Cold email follow-up reply rates, step by step, from 1.1M recipients
By Ryan Doyle, co-founder of Sales.co. Published October 25, 2026, updated October 25, 2026.
Send at least two follow-ups, three emails in all. Across 1,117,412 people Sales.co cold emailed from Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026, the second email got 0.43% human replies per recipient against 0.50% for the first, and the third still got 0.36%. The second and third emails each drew most of the first email's rate. Only 28% of recipients got a second email in the window, so follow-ups produced 24.9% of all replies.
What this page adds: the reply rate of each email in a sequence, counted per person who got it before they had replied. It comes from one company's own sending: 1,117,412 recipients and 7,366 human replies, each reply credited to the email it answered. The page is generated from the data file, so the dates above are the dates of the numbers.
Quick answers · By step · Timing · Limits · Method · FAQ
Quick answers
- How many follow-up emails should a cold email sequence have?
- At least two, so three emails in all. In Sales.co's data the second email got 87% of the first email's human reply rate per recipient (0.43% vs 0.50%) and the third got 72% (0.36%, 272 replies). With the largest sender removed those are 89% and 64%. Past the third email the data thins out: 148 and 27 replies at steps four and five, with one sender making up to 44% of those emails. Treat a fourth email and later as a test.
- What reply rate does a follow-up email get?
- 0.43% of recipients replied to the second email (1,358 of 314,038), counting only people who had not replied yet, and 0.13% replied with interest. The first email got 0.50% and 0.14%.
- What share of cold email replies come from follow-ups?
- 24.9% of human replies and 24.5% of interested replies answered a follow-up; 75.1% answered the first email. The share is low mostly because few recipients got a follow-up: 28% got a second email and 6.8% a third. Per person who got one, the second email drew 87% of the first email's reply rate.
- How long should you wait before sending a follow-up?
- One to two weeks did best in this data. Second emails sent 8-14 days after the first got 0.53% human and 0.249% interested replies per recipient (42,202 recipients), against 0.35% to 0.46% human and at most 0.110% interested for the other gaps. The gap shows most in interested replies; on human replies the 1-2 days, 3-4 days and 5-7 days rows are close. Each campaign picked its own gap, so read this as what happened, and test the gap on your own list.
- Do interested replies fall off faster than replies overall?
- Not through the third email: its interested rate (0.101%, 77 replies) was 71% of the first email's (0.142%), close to the 72% for all human replies. After that it drops further: the fourth and fifth emails got 0.075% and 0.071% interested (30 and 6 replies, so read those as direction only).
- Is the first cold email the most important one?
- It reaches everyone, so it brings most replies: 75.1% here. Per person who received it, though, the second email did almost as well (87% of the first email's rate). Here 1,358 people who had not answered the first email replied to the second.
Reply rate by step in the sequence
Each rate below is the share of people who got that email, and had not replied before it, who replied to it. The first email got 0.50%. The second got 0.43%, 87% of that, and the third 0.36%, 72%. With the largest sender removed the pattern holds: 0.47%, 0.42% and 0.30% (89% and 64% of the first). What shrinks fast is the audience: 1,117,412 people got a first email, 314,038 a second (28%) and 76,188 a third (6.8%).
| Recipients | Human replies | Human reply rate | Interested rate | Share of all replies | Human rate, largest sender removed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| first email | 1,117,412 | 5,534 | 0.50% | 0.142% | 75.1% | 0.47% |
| second email (follow-up 1) | 314,038 | 1,358 | 0.43% | 0.125% | 18.4% | 0.42% |
| third email (follow-up 2) | 76,188 | 272 | 0.36% | 0.101% (77) | 3.7% | 0.30% |
| fourth email (follow-up 3) | 39,795 | 148 | 0.37% | 0.075% (30) | 2% | 0.31% (73) |
| fifth email (follow-up 4) | 8,455 | 27 | 0.32% | 0.071% (6) | 0.4% | 0.32% (15) |
| sixth or later email (follow-up 5+) | 5,376 | 27 | not shown | not shown | 0.4% | 0.43% (12) |
Rates resting on fewer than 100 replies show the count in brackets. "Not shown": fewer than 2,000 recipients at that step, or one sending workspace sent more than 45% of those emails. Steps four and five rest on 148 and 27 human replies, and one sender sent 41% and 44% of those emails, so read them as direction only. Source: Sales.co sending data, October 6, 2025 to October 10, 2026.
Why "most replies come from the first email" misleads: it is true here too (75.1% of replies). The figure mostly reflects how few people got a follow-up: per email received, the second email did 87% as well as the first.
How long to wait before the first follow-up
Second emails sent 8-14 days after the first got the highest reply rates in this data: 0.53% human (222 replies from 42,202 recipients) and 0.249% interested (105). The other gaps got 0.35% to 0.46% human and at most 0.110% interested. On human replies the 1-2 days, 3-4 days and 5-7 days rows (12, 32 and 71 replies) are within noise of it; the clearer difference is in interested replies. Without the largest sender, 8-14 days got 0.52% human and 0.246% interested, against at most 0.42% and 0.093%. After 1-2 days, 0.35% replied (12 replies, 0 interested, from 3,419 recipients), too few to rank that gap. Most second emails here went out 15+ days later (78%), so the shorter gaps rest on fewer recipients. Each campaign chose its own gap, so the table shows what happened at each gap; it cannot show what changing yours will do.
| Days after email 1 | Recipients of email 2 | Human replies | Human reply rate | Interested rate | Human rate, largest sender removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 days | 3,419 | 12 | 0.35% | 0.000% (0) | 0.36% (12) |
| 3-4 days | 7,271 | 32 | 0.44% | 0.069% (5) | 0.42% (26) |
| 5-7 days | 15,318 | 71 | 0.46% | 0.078% (12) | 0.40% (51) |
| 8-14 days | 42,202 | 222 | 0.53% | 0.249% | 0.52% |
| 15+ days | 245,828 | 1,021 | 0.42% | 0.110% | 0.40% |
Days are whole days between the first and second email to the same person. The gap before the third email is left out: 4 of its 5 groups rest on fewer than 50 replies.
