July 30, 2026
Bredin's latest survey of 500 U.S. SMB principals found that, across all SMBs, email is the preferred first outreach tactic from a company looking to sell to them. Nearly half of SMB decision-makers say they are very likely to pay attention to an email, compared with 37% for text messages and 34% for phone calls. No guarantee that they will respond, of course, but the data indicates that cold emails are still a viable first-reach tactic.
Outreach preferences change when the results are broken out by business size. Most notably, larger SMBs are more likely to pay attention to an initial phone call than an email.
% very likely to pay attention

These findings are from our subscription research service SMB MarketPulse. Join our August 6 webcast for highlights from the latest report.
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