How to Read Cold Email Stats in B2B

Cold emails have proven to be one of the most effective outreach channels, widely used by a variety of B2B companies regardless of size or industry. In fact, cold emailing is the single most popular outbound tactic in 2021, with 34% of marketers asserting its efficiency over other channels. Besides that, 80% of prospects prefer to be contacted by sales representatives via email rather than any other outreach channel. 

However, cold email performance isn’t a simple metric to measure: It consists of multiple KPIs (key performance indicators) to keep track of and analyze constantly to secure growth and stable ROI for the company. To evaluate how successful your cold email strategy is and define what elements of your email outreach process need improvement, you should keep track of the seven main cold email statistics discussed below.

1. Cold Emails Sent

The most basic cold email stat to monitor constantly is the total number of all cold emails sent by your sales team during a certain period of time. In outbound outreach, the more high-quality leads you manage to contact, the higher is the chance of closing more deals. 

To scale your cold email outreach effort, you should either increase your in-house team or outsource this channel to a third party that specializes in this type of outreach. Another option is to use email automation to optimize your team’s effort and reduce the time wasted on manual repetitive work. 

2. Cold Email Bounce Rate

The cold email bounce rate is a metric that shows the percentage of emails that failed to be delivered to the recipient’s inbox. The bounce rate is an extremely important metric to keep a close watch on because if it is too high (more than 2%), email service providers (ESPs) like Google, Bing, or Yahoo might mark emails from your domain as spam more frequently, making it even harder to reach out to the prospect. 

To calculate your company’s email bounce rate, use the formula: 

Tips for using lead lists 

To minimize the chances of your cold email bouncing back, follow these rules: 

• Only purchase lead lists from third parties that validate them through constant prospecting. 
• Renew your lead list once in a while to clean up invalid emails. 
• Apply Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record authentication to increase your domain’s authority. 

3. Cold Email Open Rate

The cold email open rate metric is used to define the percentage of emails opened by the recipients out of all emails delivered. It is crucial for any B2B company to achieve a good email open rate and only after that to focus on improving other metrics. After all, it doesn’t matter what you are going to write in the body of the email if it remains untouched or sent to spam by the prospect right away. 

To check out what your email open rate is, use this formula:

Open Rate = Emails Opened/(Emails Sent - Emails Bounced) * 100% 

Tips for sending emails 

If you struggle with getting your email noticed among emails sent by your competitors, try out the next tips: 

• Apply A/B testing to define the best subject line. 
• Personalize the preview section of the email.
• Segment your lead list by categories and send only relevant content to each group of leads. 

4. Cold Email Response Rate

The cold email response rate shows how many emails received a reply out of all the emails that made it to the prospect’s inbox. This metric evaluates how successful you are at interacting with your prospects and trigger them to send a reply.

To find out how successful your B2B cold email response rate is, use the formula: 

Tips for email messaging

The main purpose of any cold email in B2B is to start a conversation with a potential customer. A well-researched cold email with a proper personalization and relevant message is more likely to end up with an answer, which will later result in a high cold email response rate. If this is not the case for your company, here are a few hints to improve the situation: 

• Create a convincing but organic call-to-action. 
• Work on your opening and closing lines. 
• Don’t be afraid to include a direct question to your prospect. 
• Choose the best time to send a cold email. 

5. Cold Email Adjusted Response Rate

The key difference between cold email adjusted response rate and the cold email response rate metric is that this one is based not on all the emails delivered but just on those which were actually opened by the prospects. This metric gives you a better understanding of how good your emails are in terms of the value they generate for the prospects. 

To calculate the adjusted response rate, use this formula: 

Tips to boost adjusted response rates

To increase this stat, you should first work on the content of the cold emails you send in these ways: 

• Improve the structure of the email. 
• Add more personalization.
• Make each prospect feel special for your business.

6. Cold Email Click-Through Rate 

Cold email click-through rate (CTR) is a stat that shows how many people have clicked on at least one link incorporated in the body of your email. This metric includes tracking the effectiveness of all types of CTAs, regardless of where this link leads: to schedule an appointment, to read a blog, to subscribe to news, or to purchase a product. 

To measure cold email click-through rate in B2B, you’ll need to apply the next formula: 

Tips to improve click-through rates

Cold emails are primarily a channel for communication with the prospects, but not a platform where the final sale is happening. To attract the prospect into the sales funnel, they will have to go out of their email boxes. But remember, to keep your CTR metric high, follow these tips: 

• Never overstuff your cold emails with links to avoid the spam folder. 
• Define the perfect size, color, and shape of a CTA button that works best on your recipients. 
• Send only value-adding offers without spammy content. 

7. Cold Email Conversion Rate 

The cold email conversion rate measures how many recipients completed the most desired action for your business and made it to the bottom of the sales funnel. This metric can be based on the number of closed deals, appointments set up, subscribers, unique visitors to your blog, etc.

To calculate, simply use the formula: 

Tips to increase conversion rates

In B2B, conversion rate (CR) shows how well your cold email is selling your product or services. If this metric isn’t good enough, try different options to boost it: 

• Use the benefits of multichannel outreach. 
• Make sure the landing page you link to is highly targeted for the specific campaign. 
• Experiment with your writing style and the context of your cold email. 

Boost Your Cold Email Outreach

All the seven statistics mentioned above are there to help you improve your cold email outreach process. However, to boost the efficiency of this channel, you have to pay attention and analyze all the data altogether. If you limit yourself to monitoring only cold email open rate, response rate, or click-through rate, for example, you’ll have just a small part of the picture, which might lead you to wrong conclusions. To avoid any mistakes in the future and build a strong cold email campaign, contact our specialists today.