Glossary
What is reply rate?
Reply rate is the share of the people you contacted who wrote back. Divide the number of people who replied by the number of people you messaged, and multiply by 100. Count people, not messages, and decide up front whether an automatic reply counts.
Published by Sellinger AI. Numbers and settings checked on 19 October 2026 against the fact register. Report an error.
What is the formula?
Reply rate = people who replied ÷ people messaged × 100.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| People messaged | 500 |
| People who replied at least once | 110 |
| Of those, auto replies and out of office | 10 |
| Reply rate counting everyone | 22% |
| Reply rate counting real replies only | 20% |
Example: 110 ÷ 500 = 22 percent. Removing 10 machine replies gives 100 ÷ 500 = 20 percent.
What affects reply rate?
The list, the opener and the follow ups. In Sellinger's own LinkedIn data the first message alone got 26.5 percent of people to reply, and with follow ups the total reached 38.4 percent. A reply is also not a meeting: look at positive replies and meetings per person messaged next to it.
Common mistakes
- Dividing by messages sent instead of people messaged.
- Counting out of office replies.
- Comparing across channels, where a reply means different things.
- Judging a batch too early, before the follow ups have gone out.
- Reading a high rate as success when most replies are a polite no.
How Sellinger handles it
In Sellinger's own workspace, 10,978 of 27,737 people messaged replied, 40 percent, on LinkedIn. The rate stayed between 35 and 45 percent across twelve monthly cohorts. See the Sellinger case study. autoresponders are marked as machine mail and do not count as a human reply, so the figure is not inflated by autoresponders.
That number is for one workspace and one list mix, not a promise. See connection acceptance rate for the step before a LinkedIn message.
Common questions
What is a good reply rate for cold outreach?
Does reply rate equal interest?
Should I count follow up replies?
Sources and method
Sellinger case study (own workspace, snapshot 9 October 2026), checked 19 October 2026.
Related: Sellinger case study, Connection acceptance rate, Cold outreach, Speed to lead.
