Cold Email ROI Calculator for B2B SaaS
See what a cold email program could return: meetings, cost per meeting, CAC and payback, with an optional comparison against an in-house SDR. The defaults are placeholders, so replace them with your own numbers.
Inputs
Optional: compare with an in-house SDR
Results
Versus an in-house SDR
Cost per meeting is only part of the picture. Meeting quality and show rates differ between programs, so compare opportunities as well.
How to use this tool
- 1
Enter how many cold emails you send per month and your monthly cost to run the program.
- 2
Enter your reply rate, the share of replies that are positive, and the share of positive replies that book a meeting.
- 3
Enter your meeting-to-opportunity and opportunity-to-closed-won rates, plus your contract value and gross margin.
- 4
Optionally enter an in-house SDR's monthly cost and meetings booked to compare cost per meeting.
Use cases
Checking whether outbound pays back
See your CAC and payback period from a cold email program before you commit more budget.
Outsourcing vs hiring an SDR
Compare cost per meeting from your program with a fully loaded in-house SDR.
Finding the weakest step
Change one rate at a time to see whether replies, positive replies or meetings limit your results.
Building a business case
Show your team what a given volume and reply rate could mean in meetings, pipeline and customers.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate cold email ROI?+
Multiply emails sent by your reply, positive reply and meeting rates to get meetings, then apply your later funnel rates to get customers. Compare the gross profit those customers bring with the cost of running the program.
What is cost per meeting?+
It is your total monthly program cost divided by the meetings it books. It is the number most outbound teams use to compare channels and to compare an agency with an in-house SDR.
What is a good cold email reply rate?+
It varies a lot by list quality, offer and targeting. The default here is a placeholder, so use your own recent campaign data instead of a benchmark.
How do I compare this with an in-house SDR?+
Enter the SDR's fully loaded monthly cost, including salary, benefits, tools and management time, and the meetings they book. The calculator shows both costs per meeting side by side.
Why is payback shown in months?+
Payback is how many months of a customer's gross profit it takes to earn back what you spent winning them. Shorter payback means less cash tied up in outbound.
What does this calculator leave out?+
It does not model deliverability, list-building costs outside your monthly cost, churn timing or expansion revenue. Treat it as a planning estimate, not a forecast.