Understanding a good email response rate
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If you want to succeed with email—and let’s be real, who doesn’t want that?—you need to track important metrics like your open, click-through, and conversion rate.
Segment and personalize to drive engagement: Tailor emails by audience demographics, behavior, or funnel stage, and personalize subject lines and content to increase relevance and trust.
Write compelling, mobile-friendly emails: Use clear, concise subject lines, deliver valuable content with strong CTAs, and ensure emails are optimized for mobile—where most messages are read.
Ask for direct responses: Encourage replies by including clear questions or prompts in your emails, and follow up with automated sequences to boost response rates.
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But there’s one metric that doesn’t get the love it deserves: the email response rate.
In this article, we’ll discuss what email response rate is, the average rate across multiple industries, why it’s a valuable metric, and five ways you can boost your response rate.
It’s pretty straightforward: email response rate measures the number of responses a brand receives from message recipients during an email marketing campaign.
To find your company’s response rate, simply divide the number of responses you receive by the number of emails that reach their intended targets; then multiply the result by 100. (Note: don’t include bounced emails in your response rate equation.)
For example, if you successfully delivered 100 emails and received 8 responses, you would divide 8 by 100 to get .08; then multiply it by 100 to get an 8% email response rate.
The only other thing you need to do is decide what you’ll classify as a response… Direct replies count, of course. But what about when a subscriber clicks on a link and fills out a survey? Or accepts your request and leaves a review of your product. Do these actions count as responses? You’ll need to decide this for yourself.
The answer ultimately depends on your industry and the kinds of emails you send.
For example, if you’re a B2B company that sends one newsletter a month, you’ll probably receive fewer responses than an up-and-coming influencer who asks their audience questions about the products they represent via weekly email blasts.
But as a general figure, a solid email response rate should be in the 10% range for standard email campaigns. If you’re sending cold emails, the figure jumps to 30%.
Email response rate isn’t an attractive metric like click-through rate and conversion rate. But it’s still worth tracking. Here are three reasons why:
We’ve covered what email response rate is and why it’s important. Now let’s talk about how to encourage your subscribers to respond to your messages on a regular basis:
Have you segmented your audience into like-minded groups? If not, this is the perfect place to start as it will help you send your subscribers more relevant content that they’ll actually want to engage with and reply to, boosting your response rate in the process.
There’s no shortage of ways to divvy up an email list. Fashion brands, for example, often segment their subscribers based on gender so that they can send their audiences offers that fit their needs. It doesn’t make much sense to message men about a lingerie sale…
You can also segment your list based on subscriber age, physical location, income level, position in your sales funnel, specific challenges to overcome, etc.
One of the keys to boosting your email response rate—and finding success with email marketing, in general—is sending subscribers the right content at the right time. List segmentation will make this tricky task much easier for you.
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When it comes to email marketing, personalization is your secret weapon. In fact, just personalizing your subject line (more on subject lines below) can boost your open rate by as much as 26%. The more opens you get, the more replies you’re likely to receive.
This tip is especially important for cold email campaigns. To generate responses from strangers, you MUST make your email sequences feel personal, which requires research.
Investigate your contact before you message them. Visit their LinkedIn profile to see what they’ve been up to lately. Read the last few blog posts they’ve written or watch their latest video on YouTube. Then include some of this information in your email to build rapport.
Branded emails should be personalized as well by including specific highlights unique to each subscriber. For instance, you could mention a product they purchased and ask how they like it. Or give them stats on their performance with your company’s software.
Whenever you can make your brand’s emails feel like the ones they receive from their family and friends, do it. This level of familiarity will produce more responses.
As mentioned above, subscribers have to open your emails before they can respond to them. And one of the best ways to boost open rates is to write killer subject lines. Here’s how:
This is really important: experiment with different kinds of subject lines and A/B test them to see which perform best. This is the only way to consistently garner opens and responses.
Want to improve your email response rate? Then send your subscribers and/or cold contacts must-read content that delivers them unparalleled value.
Why would anyone respond to a message they didn’t enjoy reading? Poorly-crafted content (or amazing content that’s sent to the wrong audience) will only serve to cause confusion, lower your company’s reputation, and generate unsubscribes—none of these are good things.
Instead, work hard to send your audience the kind of content they want to consume. This could come in the form of informational resources, a sale your company is having on relevant products, a discount coupon, a request for feedback, and more.
The only way you can create must-read (and reply!) content is to understand your audience. Learn their likes and dislikes, then use this information to encourage more responses.
Finally, remember to ask your audience to respond to your messages!
One of the best ways to do this is to use the “1, 2, 3” technique. Basically, you ask your subscribers a question and give them three possible options. The result is more replies because responders don’t have to think that hard about their answers.
Here’s a quick example of the “1, 2, 3” technique in action:
Hi Bob,
Many of our customers struggle to market their businesses effectively. In fact, we’ve identified three areas that seem to be the most troublesome for the people we serve:
Can you spare a couple of minutes to respond and tell me which of these challenges you struggle with most? To make it easy, just respond with the number that correlates with your most pressing challenge.
Thanks!
Here are a few other things you can try to encourage your audience to respond:
Wait, we’re not quite done!
Studies suggest that as many as 67% of email users check email on their phones. So, to boost your email response rate, make sure your messages are optimized for mobile.
This means formatting your messages for mobile devices, writing short, easy-to-digest sentences and paragraphs, using concise subject lines, etc. These things will give your readers a better email experience on mobile and encourage more responses.
Email response rate is an important metric. By tracking it, you’ll be able to identify your audience engagement levels, gain a deeper understanding of your subscribers, and determine the success of your overall email marketing efforts.
Fortunately, improving your response rate isn’t that difficult. Just implement the five tips we covered in this article and you’ll be able to generate more replies from your audience.
But here’s the thing, email marketing doesn’t work very well without email marketing software. If you haven’t invested in a reliable tool—or aren’t happy with the tool you’re currently using—we encourage you to give Nutshell a try. 😏
Wait 2-3 business days after your initial email before sending your first follow-up. This gives recipients time to process your message without feeling pressured. For subsequent follow-ups, space them 5-7 days apart. Research shows 80% of deals require at least five follow-ups, so persistence pays off when timed correctly.
Response rate measures direct replies to your emails, while click-through rate (CTR) tracks how many recipients click links within your message. Response rate indicates genuine engagement and conversation potential, whereas CTR shows interest in your content. Both metrics matter, but response rate better predicts sales conversations and relationship building.
CRM platforms like Nutshell automatically track email response rates by monitoring replies to your outreach campaigns. These tools provide real-time notifications when prospects respond, log all interactions in one place, and generate reports showing which emails drive the most engagement. This eliminates manual tracking and helps you focus on hot leads.
Yes, significantly. Cold emails typically achieve 1-5% response rates (or up to 30% with excellent targeting and personalization), while standard marketing campaigns average around 10%. Cold emails require more effort because recipients don’t know you yet. The key difference: cold outreach needs hyper-personalization and clear value propositions to overcome initial skepticism.
Tuesday through Thursday between 10 AM and 2 PM (recipient’s local time) typically generates the highest response rates. Avoid Mondays when inboxes are overloaded and Fridays when people are winding down. Weekends, especially Sundays, see the lowest engagement. Always test different times with your specific audience to find your optimal sending window.
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