Cold email open rates measure how well your email campaigns capture the recipient's attention.
Focus on crucial factors like personalized email subject lines, frequency, timing, etc., to boost the cold email open rate.
Salesmate CRM has an email campaign tool to build personalized campaigns, automation, and analytics to enhance your email outreach strategy.
Are you spending hours crafting compelling cold emails and getting an unopened string of messages?
We know it’s frustrating. Sales reps often struggle to achieve an average cold email open rate.
There are some key reasons, like ineffective targeting, lack of personalization, authentication errors, etc., for poor cold email open rates and our blog has covered all.
Further, we have discussed 6 proven tips to boost open rates of cold email campaigns.
So, let’s delve into this blog to know more.
What is the cold email open rate?
Cold email open rate is a metric for determining how many cold emails are opened out of the mail sent to prospects.
It is a key metric used to measure the effectiveness of cold emailing efforts in reaching and engaging the target audience.
A higher open rate indicates more recipients engage with the email content, showing the initial interest in the message.
Monitoring the cold email open rate is essential for the following:
Improving your outreach campaign impact as a high open rate messages reach and resonate with the intended audience.
Refining your cold email campaigns to improve results.
Discovering the delivery issues to optimize the strategy.
Our next sections will help you discover if your cold email open rate is good, average, or bad and how to calculate it.
What is a good, bad, and average cold email open rate?
A high cold email open rate indicates that most recipients click on your emails, and you’ve cracked the code of resonating with your target audience.
Let’s find out the benchmarks of good, average, and poor cold email open rates.
What is a good cold email open rate?
The good open rate for cold emails is 40% to 60% and above (varying depending on industry).
The top cold email outreach experts also tend to have 60% to 80% open rates. To achieve this, they experiment with cold email best practices, such as creating hyper-personalized subject lines and understanding the target audience deeply.
A report by Gitnux has shown that sending cold emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays can yield opening and high cold email response rates between 30-50%.
Also, good email open rates indicate that your subject lines are compelling and your target recipients are engaged, suggesting that your message aligns well with recipients.
What is an average cold email open rate?
The average open rate for cold emails in all industries is 20 to 40%.
It serves as a key performance indicator for email outreach campaigns, providing insights into their cold emailing effectiveness.
A study by SuperOffice, which analyzed over 99,000 emails sent in the past ten months, reports achieving a 40.9% average email open rate.
This success is due to strategies like crafting compelling subject lines, engaging preview text, tracking email performance, and applying deliverability hacks to ensure emails reach the inbox.
Sales reps often see low open rates due to poor deliverability and weak cold sales email pitches.
To overcome this, it’s crucial to craft engaging and well-structured cold outreach emails to enhance the likelihood of recipients opening your messages.
What is a bad cold email open rate?
A bad cold email open rate is 15% to 25%, or even lower.
Through various case studies and experiments conducted by cold email experts, we have discovered that the primary reasons for these low rates include:
Bad ICP (ideal customer profile) judgment
Terrible deliverability as emails go into the spam folder
Higher bounce rate
These are a few reasons for poor cold email open rates, we will be discussing all the possible ones in the latter section of the blog.
But let’s understand the simple calculation of cold email open rates.
How do you calculate cold email open rates?
Here is a simple formula to calculate your cold email open rate:
Open rate = Total unique opens/(Total recipients – Bounced emails) x 100
Let’s understand each terminology:
Total opens – The number of times your cold email has been opened by recipients.
Total recipients – The number of unique email addresses to which you have sent your cold emails.
Bounce rates – The number of emails sent that never reach the recipient’s inbox.
Here is an example to explain the simple calculation:
Suppose you sent a total of 4800 emails, and 3500 were opened by recipients.
Also, your campaign had 200 bounced emails(these didn’t reach the inbox).
So, the cold email open rate for this is calculated as shown below:
Cold email open rate = (3500 opened emails)/(4800 total emails – 200 bounced emails) x 100
= 72.91%
This high open rate of 72.91% indicates a very successful email campaign.
Note: If you don’t have the bounce rate, you can calculate the cold email open rate using the below formula:
Open rate = (Total opens/Total recipients) x 100
If you’re getting poor or below-average cold email open rates, explore the possible reasons as discussed next.
What are the main reasons for poor cold email open rates?
