A Complete Guide To Cold Email Conversion Rate

The cold email conversion rate is a key metric that measures the percentage of recipients who take the desired action after receiving a cold email. 

This action can vary, ranging from signing up for a newsletter, scheduling a meeting, downloading a resource, or making a purchase. 

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of emails sent, then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. 

A higher conversion rate indicates a more effective email campaign, reflecting the relevance, personalization, and persuasiveness of the email content. It’s a crucial indicator of the success and ROI of cold email outreach efforts.

How  to calculate an email conversion rate?

Formula

(Number of Conversions / Number of Delivered Emails) x 100

Example

  • You send out an email campaign to 1,000 recruitment or lead generation agencies 
  • Out of those 1,000 emails, 100 bounce (meaning they couldn’t be delivered).
  • So, 900 emails were successfully delivered.
  • From those 900 delivered emails, 30 people register for the recruitment or lead generation campaign.

Calculation

(30 conversions / 900 delivered emails) x 100 = 3.33%

Therefore, your email conversion rate for this campaign is 3.33%. This means that out of every 100 people who received your email, approximately 3.33 signed up for the webinar.

Things to Consider

  • Conversion Action: Define what constitutes a conversion for your specific campaign. Is it a website visit, a download, a purchase, or something else?
  • Delivered vs. Opened Emails: Focus on the number of delivered emails rather than opened emails to get a more accurate picture of your overall reach.
  • Segmenting Your Audience: Tailoring your emails to different audience segments can significantly improve your conversion rate.

What is a good cold email conversion rate?

A good cold email conversion rate can vary depending on the industry, target audience, and the specific action you’re aiming for. 

However, generally speaking, a conversion rate between 1% to 5% is considered good for cold email campaigns. 

Achieving higher rates, such as 5% or more, indicates an exceptionally well-targeted and crafted email campaign. It’s important to continuously test and optimize your emails to improve this rate over time.

Let’s consider these benchmarks:

  • A solid cold email open rate: 70%
  • A good reply rate: 15%
  • An effective booking rate: 50%
  • A strong sales closing rate: 80%

Starting with a base of 1000 emails, here’s the breakdown: 1000 emails sent, 700 opens, 105 replies, 53 booked meetings, 42 sales opportunities, leading to approximately 34 closed deals.

Achieving these results typically requires exceptional personalization in cold emails or superb segmentation of prospect lists.

This strategy is highly effective if your total addressable market is relatively small.

What is an average cold email conversion rate?

The average cold email conversion rate depends on several factors, including your industry, target audience, and the specific action you’re trying to achieve (e.g., download a whitepaper, schedule a call, make a purchase).

3-5%: This is considered an average range for cold email campaigns.

Let’s consider these averages:

  • Open rate: 55%
  • Reply rate: 6%
  • Booking rate: 35%
  • Sales closing rate: 60%

Using a base of 1000 emails, the breakdown is as follows: 1000 emails sent, 550 opens, 33 replies, 12 bookings, and 7 sales opportunities, resulting in approximately 1 closed deal.

If you’re performing at this level, you can expect to close 1 customer for every 142 cold emails sent. This approach often involves sending high volumes of emails with broad personalization.

This strategy is effective if you have a large total addressable market.

What is a bad cold email conversion rate?

A “bad” cold email conversion rate depends on your industry, campaign goals, and the specific action you’re trying to achieve (e.g., download a whitepaper, schedule a call). However, here’s a general breakdown:

  • Below 1%: This is generally considered very poor performance for cold email campaigns. It suggests your targeting, messaging, or offer might need significant improvement.
  • 1-3%: This is still on the low side, but it might be acceptable depending on your goals. For example, if your objective is simply to generate initial awareness, a 2% conversion rate might be okay.

Let’s analyze some key conversion rates for cold email outreach:

  • Low Open Rate: Assume a 20% open rate (meaning only 20 out of 100 emails get opened).
  • Minimal Responses: Let’s say a meager 2% of those who open your email actually reply.
  • Booking Challenges: Even if 20% of responders agree to a call (booking rate), conversions remain low.
  • Closing the Deal: Finally, consider a 40% sales closing rate from those calls.

Running the numbers:

Based on these hypothetical rates, let’s say you send 1,000 cold emails. Here’s the math:

  1. 1,000 emails sent x 20% open rate = 200 emails opened
  2. 200 opened emails x 2% reply rate = 4 replies
  3. 4 replies x 20% booking rate = 0.8 booked calls (since you can’t have a fraction of a call)

The sobering outcome:

With these assumptions, you might close only 1 customer for every 320 cold emails sent.

The takeaway

This scenario highlights the limitations of relying solely on low-quality, impersonal cold email blasts. While some send high volumes to compensate, it’s an inefficient strategy.

The better approach

Focus on targeted outreach with personalized messages that resonate with your ideal customer. This will naturally lead to higher open rates, reply rates, and ultimately, more closed deals!

