Top 51 Cold Email Statistics for Prospecting Success 2022

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Cold emailing is one of the most effective prospecting activities and is often the preferred communication method for many leads. Because of its popularity, there are many studies with insights that can help you with your cold emailing efforts. To help, we've compiled the top cold emailing statistics to help you connect with leads most likely to convert.

Here's our list of the top cold email statistics and why they matter:

• Effectiveness of Cold Emailing: Learn about the response, open and conversion rates of cold email. Read more below.
• How to Optimize Your Cold Emails: Learn about why shorter is better and personalization matters when it comes to cold emails and subject lines. Read more below.
• Company Perception of Cold Emailing: Learn about the efforts companies put into cold email and their success rate. Read more below.
• Buyer Tendencies Regarding Cold Emails: Learn how buyers react when they receive a cold email and the best way to get them to read it. Read more below.
• Cold Email Mistakes to Avoid: Learn about the worst things to do when sending a cold email and why you should avoid them. Read more below.

If you're looking for more than just cold emailing statistics, check out our list of the top sales statistics, which includes stats on lead generation, lead nurturing, deal-closing, and more.

Effectiveness of Cold Emailing

Cold emails have an average response rate of 1%. (Source: Clearbit)

Only 9% of sales emails are opened. (Source: Gartner)

The average cold email click through rate in 2021 is 10.3%. (Source: White Cream)

The average open rate of cold emails is just 14-23%. (Source: Fast Company)

The average conversion rate of a cold email is 15.11%. (Source: White Cream)

Around 24% of email opens happen within the first hour of receiving the email. (Source: Get Response)

34% of millennials say they get annoyed by cold emails that have no relevance to them. (Source: Forbes)

Companies that A/B test emails see a 37% increase in sales in comparison to those that don't test. (Source: Learn Hub)

Open rates can be increased by 49% by using A/B testing. (Source: Lead Lantern)

78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement in the last year. (Source: HubSpot)

80% of sales require at least 5 follow up emails before closing the sale. (Source: Forbes)

Welcome emails have an open rate of 82%. (Source: Adoric)

The best time to send a cold email is between 5-6AM, with an open rate of 37% and a response rate of 8%. (Source: Smart Writer)

More than 3.9 million people use email, and that number is expected to hit the 4.48 billion mark by 2024. (Source: Adoric)

Over 300 billion emails are sent every day. (Source: Adoric)

Email produces $42 for every $1 spent. (Source: HubSpot)

Cold emailing has 2 times the return on investment compared to cold calling. (Source: Business 2 Community)

Sending 4-7 emails per campaign can help you receive 3X more responses compared to sending 1-3 emails. (Source: Propeller)

How to Optimize Your Cold Emails

Personalizing an email can increase your response rate from 7% to 17%, a 100% increase. (Source: Propeller)

Friday has the highest open rate of emails during the week with an open rate of 20.58% of cold emails. (Source: Hunter)

Including the recipient's name in the subject line can increase response rate by 22%. (Source: Upland)

More than 33% of buyers will determine if they will open the email from the subject line, so keep it short and to the point. (Source: Business 2 Community)

35% of people open cold emails solely based on the subject line. (Source: Convince & Convert)

35% of buyers will access their email via phone, so keep your emails short so when viewed on mobile it does not look long. (Source: Business 2 Community)

Email response rates can be increased by 42% when the body of the email is kept under 200 words. (Source: Interseller)

Emails with less than 70 characters in the subject line have an open rate of 42% and emails with more than 70 characters have an open rate of 30%. (Source: Interseller)

Personalizing and targeting cold emails can increase the open rate by 45.5%. (Source: Fast Company)

Emails with personalized subject lines have a 50% higher chance of being opened compared to generic subject lines. (Source: Learn Hub)

Short and vague subject lines show a response rate of 66.7%, whereas long and specific subject lines have a response rate of 33.3%. (Source: Smart Writer)

69% of people will report emails as spam because of a long subject line. (Source: Convince & Convert)

82% of salespeople send emails with 60 characters or less. (Source: Convince & Convert)

Adding videos to your emails will increase your click through rate by up to 300%. (Source: Adoric)

Gmail shows 70 characters in the subject line, the iPhone shows 41 and an Android shows only 30 characters. (Source: Interseller)

Company Perception of Cold Emailing

2% of salespeople use email as their only form of communication, whereas the other 98% use a mix of email, phone, LinkedIn and other social networks. (Source: Topo)

39% of sales development organizations say their priority is to increase cold email execution. (Source: Topo)

64% of small businesses use email marketing as their main form of communication to reach customers. (Source: Campaign Monitor)

78% of marketers in 2020 said email is important to overall company success. (Source: Litmus)

Buyer Tendencies Regarding Cold Emails

In an experiment sending 700 cold emails to C and VP level executives, only 12 people responded, equaling a response rate of 1.7%. (Source: Fast Company)

Less than 33% of cold emails are opened by millennials. (Source: Forbes)

57% of buyers view cold emails as spam even before opening the email. (Source: The Guardian)

The first thing 58% of customers do in the morning is check their email, so send your cold emails in the morning to be noticed. (Source: Adoric)

Buyers who read your email on mobile and then a second time on desktop are 65% more likely to click through. (Source: Learn Hub)

86% of business professionals prefer email as their primary form of communication. (Source: Hubspot)

The average salesperson spends 2.5 hours checking their personal email per day. (Source: Adobe)

Buyers are most likely to open a cold email around 10am. (Source: Sales Handy)

The average person checks their email at least 20 times a day. (Source: Learn Hub)

Business executives are most likely to open an email on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Source: Sales Handy)

Cold Email Mistakes to Avoid

If your cold email bounce rate is over 2%, email service providers will mark your email domain as spam more frequently. (Source: Cience)

Giving up before talking to prospects at least 5 times decrease your sales by about 20%, as about 80% of prospects say "no" 4 times before they say "yes". (Source: Marketing Donut)

Emails with a multiple call to actions decrease clicks by -271% and sales by -1517%, so you should only include one call to action. (Source: Interseller)

You can decrease your sales by -600% by forgetting about your conversations and forgetting to follow up on emails within an hour of sending. (Source: Harvard Business Review)

Bottom Line: Cold Email Statistics

The cold email statistics above should provide insight on everything from the overall effectiveness of cold emailing to optimizing your cold email efforts. Use these statistics as a guide when planning and executing your cold email lead generation strategy.