These are the four prominent reasons why reps are facing bad cold email open rates in their cold email campaigns:
1) Inappropriate subject lines
Personalized subject lines are the first thing that your prospects need. If you have a long, cold email subject line without any personal touch, then there might be chances that your potential customers will ignore the email in the first place.
The reputation of the sender’s email domain and IP address prominently affects your business’s inbox placements and cold email open rates.
The recipients mainly tend to open emails first from the senders they trust, while emails from unknown resources are most likely to be marked as spam.
Therefore, maintaining a positive sender reputation is necessary. Specific measures involve following email best practices, avoiding spamming tactics, consistently delivering valuable content, and more.
3) Cold email preview text
The preview text of your cold email is crucial for boosting your open rates. Unclear or error-filled previews often lead to lower open rates, failing to engage the reader.
However, writing a relevant and engaging preview captures attention and persuades the recipients to open the email.
4) Set timing & frequency
Overlooking how often you send cold emails can reduce engagement. Further, sending only one initial email without follow-ups can lead to low prospect interest.
You need to set a strategic cold email sequence for better open rates. Reps must send emails frequently based on the prospects’ actions and interest analysis.
Do you know? At least three follow-ups are required for an average response rate.
Also, sending emails on weekends could be a better idea as they can decrease the bounce rate by around 30 percent of the average cold email response rate.
As per a study, the B2B cold email open rates can be better if sent on a specific day, like Monday, Tuesday, or Friday.
How to increase the open rates for cold emails – 6 Tips
If you are willing to increase the cold email open rates, then here are the six most effective tips that you should know:
1) Use a professional email address
If your email address looks like xyz@gmail.com, it might look unprofessional. Professional emails should be accurate, give the impression of the brand, and be less likely to go to spam inboxes.
Using email addresses like info@companyname or contact@companyname might seem professional, but they lack a personal touch for mass cold outreach emails.
Consider using more personalized email structures likefirstname.lastname@company.com. This structure appears professional but adds a personal touch to your communication.
2) Subject line personalization
We live in an age where even coffee cups are personalized, so generic subject lines will never work for reasonable cold email open rates.
The large base of prospects expects a personalized cold email experience, and when that doesn’t happen, they start ignoring emails.
Personalized subject line derives:
Increase in email open rates by grabbing the recipient’s attention.
Improves email deliverability and inbox placement.
Leads to higher click-through rates and engagement.
Build strong relationships with recipients.
Enhances relevance and personal connection with the audience.
3) Preview text should be captivating
After a subject line, the next thing prospects tend to observe in your cold email is a preview text.
Most of the tools adapt the preview text from the email content automatically. It depends on the opening cold email lines that you write. The best advice would be to give direct insights and context about the message in the preview text.
For example:
Email subject: Increase your conversion rates by 40% (prospect name)
Preview text: Make your pipeline solid with (product name)
4) Time your email carefully
It is crucial to send cold emails to the right person at the right time to boost the open rate.
Most prospects tend to boost on Fridays as the weekend approaches. Hence, Friday remains a time to approach cold email prospects to make them your best bet.
Even though they are gearing up for the break, you might think they won’t consider your email, but on Monday morning, they will probably check.
Tip:Maintaining your prospects’ list time zone is essential if you are reaching an international prospect base.
5) Improve email authentication and clean your email list
Boost your open rates by setting up email authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
This helps your emails reach the inbox instead of the spam folder. Also, regularly remove invalid addresses from your list to ensure high deliverability and consistent opens.
Email domain warm-up enables overcoming deliverability issues and ensures landing in the primary inbox of email recipients, and campaigns get good opening rates.
6) Regularly send follow-up cold emails
With zero follow-ups, your brand will vanish from the prospect’s mind.
In many instances, the recipients tend to open the cold emails after the third or fourth time. On average, you must send up to 3-6 cold emails to every recipient.
Every email should have a different CTA (Call to Action), with the right approach, timing, and frequency-like factors that can help close more deals.
Cold email open rate, inbox placement rate, or cold email reply rate: Which is the standard metric to measure?
In the tabular format, we are going to differentiate all three metrics through their essential parameters for reps to know which cold email metric they can rely on:
Metric
Definition
Formula
Key factors to improve
How to optimize for better results
Cold email open rate
Total cold emails opened by the recipients out of the emails sent.
