Cold Outreach Channels: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why Context Matters

Where’s the best place to connect with new target operators?

In the last two years at First Bite, we’ve helped manufacturers connect with 100,000+ foodservice decision-makers across multiple channels, so we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.

Let’s start with the basics. There are several channels where you can connect with new target operators:

• Email
• Social media/DMs
• Phone calls
• In-person visits
• Conferences/trade shows (exhibiting or attending)

The right approach for your team will depend on dozens of factors, including your team’s capacity, your tech stack, your target operator, and your growth phase.

Cold email

The success of your cold email efforts really depends on your ability to personalize. A “spray and pray” approach, where you send a form email to everyone under the sun, typically generates response rates of less than 1%.

Targeted messaging can drive that number above 8%. The key is to find the right decision-maker and send them a concise, tailored message that speaks directly to their business needs.

Overall, we believe email deserves a spot in every sales team’s outreach strategy. It’s relatively low cost and allows you to reach target operators at scale. 

Cold social media outreach/DMs

Yes, you can slide into someone’s DMs in a professional context!

Because each social media platform has its own features and norms, we’ll look at Instagram and LinkedIn separately. But the one universal truth about successful cold outreach on social media is that it starts with developing your brand’s presence on the platform. A big following and active page lends you instant credibility.

Instagram

On Instagram, manufacturers can connect directly with someone from the operators’ HQ via DM. 

There are some ground rules for Instagram outreach, and ignoring them can get your account suspended.We don’t recommend using third-party platforms to automate your DM sends. Spammy behavior — like pinging an operator more than twice without a response, or sending more than 20 messages/day — can get you flagged.

LinkedIn

Unlike Instagram, where outreach comes from the branded page, salespeople reach out from their personal pages on LinkedIn.

The gamble with LinkedIn is that it's the most ignored channel — people who are happily employed at an operator might not check their LinkedIn regularly, if at all. Decision-makers at smaller chains tend to spend less time on LinkedIn, versus larger chains with corporate HQ teams. 

While you can pay for features to make LinkedIn outreach a little more scalable — LinkedIn Premium and its InMail feature — we find that it’s possible to achieve strong results without a paid subscription. (In fact, we find InMail is often less successful than a regular old DM.)

Cold phone calls

Who doesn’t screen their calls these days? The low likelihood of timing your call right to get someone on the phone is one hurdle with this outreach method.

Many restaurants are inundated with cold calls — from credit card processes, POS companies, SEO pros, and more. Leaving yet another voicemail is unlikely to get someone’s attention.

While we don’t believe phone calling is dead, we think this channel is better for reaching leads with whom you’ve already had initial contact elsewhere.

Cold in-person visits

This method of outreach is expensive and far from guaranteed. Your sales team is out of the office and pounding the pavement. And as they hit different operators on their route, there’s a high likelihood the decision-maker will be busy or otherwise unavailable.

We think this is a better warm outreach method — once you’ve had initial contact with a high-value opportunity, it might be worth it to book the plane ticket and grab some actual face time. But for cold interactions, less time-intensive methods are best.

Conferences and trade shows

Trade shows and conferences connect you with hundreds of operators over the course of a few days. But the risk with these live events is in the quality, not quantity, of connection.

There’s often a low density of decision-makers and high competition, with hundreds of other manufacturers treading the conference floors with the same aim as you. 

Plus, there’s the matter of expense: exhibiting can be cost-prohibitive for smaller brands. If you’re just starting out, buying a few tickets to attend is your best bet.

Ultimately, we find that large, in-person events are better for building brand awareness and reconnecting with existing prospects, rather than establishing new leads.

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Ultimately, your best cold outreach channels are the ones you can do with the least headache, lowest cost, and greatest response rate.

We believe that email outreach delivers on all three fronts. As long as you have a strategy for identifying the right target operators (and decision-makers at each), and crafting a concise, compelling first message.

And that’s precisely what we’ll be discussing in our next newsletter: The four cold outreach messages that catch an operator’s eye — regardless of where and how you send it.