Cold Calling vs. Text Marketing: Which Gets More Leads?

Question

Hey everyone,

I’ve been wondering—on average, which strategy brings more leads daily?

Cold Calling or SMS Marketing?

Would love to hear your experiences and what’s been working better for you lately. Let’s compare notes!

Cornelius Garland · Answer

Texting brings in way more leads than cold calling. It's not even close right now. I'm in several virtual markets and primarily wholesaling. We're getting 5 solid leads for every 500 texts sent, which is a 1% lead rate. If you compare this to cold calling then you'll be lucky to get 1 lead a day per cold caller.

Cold calling was my primary marketing channel for years and I managed over 40 cold callers at one point. To get the same daily production from cold calling as I do with texting, then I would need 3 cold callers at a minimum. At $5 per your for each cold caller, your monthly expenses would be $2,400 just for cold callers. This doesn't include data and dialers. If each cold caller generated 1.5 leads per day, which is what my callers are averaging, then you can expect 30 leads per cold caller over a 20 business day month - totalling 90 leads for the month.

Based on my metrics, it's taking us roughly 50 - 100 leads to get a property under contract with cold calling. The market matters a lot. If it's an affluent market then the number will be closer to 100. However, regardless of the market, we are experiencing long contract timelines across the board. It's taking 60 - 90 days for these cold call leads to convert to contracts. I can send off a text blast this week of 500 texts per day and have a contract by the end of next week. My contract timeline is 9 days - 45 days with texting.

The people saying that it's illegal have not thoroughly read through the regulations. Ask yourself this: If texting was illegal, would Launch Control have thousands of users? What about Lead Sherpa and REI Reply (the one I use)?

These companies have done their due diligence and understand the laws. The important part is that you become 10DLC / A2P compliant and you follow best practices. It isn't the wild west like it was before 2023. However, it can still be done legally and ethically.

Texting is a blue ocean right now because investors have trouble getting their accounts registered with the organization that approves 10DLC account requests. Additionally, they are blasting thousands of sellers at once, which is causing their accounts to receive 24-hour bans.

Navigating through these issues was worth it for me because I can go in any market and target homeowners who haven't been marketed to at all by other investors.

Below are KPIs for a campaign I did in Savannah recently for texting. We averaged 6 leads per day and sent 337 messages. The daily costs for the texts sent and received were below $10. For cold calling, it would take me 1 week of dialing and paying a cold caller $200 for this same production, and that's being very optimistic about my cold caller's performance.

Carson Nordmann · Answer

Depends way more on list quality and follow-up cadence than the channel itself. Same list run through both will pull at roughly the same rate over 90 days. The channel debate gets a lot of airtime but the list source and dial/text discipline is what actually moves the number.

Stephen Morales · Answer

Before the TCPA restrictions and TCR became a thing in 2023 we were having very high delivery rates and could send out 1200+ messages a day with no issues. Now anyone that does cold SMS blasting is technically doing it illegally and are subject to fines of $500 per text sent and 1500 per willful violation if they do get reported. The ones that continue to do it accept the risk of being fined. I know someone that has been fined 3x in the same week for doing cold text, but he is still doing it anyways...Cold calling is still tried and true and more cost effective if you do it yourself. You still need volume but I would say conversion rate is much higher cold calling vs SMS outreach. Cold calling you still need a good dialer system that provides quality numbers you can use for calling. Readymode and Kixie have some of the highest connection rates we've seen recently with kixie being at 30% connection rate some days. Also, if you look around close enough, you can find some pretty amazing data providers to get high quality lead lists...Hope this helps!

Stephanie Walker · Answer

I don't do any wholesaling or cold calling personally but I've seen several people be successful at it in different areas of the industry.

Zeeshan S. · Answer

Other then Cold Calling and SMS what will be your suggestion that i follow and get more leads then Cold calling and SMS?Thanks for Assistance

Adam Tafel · Answer

Cold calling works well if you do it consistently. I had an agent on my team years ago who cold called landlords mon-fri from 9-11am and never missed a day. He ended up selling 22 units his first year, mostly multifamily (calling landlords). I still get the residual benefits of his cold calling today, 5 years later with some of the relationships he built. Most people will be annoyed and hang up, but some of the older landlords didn’t mind talking to a young kid trying to build his business, and those are the guys who have the equity to sell at a decent price point.

I’ve only tried the SMS strategy once and didn’t get a single lead, but there are probably some bigger outfits you could ask who have had success. I will never ever respond to an SMS solicitation but I have personally given businesses to plenty of cold callers and door knockers over the years.

Dominic Mazzarella · Answer

I think both work, but they’re solving the wrong problem if you’re relying on them for “more leads.”

Cold calling and SMS are just distribution. If the underlying data is stale or already picked over, you’re basically competing with everyone else on the same list. That’s where most people get stuck grinding volume with mediocre results.

What’s moved the needle more for me is focusing on when the lead shows up, not how I contact them. Stuff like code enforcement activity, unresolved issues, things that surface before a property ever hits a typical list. Way less competition and way better conversations.

Once the data is right, cold calling works great. Without that, it’s just a numbers game.

Dominic Mazzarella · Answer

I’d stick with cold calling/SMS, just change what you’re calling. If you’re hitting the same recycled lists everyone else is, you’ll get the same results. When you’re reaching out to owners dealing with something real (violations, liens, weird situations, etc.), the conversations are completely different. Way less “not interested” and more actual problem solving.

Marc Oliver · Answer

Ian would love to talk to you about your help with Cold calling.

Cold Calling vs. Text Marketing: Which Gets More Leads?

Most Popular Reply