(Total emails opened / Total emails sent) * 100
– Subject line – Sender reputation – Timing and frequency of sending cold emails – Personalized & relevant content
Craft compelling subject lines to intrigue the prospects. Optimize the sender’s reputation to avoid spam triggers. Experiment with timing and frequency to determine the best times for sending cold emails. Personalize emails with recipients’ needs and interests.
Inbox placement rate
Cold emails that successfully landed in recipients’ primary inboxes without going into spam.
(Total emails delivered to primary inbox / Total emails sent) * 100
– Compliance with email regulations – Engagement metrics (e.g., open rates, click-through rates)
Maintain a good sender reputation by crafting engaging content. Follow email regulations and best practices to ensure compliance. Monitor prospects’ engagement to understand their interaction.
Cold email reply rate
Percentage of cold emails that receive a response from recipients out of the total emails sent.
(Total replies received / Total emails sent) * 100
– Personalization and relevance of content – Clear and compelling CTA – Timing and frequency of follow-ups – Relationship building
Personalize emails by addressing recipients’ names and their specific details. State the desired action in the email. Follow up timely. Focus on building rapport & trust with recipients.
How does Salesmate enhance your cold email experience?
Salesmate campaigns can help you to generate and deliver the best cold email campaigns for your business through its amazing attributes:
Dedicated IP address: Gain complete control over your sender reputation and enhance the deliverability of your cold emails.
Personalize email templates: Build powerful personalized email templates within minutes. Also, build customized email templates for better effectiveness and a more personal touch for the brand.
Campaign schedule: Create & schedule a campaign for the events and promotions lined up through strategic follow-ups with email sequences.
Email throttling: Limit email delivery to increase the inbox landings of cold emails, which can help boost open rates.
A/B testing: It helps determine what works with the target audience. With multi-variant tests, you can build the perfect cold email campaigns.
Track consumer behavior: Provide brief insight into cold email campaign performance metrics to determine the campaigns’ email open and reply rates, clicks, and UTMs.
Open rate tracking: You can track email open rates by location to optimize your strategy.
Analytics: Get campaign insights to improve decision-making for future cold outreach.
Salesmate is an all-in-one solution for your business that helps you streamline your marketing and customer support tasks. It is highly customizable to meet your business needs plus offers integration with top business apps.
Wrapping it up!
Improving your cold email open rates is no longer a hefty task. With the implementation of perfect methods and a cold email outreach tool, you can quickly increase the open rates.
Remember, tips like personalized subject lines, on-point preview text, and writing tailored email messages can help seamlessly spike up your cold email open rates.
If you need help boosting the cold email open rate, Salesmate, an email marketing CRM software, can help you achieve success through its features like smart emails.
Know more by starting your 15-day free trial today!
A good cold email open rate is ideally above 40% to 60% & above (it varies based on industry factors).
2) Is a 20% open rate for email good?
If your cold email outreach gets an open rate as low as 20%, it will likely go to the spam folder.
3) Are cold emails open rate benchmarks for outreach success?
Cold email open rates can be considered initial indicators of interest but not complete measures of success. They show how many people view your email but not how many are truly engaged or likely to respond.
4) What are typical cold email open rates?
The average cold email open rate is 20% to 40% (across all industries), whereas some cold email statistics show 40% to 50% opening rates for successful email marketers.
5) What is the average B2B email open rate?
Any outreach campaign’s average cold email rate is generally above 20% to 40% (depending on industry factors).
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.
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Key Takeaways
Are you spending hours crafting compelling cold emails and getting an unopened string of messages?
We know it’s frustrating. Sales reps often struggle to achieve an average cold email open rate.
There are some key reasons, like ineffective targeting, lack of personalization, authentication errors, etc., for poor cold email open rates and our blog has covered all.
Further, we have discussed 6 proven tips to boost open rates of cold email campaigns.
So, let’s delve into this blog to know more.
What is the cold email open rate?
Cold email open rate is a metric for determining how many cold emails are opened out of the mail sent to prospects.
It is a key metric used to measure the effectiveness of cold emailing efforts in reaching and engaging the target audience.
A higher open rate indicates more recipients engage with the email content, showing the initial interest in the message.
