Fardeen Karim
Email tracking in Gmail: how it works and what you can trust
How open and click tracking really work in Gmail, simple ways to add them without heavy extensions, and why an open can be counted when nobody read the email.
Fardeen KarimRead Across six-plus years and roughly 12 million cold emails for SaaS and agency clients, I've mostly seen reply rates of 1-3%. You'll read articles promising far more. I can only tell you what I've seen, and it's that.
Why 1-3% is enough
A low percentage works because the emails are cheap and the customers aren't. Do the sum with your own numbers, using deliberately cautious guesses:
- 5,000 people emailed at a 2% reply rate is 100 replies.
- If 1 in 5 of those replies is interested, that's 20 conversations.
- If 1 in 5 of those becomes a customer, that's 4 customers.
Whether 4 customers is good depends entirely on what one is worth. The ROI calculator runs it with your own figures. These are example numbers for the sum, not a promise.
Count replies honestly
A reply rate can flatter you. Out-of-office messages aren't replies, and neither are bounces. "Please remove me" technically is one, but it won't pay your bills. Keep two numbers: all human replies, and interested replies. The second one tells you whether the offer works.
What moves the number
- The list, more than anything. The right people with a real reason to care. Bad lists are one of the failures I've seen again and again.
- The offer. A great email can't save a weak offer. If people read it and shrug, change what you're offering, not the adjectives.
- Follow-ups. I send one email and three follow-ups. Here's the timing.
- Length and tone. Short and plain, like one person writing to another.
- Landing in the inbox. None of the above matters in the spam folder.
How to diagnose a low reply rate
Don't rewrite the copy first. Work through this in order:
- Almost nobody replies, not even to say no. Suspect deliverability. Run a placement test.
- People reply, but mostly "not interested". You're reaching them, so the offer or the audience is off.
- Interested replies, but no meetings. The problem is what happens after the reply. See turning replies into meetings.
Give it a fair test
Don't judge a campaign on 50 emails: a single reply swings the rate by 2%. Test a few hundred people in one tight niche, with follow-ups finished, before you decide anything.
mailzy's Unibox labels replies so you can see interested ones apart from the rest, and analytics shows reply rate by campaign and by step.