Factors that influence cold email conversion rate

Cold email conversion rate is like a Domino’s Effect; toppling the first domino is crucial. 

Craft catchy subject lines and personalize emails to boost opens. Clear value propositions and strong CTAs can turn opens into replies. 

Once engaged, scheduling tools and follow-up emails increase booking rates. 

Finally, well-prepared sales calls with targeted messaging can convert those booked meetings into closed deals. Each step optimized brings you closer to cold email conversion glory.

Here, we will discuss each of these factors one by one.

Email sending volume

While sending a high volume of cold emails might seem like a shortcut, it often backfires. The more emails you pump out in a day, the less time you have to personalize them.

Unless you have a large, well-trained sales team specifically dedicated to crafting high-quality cold outreach (and who’ve likely been prepping for days or weeks!), sending thousands of generic emails is an unsustainable strategy.

The better approach

Target your outreach, personalize your messages, distribute your daily sending volume over a large number of sending email accounts using a feature such as Inbox rotation and focus on delivering value. This will lead to higher open rates, reply rates, and ultimately, more sales success.

Recommended read: Email Sending Limits Explained: How to Optimize Campaigns?

You can also adapt the tactical approach of inbox rotation. It involves distributing your email campaigns across multiple sending addresses and domains, instead of relying solely on a single one. This approach offers several advantages:

  • Spreading the Load: By distributing email volume across multiple inboxes, you avoid triggering sending limits imposed by providers like Gmail or Yahoo. This ensures your emails continue to reach their intended recipients.
  • Enhanced Inbox Placement: Inbox rotation can improve the overall placement of your emails within recipient inboxes. This translates to a higher chance of your messages landing in the “primary” folder rather than spam or promotions.
  • Managing Sender Identities: This method allows you to create and manage distinct sender identities for various outreach campaigns or team members. This can be beneficial for targeted outreach or A/B testing different messaging strategies.

Reply rate volume

While reply rates are a key metric in cold emailing, not all replies are created equal. It’s important to differentiate between positive responses that indicate genuine interest and negative replies (e.g., unsubscribes, complaints) that impact your chances of scheduling calls (booking rate).

Understanding the nature of these responses allows you to refine your outreach strategy, improve message relevancy, and ultimately convert more replies into booked meetings.


Recommended read: How to Increase Email Reply Rate for Cold Email Outreach?

Booking rate

Not all positive cold email replies translate to booked calls. To optimize your booking rate, craft clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) within your emails.

Instead of generic CTAs, use specific language that invites scheduling a call. For example, “Would you be interested in a quick 15-minute call to discuss how we can help?”

Source

This direct approach clarifies your desired outcome and increases the likelihood of turning a positive response into a valuable meeting on your calendar.

Closing rate

Closing deals is the ultimate goal in any sales cycle. The path to “closed won” can be paved through two primary approaches:

  • Traditional Sales Prospecting: This method involves targeted outreach, building relationships, and carefully guiding leads through the sales funnel.
  • Social Selling Techniques: This approach leverages social media platforms to connect with potential customers, establish thought leadership, and nurture leads towards a buying decision, often accelerating the sales cycle.

Both methods have their place, and the optimal approach may vary depending on your industry, target audience, and product/service complexity.

How to send cold emails that convert?

Cold emails can be a powerful tool, but success hinges on capturing attention. Here are two effective strategies to choose from:

1. Hyper-personalization

This involves crafting emails tailored to each individual recipient.You can mention a specific achievement of the prospect’s company or referencing a recent industry article they might find interesting.

Pros

  • Higher open rates and response rates due to the tailored approach.
  • Shows genuine effort and increases engagement.

Cons

  • Time-consuming to research and personalize each email.
  • Not scalable if you have a large outreach list.

smartreach.io can helps you craft personalized cold emails to that can make your outreach campaigns more successful. It offers hyper-personalization features with its built-in AI content tool to craft your cold emails perfectly. 

Source

2. Prospect segmentation

This approach involves dividing your target audience based on your ICP and buyers personna into smaller groups with similar characteristics (e.g., industry, company size, job title). Then, craft emails that resonate with the specific needs and challenges of each segment.

Pros

  • More efficient than hyper-personalization for larger lists.
  • Still allows for a level of personalization within segments.
  • Enables targeted messaging that increases relevance.

Cons

  • May not feel as personal as a hyper-personalized email.

Takeaway

Both hyper-personalization and segmentation are valuable strategies. For smaller outreach efforts, hyper-personalization can be impactful. For larger lists, segmentation allows you to send quality emails in higher volumes while still maintaining a level of relevance.

Bonus Tip: Regardless of the method you choose, remember to send lower volumes and focus on quality outreach. Quantity over quality rarely yields results.

Factual queries from Quora

Here are some queries that are often asked in Quora. Let’s take them one-by one.