Monitoring the cold email open rate is essential for the following:
Our next sections will help you discover if your cold email open rate is good, average, or bad and how to calculate it.
What is a good, bad, and average cold email open rate?
A high cold email open rate indicates that most recipients click on your emails, and you’ve cracked the code of resonating with your target audience.
Let’s find out the benchmarks of good, average, and poor cold email open rates.
What is a good cold email open rate?
The good open rate for cold emails is 40% to 60% and above (varying depending on industry).
The top cold email outreach experts also tend to have 60% to 80% open rates. To achieve this, they experiment with cold email best practices, such as creating hyper-personalized subject lines and understanding the target audience deeply.
A report by Gitnux has shown that sending cold emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays can yield opening and high cold email response rates between 30-50%.
Also, good email open rates indicate that your subject lines are compelling and your target recipients are engaged, suggesting that your message aligns well with recipients.
What is an average cold email open rate?
The average open rate for cold emails in all industries is 20 to 40%.
It serves as a key performance indicator for email outreach campaigns, providing insights into their cold emailing effectiveness.
A study by SuperOffice, which analyzed over 99,000 emails sent in the past ten months, reports achieving a 40.9% average email open rate.
This success is due to strategies like crafting compelling subject lines, engaging preview text, tracking email performance, and applying deliverability hacks to ensure emails reach the inbox.
Sales reps often see low open rates due to poor deliverability and weak cold sales email pitches.
To overcome this, it’s crucial to craft engaging and well-structured cold outreach emails to enhance the likelihood of recipients opening your messages.
What is a bad cold email open rate?
A bad cold email open rate is 15% to 25%, or even lower.
Through various case studies and experiments conducted by cold email experts, we have discovered that the primary reasons for these low rates include:
These are a few reasons for poor cold email open rates, we will be discussing all the possible ones in the latter section of the blog.
But let’s understand the simple calculation of cold email open rates.
How do you calculate cold email open rates?
Here is a simple formula to calculate your cold email open rate:
Open rate = Total unique opens/(Total recipients – Bounced emails) x 100
Let’s understand each terminology:
Total opens – The number of times your cold email has been opened by recipients.
Total recipients – The number of unique email addresses to which you have sent your cold emails.
Bounce rates – The number of emails sent that never reach the recipient’s inbox.
Here is an example to explain the simple calculation:
Suppose you sent a total of 4800 emails, and 3500 were opened by recipients.
Also, your campaign had 200 bounced emails(these didn’t reach the inbox).
So, the cold email open rate for this is calculated as shown below:
Cold email open rate = (3500 opened emails)/(4800 total emails – 200 bounced emails) x 100
= 72.91%
This high open rate of 72.91% indicates a very successful email campaign.
Note: If you don’t have the bounce rate, you can calculate the cold email open rate using the below formula:
Open rate = (Total opens/Total recipients) x 100
If you’re getting poor or below-average cold email open rates, explore the possible reasons as discussed next.
What are the main reasons for poor cold email open rates?
These are the four prominent reasons why reps are facing bad cold email open rates in their cold email campaigns:
1) Inappropriate subject lines
Personalized subject lines are the first thing that your prospects need. If you have a long, cold email subject line without any personal touch, then there might be chances that your potential customers will ignore the email in the first place.
You can gather tips on writing sales email subject lines to gain the proper understanding and boost your cold email open rate.
2) Sender reputation
The reputation of the sender’s email domain and IP address prominently affects your business’s inbox placements and cold email open rates.
The recipients mainly tend to open emails first from the senders they trust, while emails from unknown resources are most likely to be marked as spam.
Therefore, maintaining a positive sender reputation is necessary. Specific measures involve following email best practices, avoiding spamming tactics, consistently delivering valuable content, and more.
3) Cold email preview text
The preview text of your cold email is crucial for boosting your open rates. Unclear or error-filled previews often lead to lower open rates, failing to engage the reader.
However, writing a relevant and engaging preview captures attention and persuades the recipients to open the email.
4) Set timing & frequency
Overlooking how often you send cold emails can reduce engagement. Further, sending only one initial email without follow-ups can lead to low prospect interest.
You need to set a strategic cold email sequence for better open rates. Reps must send emails frequently based on the prospects’ actions and interest analysis.
Do you know? At least three follow-ups are required for an average response rate.
