Free tools / Cold email follow-up planner
Cold email follow-up planner: how many follow-ups get replies
Updated November 7, 2026. Data: 1,143,394 recipient threads from the Sales.co sending database, October 6, 2025 to October 18, 2026. Runs in your browser.
For B2B teams planning a cold email sequence: send at least one follow-up. In our 1,143,394 recipient threads the second email drew 0.447% human replies against 0.495% for the first, and emails 3 to 5 each drew 0.331% to 0.384%. Every step through the fifth still earned replies.
Enter your contacts, the emails each one gets and the days between them. The planner is free with no signup. If you would rather not run the sequence yourself, Sales.co sends it for you from $2,000 a month, see pricing.
1,000 contacts, 3 emails each, 7 days apart (the last goes out on day 15): about 13.0 human replies, 3.8 of them interested. The first email alone would bring 5.0, so the follow-ups add 8.0 more (162% on top). Step 3 is the first that returns under three quarters of the first email's reply rate (a 75% line we chose, not an industry rule).
In our data, a second email sent 5-7 days after the first drew 0.460% human replies and 0.077% interested (15,641 recipients).
| Step | Day | Emails sent | Reply rate | Human replies | Interested | Share of replies | Added to earlier steps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (first email) | 1 | 1,000 | 0.495% | 5.0 | 1.4 | 38.2% | - |
| 2 | 8 | 995 | 0.447% | 4.4 | 1.3 | 34.3% | +90% |
| 3 | 15 | 991 | 0.361% | 3.6 | 1.0 | 27.6% | +38% |
| Total | 15 | 2,986 | 0.435% | 13.0 | 3.8 | 100.0% |
Same contacts, one to 5 emails
| Emails per contact | Human replies | Interested | Emails sent | Emails per reply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5.0 | 1.4 | 1,000 | 202 |
| 2 | 9.4 | 2.7 | 1,995 | 212 |
| 3 | 13.0 | 3.8 | 2,986 | 230 |
| 4 | 16.8 | 4.5 | 3,973 | 237 |
| 5 | 20.0 | 5.3 | 4,956 | 248 |
How to read it
- Reply rate: the share of recipients who answered that step, from the table below. Each step is applied to the contacts who have not replied yet.
- Human replies: a person answered. Auto-replies, out-of-office, bounces and spam are left out. Interested is the part labeled possibly interested.
- Share of replies: each step's part of the plan's total. It differs from the 74.3% first-email share in the study because most threads there got one email; here every contact gets every step.
- Added to earlier steps: the replies this step brings as a percentage of all replies from the steps before it.
- Emails per reply: emails sent divided by replies. When it climbs, the extra email costs more sending for each answer.
- Three-quarters line: the planner flags the first step whose rate is under 75% of the first email's. We picked 75%; the data has no natural cutoff, and a step can still pay for itself below it. Step 4 rose back above it.
Reply rate by step
With 1,000 contacts and the default 3 emails, the planner shows 13.0 human replies against 5.0 for the first email alone.
| Step | Recipients | Human replies | Human reply rate | Interested replies | Interested rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,143,394 | 5,660 | 0.495% | 1,637 | 0.143% |
| 2 | 329,644 | 1,475 | 0.447% | 432 | 0.131% |
| 3 | 76,191 | 275 | 0.361% | 79 | 0.104% |
| 4 | 39,795 | 153 | 0.384% | 30 | 0.075% |
| 5 | 8,455 | 28 | 0.331% | 7 | 0.083% |
Step 6 and later is not shown: the file holds 5,376 recipients there, but one workspace sent 48.6% of them, over the 45% cap. The full cut, with the gap between emails and the sequence length, is in the cold email follow-up reply rates study.
What to do next
- Grade the first email's subject line with the subject line grader.
- Run each draft through the email spam checker before it goes out.
- Turn expected replies into meetings and revenue with the lead generation calculator.
- See the other free tools, or have us run the sequence: done-for-you cold email is $2,000, $2,500 or $3,000 a month for up to 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 emails (pricing).
Method and sources
Source: data/followup-steps.json, built from the Sales.co sending database (every sent email with its step number, plus labeled replies), 1,143,394 recipient threads across 58 sending workspaces, October 6, 2025 to October 18, 2026, data through October 18, 2026. A recipient thread is one address in one workspace from the first email of its sequence; a reply counts when it is credited to the last email sent before it, with 14 days allowed for replies to arrive. A step is shown only with at least 2,000 recipients and no workspace over 45% of them. The planner multiplies each step's rate by the contacts who have not replied by then. Page updated November 7, 2026.
FAQ
How many follow-ups should I send in a cold email sequence?
In our data every step through email 5 still drew replies: 0.495% human replies at the first email, 0.447% at the second, 0.361% at the third, 0.384% at the fourth and 0.331% at the fifth. Use the planner to see what each extra email adds for your list size. Data for a sixth email is too thin to show.
How many days should I wait between cold emails?
In our data, a second email sent 8 to 14 days after the first drew 0.594% human replies and 0.263% interested (47,843 recipients), against 0.437% at 3 to 4 days and 0.351% at 1 to 2 days. Those groups came from different senders, so it is a comparison and not a controlled test. Put your gap in the planner to see the day each email goes out.
Do I need to give my email to use the planner?
No. The planner runs in your browser with the numbers already on the page, so nothing you type is sent anywhere and there is no signup.
Where do the planner's reply rates come from?
They come from the Sales.co sending database: 1,143,394 recipient threads across 58 sending workspaces, October 6, 2025 to October 18, 2026, with data through October 18, 2026. Only steps with at least 2,000 recipients and no workspace over 45% of them are shown. The full write-up is in the follow-up reply rates study.