Limits
The strongest objection: the people who get a follow-up are not a random sample. Campaigns with longer sequences may differ in list, offer and sender. Each campaign also sets its own gap before a follow-up, so the timing table shows what each gap got and cannot show what changing your gap will do. The step rates hold with the largest sender removed, so the largest sender's sequences do not make the pattern on their own; campaign mix could still play a part.
The edge of the window: emails sent after October 10, 2026 are not counted. People first emailed in the last weeks of the window had less time to get a follow-up, and a reply to a follow-up sent after that date is credited to the last counted email. Both effects can only lift the earlier step's numbers and lower the 28% who got a second email. The data also cannot see replies a sending tool failed to tie to a recipient, so every rate is a floor.
What to do with this
Write the sequence as at least three emails. For the second email, one to two weeks after the first did best here; if you follow up sooner, test that gap on part of your list. Interested replies fall with each later email (0.142% on the first, 0.101% by the third on 77 replies), so judge a fourth or fifth email by the interested replies it brings. For wording, see the follow-up email templates; to check a follow-up for spam words, use the email spam checker. To see what a reply rate means for meetings at your volume, use the lead generation calculator.
If you would rather have someone run the sequences, Sales.co runs done-for-you cold email from $2,000 a month for up to 10,000 emails, month-to-month. See pricing.
Method
- Source: Sales.co's sending database: 1,877,645 sent cold emails with their step number, to 1,117,412 recipients, from 58 sending workspaces, October 6, 2025 to October 10, 2026, and the replies the sending tool labeled.
- Unit: recipient thread: one recipient address in one sending workspace, from the first email of its sequence. Recipients whose sequence started before the window (94,664) or who had replied before it (356) are left out.
- Step: the email's place in its sequence. The database's own step number matched the email's position for 100% of emails (7 differed).
- A human reply is the recipient's first reply that is not an auto-reply, out-of-office, bounce, warm-up, test or spam (sending tool's labels), credited to the last email sent before it. An interested reply is a thread whose replies include one labeled 'possibly interested', credited to the same email as its first human reply. Recipients at a step: recipients who got that email before they had replied.
- Window: emails sent up to 14 days before the newest send in the database, so late replies have time to arrive.
- Left out: any row with fewer than 2,000 recipients, or where one sending workspace sent more than 45% of the emails. The largest sender sent to 16% of recipients, so each table also shows the rate with it removed. No client is named and no email, subject line or address is published.
- An older Sales.co report, the cold email reality check, counted an earlier period with another reply definition and put the first email's share of replies at 69%, against 75.1% here. Compare numbers within one page.
- Refresh: the data is recomputed weekly and this page is regenerated from it; the freshness line at the top is written from the data file.
Cite this: Sales.co, "Cold email follow-up reply rates, step by step", https://sales.co/research/cold-email-follow-up-reply-rates, data through October 10, 2026.
Where to go next
Best time to send cold email · 11 cold email rules from 1.1M emails · cold email statistics · follow-up email templates · cold email subject line grader · all Sales.co research
Sources
- Sales.co sending database: 1,117,412 recipients, 1,877,645 sent emails and 7,366 human replies, October 6, 2025 to October 10, 2026, as of October 25, 2026.
- Sales.co pricing and plans: sales.co/pricing, read October 25, 2026.
FAQ
How many follow-up emails should a cold email sequence have?
At least two, so three emails in all. In Sales.co's data the second email got 87% of the first email's human reply rate per recipient (0.43% vs 0.50%) and the third got 72% (0.36%, 272 replies). With the largest sender removed those are 89% and 64%. Past the third email the data thins out: 148 and 27 replies at steps four and five, with one sender making up to 44% of those emails. Treat a fourth email and later as a test.
What reply rate does a follow-up email get?
0.43% of recipients replied to the second email (1,358 of 314,038), counting only people who had not replied yet, and 0.13% replied with interest. The first email got 0.50% and 0.14%.
What share of cold email replies come from follow-ups?
24.9% of human replies and 24.5% of interested replies answered a follow-up; 75.1% answered the first email. The share is low mostly because few recipients got a follow-up: 28% got a second email and 6.8% a third. Per person who got one, the second email drew 87% of the first email's reply rate.
How long should you wait before sending a follow-up?
One to two weeks did best in this data. Second emails sent 8-14 days after the first got 0.53% human and 0.249% interested replies per recipient (42,202 recipients), against 0.35% to 0.46% human and at most 0.110% interested for the other gaps. The gap shows most in interested replies; on human replies the 1-2 days, 3-4 days and 5-7 days rows are close. Each campaign picked its own gap, so read this as what happened, and test the gap on your own list.
Do interested replies fall off faster than replies overall?
Not through the third email: its interested rate (0.101%, 77 replies) was 71% of the first email's (0.142%), close to the 72% for all human replies. After that it drops further: the fourth and fifth emails got 0.075% and 0.071% interested (30 and 6 replies, so read those as direction only).
Is the first cold email the most important one?
It reaches everyone, so it brings most replies: 75.1% here. Per person who received it, though, the second email did almost as well (87% of the first email's rate). Here 1,358 people who had not answered the first email replied to the second.