Cold email vs the site's contact form

Cold email vs the site's contact form
Found the site. Now how do you reach in?

— Direct email to a named editor: always wins. Lands in a human inbox, you can follow up, you can track opens.
— Generic info@ or editor@: dead zone. Goes to a shared box nobody owns. Use only if there's literally nothing else.
— Contact form: last resort. No follow-up, no thread, no open tracking. BUT on locked-down sites with no email anywhere, the form is the only door, and a sharp form message still converts.

My split: 80% named email, 15% form, 5% I skip the site. Forms got me 4 of my last 30 placements. Not zero.

Go do it.