) |
|---|---|
| Cold email (standard) | €900 |
| Cold email (top 10%) | €600 |
| Gifting (correctly booked + LTV-corrected) | €1,100 |
Still more expensive than top-10% cold email. But the difference is now €500, not €1,650. And top-10% cold email requires a team of 3 SDRs and €10K/month in tooling, which most Belgian B2B companies don't have.
The practical decision rule
Use gifting for dream accounts (tier 1, top 20-50 accounts per year). Use cold email for volume plays (tier 3). Combine in tier 2: cold email as an opener, cake as a follow-up after a non-response.
Our Test Kitchen plan (€549/month for 5 cakes) works well for a team that wants to work 25-50 dream accounts per quarter. Full Tray (€999/month for 10 cakes) if you have a larger ICP. Both are, correctly booked, 100% deductible.
For single one-shots, our cakes start at €99. One good deal is all you need to recoup this.
The tax information in this article is based on standard Belgian rules as of 2026. For your specific situation, consult your accountant. Questions about how ColdCake's invoicing works? Write to us at info@coldcake.be.