Email Deliverability Benchmarks — Cited Industry Data

Last reviewed: May 28, 2026  ·  Submit a correction or new source

This page is a neutral, evergreen compendium of email deliverability and outreach benchmarks. It is built for one purpose: to be a reliable citation source. Every number on the page traces back to a named primary study, with both a live URL and a Wayback Machine archive link so the reference resolves even if the original page is moved or removed.

The data covers seven areas where founders, deliverability operators, and researchers routinely need a hard number to cite: inbox placement by mailbox provider, cold-email reply and bounce rates, performance by industry, LinkedIn connection and message benchmarks, warmup timeline expectations, the spam-filter signals that matter in 2025-2026, and the global state of DMARC/SPF/DKIM authentication compliance.

No tool, vendor, or platform is ranked or recommended on this page. Where two primary sources disagree, both values appear with their respective citations. Where no published study breaks out a number, the cell reads "No public benchmark available" — figures are never fabricated to fill a gap.

Inbox Placement Rate by ISP

Inbox placement rate (IPR) is the percentage of legitimate, sent mail that reaches the recipient's inbox rather than the spam folder or being silently dropped. It is the single most-cited deliverability metric, and it varies significantly by mailbox provider. The table below reports global averages compiled by Validity from their measurement panel, alongside regional figures where breakouts are published.

IPR is not a sender-controllable metric in isolation — it reflects the interaction between the sender's reputation, list quality, content, authentication posture, and the receiving provider's filtering policy. Different ISPs apply very different filtering models, which is why the spread between Microsoft and Gmail/Yahoo/Apple is so wide in the current data.

Metric2024-2025 AverageNotes
Global average (all ISPs)83.5% (2024) -> 87.2% (2025) [1][2]3.7-point year-over-year uplift after Feb 2024 bulk-sender mandate took effect. 6.7% spam-folder rate; 9.8% missing in 2024.
Gmail (Google Workspace + consumer)87.2%-89.8% [1][3]Started 2024 near 89.8% IPR, declined to 87.2% during initial bulk-sender enforcement, recovered toward 89.8% across 2025. Gmail holds roughly 42.9% global mailbox-provider market share.
Microsoft 365 / Outlook75.6% [1][3]Worst inbox placement among major providers; spam-folder rate exceeds 14%. Microsoft does not publish a Postmaster-Tools-equivalent reputation dashboard.
Yahoo / AOL87.3% [1][3]Improved markedly after Yahoo Sender Hub launch and Feb 2024 bulk-sender alignment with Gmail.
Apple iCloud82.0% [1][3]Reasonable IPR but iOS 18.2 Mail Privacy Protection changes affect open-rate signals more than placement.
Zoho MailNo public benchmark available Not separately reported in major industry studies.
No published study breaks this out
Comcast / Verizon / consumer ISPsNo public benchmark available Grouped under "other" in Validity reporting; declining share of inbox traffic overall.
No published study breaks this out
Europe (regional)89.1% [1][3]Outperforms US by roughly 6 percentage points; Validity attributes this to stricter consent regimes (GDPR, German double-opt-in case law).
United States (regional)~83% [1]Six percentage points below double-opt-in markets, per Validity 2025 quarterly tracking.

The most striking pattern in the 2024-2025 data is the gap between Microsoft and the other three majors. Microsoft inbox placement sits at 75.6% with spam rates above 14%, while Gmail, Yahoo, and Apple cluster in the 82-90% band. The most-cited explanation across multiple primary sources is that Microsoft's content-based filter weighs sender-content combinations more aggressively than its peers, and Microsoft does not publish a public reputation dashboard with domain or content visibility. Senders therefore have less corrective feedback on Microsoft than they do on Gmail.

The second pattern is that regional double-opt-in regulation works. European inbox placement (89.1%) outperforms the US by roughly six percentage points, which Validity attributes to stricter consent regimes producing cleaner lists and better engagement-driven scoring. The same dynamic shows up in the quarterly tracking: regions with the most aggressive privacy law have the highest inbox placement.

