57 Key Cold Email Statistics You Need

Intro

Email marketing is one of the most important activities that any brand can do for the growth of their business. However, cold emails have a bad reputation. Not only are they illegal in some circumstances, but they can also be seen as spam marketing tactics.

If you’re considering using this tactic to build your business. You can look at these cold email statistics to decide whether it is a worthwhile activity or not.

The Average Use of Cold Emails

Cold emails have been used for years. However, their use is sometimes hidden behind other more conventional ways to send emails. In this section, we look at the average use and statistics about how they’re used.

1. Email is 40 times as effective as making a sale on social media.
2. The average cold email list is more than 1300 individuals.
3. Experts suggest that cold email lists should be no more than 1,000.
4. Campaigns with fewer than 200 recipients get the best results.
5. 74% of cold emails are sent via Gmail.
6. Only 5% of cold emails are sent via custom SFTP.
7. Cold email helped Alex Berman to take $400,000 worth of deals within 30 days.
8. Cold emails helped Laura Lopuch earn 1400% more with her freelance business.
9. 21% of a sales rep's day is spent writing emails, this is the equivalent of 1 hour and 40 minutes a day.
10. Only 1 in 50 email campaigns will use a personalization option, whether in the subject line or within the email body.
11. More than half (59%) of people prefer a cold email than to be contacted without permission on LinkedIn.
12. 1 in 4 college graduates has already used AI technology or job automation software to streamline their outreach efforts.

Cold Email Open Rate

The open rate is the rate of emails that are opened in a campaign. It can be a good way to determine how successful a brand is with its email campaign. But what are the main statistics?

13. 33% of recipients will open an email based on the subject line alone.
14. A personalized subject line will increase the open rate by 50%.
15. Adding multiple personalization elements into a subject line can improve open rates by 145%.
16. You can improve open rates by 21% by adding a question to the text.
17. One cold email marketing service found that the average open rate for cold emails is 44%.
18. Another email marketing service provided found that the open rate for cold emails is 22%.
19. A longer subject line can help improve open rates by 24%.
20. Only 8% of cold email marketing campaigns have an open rate of 80% or more.
21. About a third of cold email marketing campaigns have a 60% open rate or more.
22. When a campaign has an open rate of less than 20%, it is often a sign that the emails are landing in the spam folder, or are targeting a poor audience (i.e. dead emails or irrelevant audiences).
23. Subject lines that include a number can get twice (113%) the open rate.
24. A quarter (24.45%) of cold emails are opened on a mobile device.
25. Three-quarters of emails (75%) are opened within an email of being sent.
26. 77% of cold emails are ignored by the intended decision-maker.
27. Pain points being used within the subject line can improve the email campaigns' open rate by 28%.
28. Including an emoji within the subject line can improve the open rate of a campaign by 8%.

Cold Email Response Rate Statistics

Whether it is a sale or a reply to a message, a response is when there is a conversion with an email marketing campaign. How do cold emails do when it comes to responses?

29. 80% of decision-makers prefer to receive information about products/services via email.
30. Adding the prospect’s business name within the subject line can increase response rates by 22%.
31. The top 25% of campaigns will have 20% of contacts reply to them.
32. About half of the campaigns will have a reply rate of under 10%. Compared to warm emails, this is below performance.
33. 25% of campaigns have a response rate of between 10 and 20%.
34. Only 8.5% of cold emails get any response.
35. About 3.67% of recipients will click through from a cold email campaign.
36. The best days to send a cold email for a response are Friday (20.98%), Thursday (20.21%), and Tuesday (18.34%).
37. The worst days to send a cold email for a response are Saturday (3.5%) and Sunday (3.8%).
38. Sending a cold email between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. will get a significantly higher response rate.
39. Sending a cold email between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. will get a significantly lower response rate.
40. Emails that have more than one question within the body of the text will get 50% more replies.
41. 42% of replies happen within the first hour.
42. There is a 93% increase in response rate when you send cold emails to multiple people in the same organization.
43. Using an ‘interest’ call-to-action can double the response rate from a group of contacts on a mailing list.
44. A call-to-action that asks for the opinion of the ready can significantly increase the number of replies you get but will decrease sales by 20%.
45. Using lots of personalization within the body of the email can improve the response rate by 32%.
46. Increase sales and responses by using the term, “Hope this email finds you well” within the body of the email.
47. Emails that have been written with a 3rd-grade vocabulary will get 36% more replies than those emails that use a college-level vocabulary.

Cold Email Follow-Up Statistics

Source: lemlist.com

In addition to the initial email, cold email campaigns need follow-ups. In this set of statistics, we see how follow-ups can affect the performance of a cold email campaign.

48. More than 55% of replies to the initial cold email campaign came with a follow-up email, not on the first email sent.
49. The number of follow-ups that are required for a response is three on average.
50. Nearly seven out of every ten campaigns don’t have a follow-up email or call.
51. Using the term, ‘I never heard back’ can lower the chances of a successful sale by 14%.

Cold Email Unsubscribe Rate Statistics

At any time, someone on a cold email list, can unsubscribe. That means that they can no longer receive

52. More than 1 in 50 on a cold email list will unsubscribe from the mailing list.
53. There is a 230% increase in the unsubscribe rate between warm emails and cold emails when it comes to the unsubscribe rate.
54. It is a legal requirement to offer those receiving your email a chance to unsubscribe from your list. Refusing to do so can lead to a business fine.

Cold Email Bounce Rate Statistics

The bounce rate is when an email doesn’t arrive in an inbox. Bounce rate is one of the main metrics that determines whether a sender is a legitimate business. A good, low bounce rate is important to maintain.

55. 7.5% of cold emails will bounce (both hard and soft bounces).
56. The average warm email bounce rate is 2%.
57. Therefore, there are 3.5 times more bounces with a cold email list than there are with a warm email list.

Conclusion

Cold emails will always be used by businesses. However, they have to be used correctly for them to be effective. Just sending out mass campaigns is only going to be expensive. However, targeted cold emails, and following email marketing laws can help to improve sales and grow your business.