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Glossary · Metrics and pipeline

Reply rate

The share of contacted people, or of emails sent, that got any reply, including "not interested" and out-of-office answers if not filtered out.

Reply rate is the first honest measure of a cold campaign, because a reply needs a person. Read the definition before comparing numbers: some tools divide replies by emails sent, others by people contacted, and some count automatic replies. A campaign of three emails per person has a reply rate per email roughly a third of its reply rate per person, from the same results.

Published benchmarks are low. Belkins' 2026 study, which divides replies by emails sent, reports 0.45% across industries, and Smartlead's benchmark puts the median sender at 0.74% of contacts. A reply rate well below your own usual level, once a few hundred people have been reached, usually means the audience or the message is off, or that emails are not reaching the inbox. Because "no thanks" counts as a reply, the positive reply rate says more about whether a campaign works.

Related terms

  • Positive reply rateThe share of contacted people who replied with interest, such as asking for details or agreeing to talk, rather than declining or auto-replying.
  • Meeting rateThe share of contacted people who end up in a meeting with you, usually counted per 100 contacts or per campaign.
  • Open rateThe share of delivered emails that were opened, as measured by a tracking pixel, a measure that has become unreliable.
  • A/B testSending two versions of a message to comparable groups and keeping the one that performs better on a metric chosen in advance.

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