The 7 Best Cold Outreach Tools for Improving Lead Flow

The B2B landscape today is a hyper-competitive place. If you want your sales pipeline to be successful, you have to focus on consistency with generating and converting cold leads. Having the right cold outreach tool can turn your empty calendar into a fully booked schedule. 

How do you know which tool will actually help you, and which ones are prone to overpromising and underdelivering? We’re here to help you figure that out. The best cold outreach tools should go beyond just sending out emails for you. The best ones will help you warm up your domain, personalize your messaging, and monitor deliverability for you in real-time. 

Some of these tools can even help you with prospecting, making it easier to go from discovering leads to booking a call in a streamlined workflow. In this article, we’ll be breaking down the seven best cold outreach tools for improving lead flow. 

7 Best Cold Email Outreach Tools to Improve Lead Flow

If your version of cold outreach is still all about sending out generic messages and just hoping something sticks, it’s probably time for an upgrade. To succeed, you need a strategic and data-backed system that will help you prioritize personalization, sender reputation, and lead targeting. 

Here are seven tools we believe can help you hone in on the perfect option for you. 

1. Instantly

Instantly is the ultimate cold outreach solution if you’re an agency, consultant, or B2B team and you’re serious about scaling. Not only does Instantly offer an automation engine, but it also keeps you from needing a bunch of third-party tools by giving you a range of comprehensive, built-in features. 

Here are a few of the components that help Instantly stand out: 

• Supersearch: A built-in B2B database that gives you access to millions of verified contacts that you can filter by job title, industry, technologies used, company size, funding status, and more.
• Deliverability network: An automated warm-up that mimics human-like engagement, helping to boost your sender reputation. 
• Unlimited sending accounts: You can run campaigns across hundreds of inboxes with no extra charge per seat. 
• AI-powered inbox rotation: Improves your open rates by distributing emails in a way that avoids spam filter triggers. 
• Real-time reporting: Allows you to view the rates for opens, replies, and bounced messages as they happen. 

Instantly has an end-to-end workflow that helps you from the initial process of finding leads all the way until the campaign is over. Having such an efficient tool at your disposal means faster and more successful launches. 

2. Apollo

If you’re looking for more of a hybrid of a lead database and an outreach platform, you can check out Apollo. This is great for sales teams because it gives you the ability to blend email, phone, and CRM tools. 

Apollo has an impressive database of verified contacts that includes information like job titles, technographics, and buying intent signals. This may not have the most robust array of tools, but warm-up features combined with a native email sequencing tool still make it worth a spot on our list.  

3. Reply.io

Reply is a multichannel outreach tool that does more than just cold email. With Reply, you can also automate LinkedIn outreach, phone calls, SMS messages, and various other tasks. If you are an SDR team or you just feel like you need a tool with strong personalization, this one could be a keeper. 

This cold email outreach tool may not be as intuitive as Instantly or have as comprehensive a lead database, but it does offer LinkedIn automation and AI-powered email generation. 

4. Snov.io 

For an affordable option, Snov.io is a combination of lead generation, email verification, and cold outreach. It can be used to scrape emails from LinkedIn, verify prospect addresses, and send campaigns that you can then report and track. 

Competitive pricing is where Snov.io really shines, though. The deliverability tools may require more manual effort than Instantly, and you do have to watch out for somewhat lagging email list verification, but if you are working on a budget or just getting started, it’s a great place to begin. 

5. Close 

If you’d like a tool that’s more of a full CRM with built-in outreach automation, you can check out Close. While it does offer cold outreach, that’s only one aspect of a more expansive high-touch sales process. With Close, you get features like integrated email cadences that give you or your sales team a unified view of interactions. 

You do also get the basics that you’d expect to see in a good cold outreach tool, though. There’s a power dialer for cold call campaigns, email templates complete with auto-follow-ups, and smart filters for segmentation. Just watch out if you have a high volume of outgoing calls or emails, because you may need to enlist additional tools for domain warm-up and inbox rotation. 

6. Klenty

Klenty is a sales engagement tool that was designed for use by outbound teams. With Klenty, you can automate email sequences, calls, and LinkedIn touchpoints while you sync with popular CRMs. 

You’ll also get fairly strong tools for email tracking and cadence reports, along with some nice hyper-personalization options for your messaging. This is a solid option for a mid-size team that will be working across channels, though it doesn’t have a native lead database, so make sure you have a plan in place for sourcing your contact list! 

7. Yesware

Yesware is one of the more lightweight tools on this list, though it does integrate directly into Gmail and Outlook. This is useful for small teams because it gives you the ability to send, track, and automate your outreach in one inbox, even if you’re just starting out. 

The downside? There is no lead database and no deliverability tools. Consider this a useful companion or starting point, but not a full cold outreach platform. 

Final Thoughts

The best tools you can find today are multi-functional. They’ll not only help you send out emails for your campaign, but they’ll also help you source prospects, warm up inboxes, and scale your business. Each tool on this list can help you in one way or another, depending on your specific needs, but Instantly is the only one that covers every base. 

With built-in lead discovery through Supersearch, unlimited inbox support, and competitive warm-up automation, Instantly removes the common roadblocks that can kill your campaign deliverability. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo operator or part of a growing agency. Instantly gives you everything you need to generate leads, book meetings, and close deals.