1. On average, how many cold emails are needed to schedule a sales call with a qualified lead?

There’s no single answer to how many cold emails are needed to schedule a call with a qualified lead. It depends on several factors, but here’s a breakdown to give you an idea:

  • Average Conversion Rates: Cold email conversion rates (the percentage of recipients who respond positively) typically fall within the range of 1% to 5%. This means for every 100 cold emails sent, you might expect 1-5 leads to respond with interest.
  • Industry and Targeting: Conversion rates can vary significantly by industry. Competitive industries with high marketing saturation might have lower average conversion rates. Additionally, targeting the right audience with a well-defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) can significantly improve your chances of getting a response.
  • Email Quality: A well-crafted email with a clear value proposition, a strong call to action (CTA), and personalization will naturally outperform a generic and impersonal message.

Considering these factors, it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact number. However, some studies suggest it might take anywhere from 50 to several hundred cold emails to schedule a call with a qualified lead.

Here are some key takeaways:

  • Focus on Quality, Not Quantity: Sending a high volume of generic emails is unlikely to yield results. Invest time in crafting compelling emails that resonate with your target audience.
  • Track and Analyze Results: Monitor your cold email campaigns and analyze metrics like open rates, reply rates, and booking rates. This data can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your future outreach efforts.
  • Test Different Approaches: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different subject lines, email structures, and CTAs. See what resonates best with your audience to improve your chances of scheduling calls.

2. Is there a cold email conversion calculator somewhere?

There aren’t necessarily calculators specifically designed for cold email conversion rates, but there are tools and resources that can help you estimate and improve them. Here are a few options:

Cold email outreach calculators

These calculators focus on estimating the number of emails you’d need to send based on various factors like desired number of meetings, response rates, and sales cycle length. While not directly calculating conversion rates, they can give you a sense of the volume of outreach needed based on your goals. One such is mentioned below. 

Oleg Tomenko’s Cold Email Volume Calculator

3. Cold email conversion rate Vs cold calling conversion rate

Interesting! Cold calling boasts a reported conversion rate of 5-10%, potentially surpassing our current cold email range of 0.7-4.2%. 

While cold calls offer a higher potential payoff, it’s important to remember they’re typically more expensive to execute compared to email outreach

Now let’s compare based on: 

Engagement

  • Cold Email: Relies on a strong written message with a clear value proposition and a call to action (CTA) to capture attention and generate a response.
  • Cold Call: Allows for a more interactive conversation where you can tailor your pitch based on the prospect’s specific needs and objections.

Scalability

  • Cold Email: More scalable than cold calling. You can send out a large number of emails simultaneously, potentially reaching a wider audience.
  • Cold Call: Less scalable as it involves direct, one-on-one communication with potential customers. This limits the number of calls you can make in a given timeframe.

Upfront investment

  • Cold Email: Requires less upfront investment compared to cold calling. You primarily need to invest time in crafting compelling email copy.
  • Cold Call: May require additional investment in training salespeople on effective cold calling techniques.

4. Cold email conversion rate Vs social selling conversion rate

Social selling techniques can significantly boost your sales efficiency. Studies show it can accelerate the sales cycle by an average of 50% compared to traditional prospecting methods like cold emailing. This acceleration often translates to higher conversion rates as well.

While cold email conversion rates typically hover between 0.7% and 4.2%, social selling efforts can potentially yield conversion rates in the range of 1.4% to 8.2%. This improvement stems from the ability to build relationships and establish trust with potential customers on social platforms, making them more receptive to your outreach when the time comes to close a deal.

Final thoughts

Cold email conversion rates, though seemingly low, remain a valuable metric in the sales game. 

While percentages might range between 0.7% and 5%, remember, it’s a numbers game. Sending high-quality, targeted emails with a clear value proposition can significantly improve your chances of landing leads.

 Don’t get discouraged by averages; focus on optimizing your outreach. Personalization, compelling CTAs, and well-timed follow-ups are key. 

Consider your options – cold calls might offer slightly higher conversion rates, but cold email offers greater scalability. 

Ultimately, the best approach depends on your audience and resources. 

By understanding conversion rates and employing effective strategies, you can turn cold email outreach into a warm lead generation machine.

FAQs

What is a good conversion rate for cold emails?

A good conversion rate for cold emails typically falls between 1% to 5%. Achieving a higher rate indicates a well-targeted and effective email campaign.

What is a good response rate for a cold email?

A good response rate for a cold email is generally around 10% to 15%. This rate reflects the percentage of recipients who reply to your initial outreach, indicating engagement and interest.

What should my email conversion rate be?

Your email conversion rate should ideally be above 1%, with 2% to 5% being a strong target. This rate signifies that your emails are successfully prompting recipients to take the desired action, whether it’s scheduling a meeting, signing up for a service, or making a purchase.

How many cold emails does it take to get a client?

Depending on your conversion rate, it will take you between 50 to a 1000 cold emails to get 1 client.

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