Third, the Feb 2024 Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender mandate had a temporary cost but a lasting benefit. Gmail IPR briefly dipped from 89.8% to 87.2% during initial enforcement, attributed to senders being filtered while they scrambled to add DMARC. By mid-2025, IPR recovered as the long tail of senders came into compliance. The 11-point year-over-year increase in DMARC adoption among informed senders is the structural driver behind the global uplift.

Cold Email Response Benchmarks

Cold email benchmarks have shifted meaningfully over the past five years. Reply rates have compressed downward as inbox saturation has increased, while bounce-rate and spam-complaint thresholds have tightened following the Feb 2024 Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender mandate. The table below reports cross-industry averages and top-quartile performance, drawn from primary measurement reports published by Mailshake, Apollo, Instantly, Lemlist, and Mailmodo.

"Top quartile" or "top 10%" figures represent well-segmented, signal-triggered programs with verified lists — not what an untargeted broadcast produces. The gap between median and top-decile performance has widened over time, which is the most important structural pattern in the data.

MetricIndustry AverageTop 10% (Top Quartile)
Open rate (cold, B2B)36.7%-42.35% [4][5][6]50%+
Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection; reply rate is the more trustworthy engagement metric.
Reply rate (cold)3.0%-5.1% (3.43% recent mean) [4][7][8]15%-25%
Positive reply rate (interested/qualified)~14.1% of total replies; ~0.5%-2% of contacts emailed [9][10]2%-5% of contacts (tight ICP)
Bounce rate (cold email)5%-8% typical for cold lists [4][11]<2% on opt-in equivalent
Hard bounce rate (danger zone)>8% triggers reputational damage [4][11]<3% target
Spam complaint rate (Gmail enforcement hard limit)<0.30% (mandatory) [12][13][14]<0.10% (recommended)
Above 0.30% sustained in Postmaster Tools triggers rejection, not just filtering, as of Nov 2025.
Spam complaint rate (industry average actual)~0.07% [15]<0.02%
Click-through rate (B2B)2.0%-4.0% [5]>6%

Reply rates for cold email have declined substantially over the past five years. Longitudinal data from multiple primary measurement reports shows the cross-industry average dropping from 8.5% (2019) to 7% (2023), 5% (2025), and 3.43% (2026). The decline is consistent across independent measurements, converging on the same trend. The most-cited drivers are inbox saturation as more sales teams adopt cold-email tooling, stricter ISP filtering after the Feb 2024 mandate, and recipient fatigue with generic, AI-template-detectable messages.

The flip side is that top-quartile performance has not collapsed — it has bifurcated. Top-decile senders running signal-based, tight-ICP, behavioral-trigger outreach routinely report 15%-25% reply rates in the published hook studies, which means the dispersion between bottom and top quartiles is wider than ever. The "3.43% average" is a misleading north-star for any individual sender: the median program is much closer to 3%, while a well-segmented program with a fresh verified list and a triggered hook can clear 10% comfortably.

For bounce rates, the canonical "keep it under 2%" target was calibrated for permission-based newsletter lists. Cold-email programs are calibrated differently: the realistic cold-email median sits at 5-8%, and "danger zone" doesn't begin until 8%+. The single largest driver of cold-email bounce rate is list source quality — verified email-finder output keeps bounces under 5%; scraped lists routinely exceed 15%.

On spam complaints, Google's enforcement threshold is now hard: above 0.30% spam rate in Postmaster Tools for sustained periods triggers rejection, not just filtering. The recommended ceiling of 0.10% is what experienced deliverability operators target, and 0.02-0.05% is what well-segmented lists actually produce. November 2025 marked the transition from warning to enforcement, so the 0.30% hard limit is now operationally relevant.

Cold Email Benchmarks by Industry

Cold-email performance varies meaningfully by recipient industry — and the pattern is the opposite of what many B2B marketers expect. The industries that most heavily adopt cold-email tooling (SaaS, software, marketing services) are the worst-performing verticals on both open rate and reply rate, because their prospect pools are the most saturated.

