Glossary
What is reply rate?
The share of people who respond to your outreach: replies divided by messages delivered, shown as a percentage.
Definition
Reply rate is the percentage of outreach recipients who respond to your message, calculated as replies divided by messages delivered, or by contacts reached, times 100. It is a core metric for cold email and LinkedIn outreach because it measures a person actually writing back, which opens and clicks can't confirm.
How to calculate it
Reply rate = replies / delivered messages x 100. A few choices change the number, so be consistent:
- Per contact or per message. For sequences, count each contact who replied once, divided by contacts who received at least one step.
- Exclude auto-replies. Out-of-office messages and bounces are not replies.
- Use delivered, not sent. Bounced emails were never seen.
Reply rate vs positive reply rate
Not every reply is good news. "Not interested" and "remove me" count as replies too. Positive reply rate counts only replies that show interest, such as a question or agreement to talk. It is closer to what you actually want, since a campaign can get many replies and few meetings. Track meetings booked per 100 contacts as well, so you can see where the drop-off happens: reaching people, getting replies or turning replies into calls.
An example
Say you run a sequence to 250 contacts and 240 are delivered. You get 15 replies: 6 interested, 5 not interested, 4 asking to be removed. Your reply rate is 15 / 240 = 6.25%, and your positive reply rate is 6 / 240 = 2.5%. These numbers are illustrative; for what to expect, see what a good cold email reply rate is.
What moves reply rate
- Targeting. The right people with a real reason to care matter most.
- Relevance. A specific trigger or observation beats a generic pitch.
- A simple ask. An easy question gets answered more than a meeting request.
- Follow-ups. Many replies come after the first message.
- Deliverability. Emails in spam can't get replies.
- The sender. A message from a real person with a real profile tends to get more replies than one from a generic brand address.
Questions
How do you calculate reply rate?
Divide the number of people who replied by the number of people whose messages were delivered, then multiply by 100. For example, 12 replies from 200 delivered emails is a 6% reply rate. Exclude bounces and automatic out-of-office replies so the number reflects real responses.
Is reply rate better than open rate?
For sales outreach, usually yes. A reply means a person read your message and chose to respond, while open tracking can be inaccurate and doesn't tell you whether anyone cared. Many teams track reply rate and positive reply rate as their main outreach metrics.
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