Also, sending emails on weekends could be a better idea as they can decrease the bounce rate by around 30 percent of the average cold email response rate.
As per a study, the B2B cold email open rates can be better if sent on a specific day, like Monday, Tuesday, or Friday.
How to increase the open rates for cold emails – 6 Tips
If you are willing to increase the cold email open rates, then here are the six most effective tips that you should know:
1) Use a professional email address
If your email address looks like xyz@gmail.com, it might look unprofessional. Professional emails should be accurate, give the impression of the brand, and be less likely to go to spam inboxes.
Using email addresses like info@companyname or contact@companyname might seem professional, but they lack a personal touch for mass cold outreach emails.
Consider using more personalized email structures like firstname.lastname@company.com. This structure appears professional but adds a personal touch to your communication.
2) Subject line personalization
We live in an age where even coffee cups are personalized, so generic subject lines will never work for reasonable cold email open rates.
The large base of prospects expects a personalized cold email experience, and when that doesn’t happen, they start ignoring emails.
Personalized subject line derives:
3) Preview text should be captivating
After a subject line, the next thing prospects tend to observe in your cold email is a preview text.
Most of the tools adapt the preview text from the email content automatically. It depends on the opening cold email lines that you write. The best advice would be to give direct insights and context about the message in the preview text.
For example:
Email subject: Increase your conversion rates by 40% (prospect name)
Preview text: Make your pipeline solid with (product name)
4) Time your email carefully
It is crucial to send cold emails to the right person at the right time to boost the open rate.
Most prospects tend to boost on Fridays as the weekend approaches. Hence, Friday remains a time to approach cold email prospects to make them your best bet.
Even though they are gearing up for the break, you might think they won’t consider your email, but on Monday morning, they will probably check.
As per the study, emails sent at 10 am get an average open rate for cold emails of 24.79%.
5) Improve email authentication and clean your email list
Boost your open rates by setting up email authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
This helps your emails reach the inbox instead of the spam folder. Also, regularly remove invalid addresses from your list to ensure high deliverability and consistent opens.
Email domain warm-up enables overcoming deliverability issues and ensures landing in the primary inbox of email recipients, and campaigns get good opening rates.
6) Regularly send follow-up cold emails
With zero follow-ups, your brand will vanish from the prospect’s mind.
In many instances, the recipients tend to open the cold emails after the third or fourth time. On average, you must send up to 3-6 cold emails to every recipient.
Every email should have a different CTA (Call to Action), with the right approach, timing, and frequency-like factors that can help close more deals.
Cold email open rate, inbox placement rate, or cold email reply rate: Which is the standard metric to measure?
In the tabular format, we are going to differentiate all three metrics through their essential parameters for reps to know which cold email metric they can rely on:
How does Salesmate enhance your cold email experience?
Salesmate campaigns can help you to generate and deliver the best cold email campaigns for your business through its amazing attributes:
Salesmate is an all-in-one solution for your business that helps you streamline your marketing and customer support tasks. It is highly customizable to meet your business needs plus offers integration with top business apps.
Wrapping it up!
Improving your cold email open rates is no longer a hefty task. With the implementation of perfect methods and a cold email outreach tool, you can quickly increase the open rates.
Remember, tips like personalized subject lines, on-point preview text, and writing tailored email messages can help seamlessly spike up your cold email open rates.
If you need help boosting the cold email open rate, Salesmate, an email marketing CRM software, can help you achieve success through its features like smart emails.
Know more by starting your 15-day free trial today!
Frequently asked questions
1) What is a good open rate for cold email?
A good cold email open rate is ideally above 40% to 60% & above (it varies based on industry factors).
2) Is a 20% open rate for email good?
If your cold email outreach gets an open rate as low as 20%, it will likely go to the spam folder.
3) Are cold emails open rate benchmarks for outreach success?
Cold email open rates can be considered initial indicators of interest but not complete measures of success. They show how many people view your email but not how many are truly engaged or likely to respond.
4) What are typical cold email open rates?
The average cold email open rate is 20% to 40% (across all industries), whereas some cold email statistics show 40% to 50% opening rates for successful email marketers.
5) What is the average B2B email open rate?
Any outreach campaign’s average cold email rate is generally above 20% to 40% (depending on industry factors).
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.