Only 8.5% of outreach emails get a reply

Backlinko and Pitchbox jointly analysed twelve million link-building outreach emails sent through Pitchbox in the four years leading up to the 2019 study and found an average reply rate of 8.5 per cent, roughly one reply for every twelve sent. The distribution is heavy-tailed: a small share of senders run substantially above the average through tighter list quality and personalisation, while the median sender sits below it. For programme planners, the practical implication is that any outreach forecast built on a higher implicit reply rate will overstate the expected placement volume; the 8.5 per cent figure is the realistic baseline against which campaign-level efficiency gains should be measured.