What is Reply Rate?

Reply rate is the percentage of contacted prospects who respond to your outreach, calculated as replies divided by messages sent (or by unique prospects contacted). It's a core health metric because it measures whether your targeting and messaging are actually resonating — high send volume with a low reply rate usually means poor relevance, not bad luck.

It's worth separating positive replies from all replies: a raw reply rate counts "not interested" and "unsubscribe" alongside genuine interest. Tracking positive reply rate gives a truer read on whether outreach is generating opportunities.

Reply rates vary widely by channel and segment, so the useful comparison is against your own baseline and across sequence variants, not against a universal benchmark.