When we've run cold B2B outbound across the US, the UK, Germany, France and Mexico, the prospects who replied in a friendly way and agreed to demo and pilot meetings were in France and Germany. The campaigns were in English. We didn't need French or German versions to get those meetings.
That's our experience across several campaigns, not a law, and we don't have a percentage to put on it. But it's a good reason not to default to the US and UK because they share your language, or to hold off on Europe until the copy is translated.
Where it came up
On a mentoring call, a founder outside Europe was looking for the first 10 to 15 business customers for a productivity tool aimed at companies of roughly 10 to 100 employees. The prospects knew the problem but not the product category, so we agreed paid ads weren't the answer yet. Direct conversations were.
Two pieces of advice from that call. First, the persona: CTOs and heads of engineering at mid-size companies may not answer cold outreach, while product managers and product owners carry the delivery deadlines a productivity tool speaks to. Second, the geography: start with product managers in Germany and France, in English, because that's where our own campaigns had booked the most willing meetings.
Build the list by country and language
Sales Navigator's lead filters cover both halves of this:
- Geography. Filter by region, country, state, city or postal code to pull leads located in France or Germany.
- Profile language. Filter by the language selected on the lead's LinkedIn profile. Pairing it with Geography gives you French and German leads whose profiles are set in English, a sensible starting list if your copy is in English.
- Function, seniority and headcount. Narrow to product roles at the company sizes you sell to. If several roles matter, write a message for each, as in one ICP, three messages.
Profile language tells you what the lead chose for their profile, not every language they read. Treat it as a filter that raises the odds, and let the replies tell you the rest.
Send in their working hours, not yours
A founder in another time zone who schedules to their own clock lands in European inboxes at night. In lemlist, turn on Timezone based schedule in the campaign's Schedules & launch settings: each lead gets emails within your chosen days and hours in their own timezone, and leads without a timezone use the fallback you set. Lead timezones can come from a CRM sync, a CSV import or a manual edit.
lemlist's Pause during holidays option skips bank holidays, but the calendars it offers are US, France and UK. For German leads, check the public holidays and pause or schedule around them yourself.
Then compare countries on meetings booked, not reply counts. Ask for the conversation in the first email, as in the cold email CTA that gets replies.
The takeaways
- In our cold campaigns, France and Germany booked the most willing demo and pilot meetings, in English.
- Don't default to English-speaking markets, and don't wait on translation to test Europe.
- Use Sales Navigator's Geography and Profile language filters together to build the list.
- Send in each lead's timezone with lemlist's timezone-based schedule.
- lemlist's holiday pause covers US, France and UK calendars. Plan German holidays yourself.
Common questions
Should cold emails to France and Germany be in English?
In our campaigns, English worked. We've run several cold B2B campaigns across the US, UK, Germany, France and Mexico, and France and Germany were where prospects replied in a friendly way and booked demo and pilot meetings, without French or German versions. That's our experience, not a rule for every product, so test it on your own list.
Which country responds best to B2B cold outreach?
There's no universal answer, and we don't have a statistic to give you. In our own cold campaigns comparing the US, UK, Germany, France and Mexico, France and Germany booked the most willing demo and pilot meetings. Run the same message to two or three countries and compare meetings booked, not just replies.
Can I filter Sales Navigator leads by language?
Yes. Sales Navigator's lead filters include Profile language, which filters leads by the language selected on their LinkedIn profile, alongside Geography (region, country, state, city or postal code), Function, Seniority level and Company headcount. Combining Geography with Profile language narrows a country list to people whose profiles are set in the language you plan to write in.
How do I send cold emails at the prospect's local time in lemlist?
Turn on Timezone based schedule in the campaign's Schedules & launch settings. lemlist then sends each step within your days and hours in each lead's own timezone, using a fallback timezone for leads without one. The lead timezone can be synced from a CRM, imported by CSV or set manually.
Does lemlist skip public holidays?
lemlist's Pause during holidays option skips sending on bank holidays for the calendars you select, and the available calendars are US, France and UK. Germany isn't one of them, so for German leads plan around their public holidays yourself.