A personalised email body lifts replies by 32.7%

The same Backlinko and Pitchbox study found that outreach emails whose body copy referenced specific recent articles by the recipient or a tailored angle for the receiving site lifted reply rates by 32.7 per cent against template body copy. Notably the body-personalisation uplift is roughly the same magnitude as subject-line personalisation and the two stack near-linearly: campaigns running both consistently see reply rates roughly double the template baseline. For programmes evaluating manual-versus-AI-assisted personalisation, the open question is whether AI-drafted personalisation captures the same lift. Early evidence suggests it captures most of it when fed real article content rather than recipient names alone.