Guest invitations, cold email and paid social on one monthly budget line. Enter volumes, rates and costs; get meetings, cost per meeting, opportunities and cost per opportunity for each. Cold email often wins the first cost. Invitations usually win the second, and your forecast runs on the second.
meeting = the first 30-min buyer conversation each channel produces (defined per channel below) · runs in your browser, nothing is sent
Sliders start at our sample defaults. Swap in your own; all twelve outputs and both charts update as you drag.
Cheapest meeting: cold email at $625. Cheapest opportunity: guest invitations at $2,550, 39% under cold email.
Plus clips, quote cards and a referral path.
Reply threads in an SDR inbox, mostly no.
A retargeting audience that empties when spend stops.
These are sample rates. On a fit call we swap in your ICP, your SDR cost and your ad benchmarks.
At the defaults it isn't close: $625 against $841. One step later the order flips, because of what each meeting contains.
3,000 sends → 60 replies → 12 booked calls → 1.8 opportunities. The SDR knows only that the prospect opened an email. 15% qualify: about $4,170 per opportunity.
625 clicks at $8 → 7.5 meetings → 1.5 opportunities: about $667 a meeting, $3,330 an opportunity. Spend stops, meetings stop. Ad prices climb as audiences saturate.
105 invitations → 35.7 accepted → 8.2 recorded → 2.7 opportunities. Each meeting is a 30-minute interview that already covered priorities, pain and the buying committee. 1 in 3 qualify: about $2,550 each.
The short version. Judged on meetings booked, cold email looks better here. Judged on opportunities, or on what still works after the budget stops, invitations usually come out ahead. Why invitations get answered
The calculator counts each channel's meeting as one. Here is what the buyer received, who they met and what you know before the first sales call.
| channel | guest invitation | cold email | paid social |
|---|---|---|---|
| what the buyer receives | a stage | a request | an impression |
| typical response | 30–40% accept (sample) | 1–3% reply | 0.5–1% click |
| who they meet first | the host, peer to peer | an SDR | a landing page |
| known before a sales call | priorities, pain, committee | whether they opened | which ad they clicked |
| left behind | episode, clips, a referral path | a thread | a retargeting pixel |
| over time | past guests refer peers | lists fatigue | CPMs (ad prices) climb |
Sample rates, not client results. Change any of them above; the formulas stay the same.
Rates from our sample season_01 funnel. 23% = 41% pass the pre-interview × 56% of those record. Cost is Engine, infrastructure and production included.
Reply rate sits mid-range of the typical 1–3%. Cost covers an SDR's time, data and sending tools.
$8 reflects senior B2B titles. Add creative or agency fees if you pay them; they belong in the cost per opportunity.
invitations: meetings = invites × acceptance × accepted→recorded
cold email: meetings = sends × reply rate × reply→meeting
paid social: meetings = (spend ÷ CPC) × click→meeting · cost = spend + fee
all: opps = meetings × meeting→opp · cost per meeting = cost ÷ meetings · cost per opp = cost ÷ opps
Meetings of 2 or more are rounded to one decimal before dividing; below 2, the unrounded figure is used and shown to two decimals. Cost per meeting is shown to the dollar, cost per opportunity to the nearest $10.
It does a discovery call's job. Five questions surface priorities, pain, failed fixes, urgency and the buying committee, without a single sales question. See the interview anatomy
"Cold email is cheaper per meeting. Why pay more?"
Because the meeting isn't what you bank. At the defaults, invitations cost $216 more per meeting and about $1,620 less per opportunity.
"What if our reply rate is 3%?"
Then 3,000 sends book 18 meetings at $417 each and 2.7 opportunities at about $2,780. Still above invitations at $2,550 per opportunity. At the other defaults, the two lines cross near a 3.3% reply rate.
"Couldn't our SDR team run this?"
They can, and the Launch Sprint hands them the system. Budget roughly 25 hours a week across research, invitations, producing and editing to do it well.
"We need results this quarter."
Invitations go live on day 18; first recordings land around day 25. Many guests become conversations before their episode is published.
Recorded guests in; pipeline, revenue and break-even deals out.
See the pipeline math 03 · season-plannerA quarterly target in; invitations, recorded guests and a tier out.
Run the numbers → results_wallThe sample season behind the invitation defaults, and how we measure it.
See the method →Send your ICP and what your channels cost today. We return guest volume, expected acceptances and a cost-per-opportunity forecast before you commit.