The table below combines cold-email open-rate breakdowns and reply-rate data from primary studies. Where a vertical lacks a clean cold-email cell, the row notes "No public benchmark available" rather than fabricate a number from non-comparable data.

MetricOpen Rate (cold)Reply Rate (cold)
SaaS / Software25.71% [16][17]~3%-5%
Agencies / Marketing servicesNo public benchmark available [18]3%-5% per published guidance
No published study breaks out cold-email open rate for this vertical at the same granularity.
Finance / Financial services~28% [18][16]2%-3% average; 5%-8% top performers
Healthcare34.01%-37.39% (marketing email; cold lower) [19][17]Cold reply data unpublished; LinkedIn reply 9.25%
Healthcare marketing-email open rates are routinely published; cold-prospecting reply data for healthcare specifically is not.
Manufacturing19% [16][18]5%-8% target; 7%-10% top performers
Legal & professional servicesNo public benchmark available [17]Cold-email reply unpublished; LinkedIn reply 10.42% (highest in study)
No published study breaks out cold-email reply rate for this vertical.
Retail & consumer goodsNo public benchmark available [17]Cold-email reply unpublished; LinkedIn reply 9.17%
No published study breaks out cold-email reply rate for this vertical.

The industry pattern in 2024-2025 inverts what many B2B marketers expect. SaaS — the industry that most heavily adopts cold-email tooling — is the worst-performing vertical on both open rate and reply rate, sitting roughly half a standard deviation below the cross-industry median. The explanation across the primary studies is consistent: SaaS prospects are the most cold-emailed group on the internet. The same prospects who get pitched by 50 SaaS vendors a week are not the same as a manufacturing operations VP getting their first cold email in months.

Legal and professional services lead on LinkedIn reply rate (10.42% in the cited 20M-attempt study), which the source attributes to lower automation prevalence in those verticals — the channel is less saturated. Manufacturing's relatively modest 19% cold-email open rate is paired with strong reply rates among those who do open (5-8%), suggesting a high-intent audience that's harder to reach but rewarding to convert.

The healthcare data is double-edged: marketing emails to healthcare lists open at 34-37%, but cold prospecting into healthcare practitioners is constrained by regulatory caution (HIPAA-adjacent recipients are slower to reply to unsolicited mail). The 9.25% LinkedIn reply rate suggests LinkedIn is a more receptive channel for healthcare outreach than cold email.

Sample-size note: the LinkedIn industry breakouts referenced in this section come from a 2024 study analyzing 20 million-plus outreach attempts across a single year, and a separate H1 2025 dataset covering more than 70,000 campaigns. Cold-email open-rate breakouts are drawn from aggregated team data where specific cohort sizes are not published per the source's methodology page.

LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks (Neutral)

LinkedIn outreach metrics fall into three clusters: connection-request acceptance rate (the share of cold connect requests accepted), message reply rate (after acceptance, on the follow-up DM), and InMail response rate (for paid Sales Navigator users sending to non-connections). The table below reports each cluster with primary citations from large-N studies and LinkedIn's own published documentation.

LinkedIn has never published official daily or weekly invitation limits. The widely-cited caps below are reverse-engineered from observed account-restriction patterns across multiple automation tool vendors. They are presented here as practitioner consensus, not as official LinkedIn policy.

MetricIndustry AverageTop 10%
Connection request acceptance rate26%-30% (29.61% H1 2025); 37% (16k-invitation study) [20][21]50%-70%
Message reply rate, no personalized note5.44% [17]15%+
Message reply rate, with personalized note9.36% [17]15%+
InMail response rate (Sales Navigator)10%-25% (LinkedIn published range) [22][23]30%-40% (elite social-selling)
InMail response rate (no personalization)3%-5% [23]No public benchmark available
Daily safe invite cap (free / basic)~20 per day (<=100 per week) [24][25][26]—
Weekly safe invite cap (premium / Sales Navigator)200 per week [24][25]Up to 250 (established accounts)

LinkedIn outreach is the inverse of cold email on saturation effects. The technology/SaaS vertical has the lowest LinkedIn reply rate (4.77% in the 20M-attempt study) for the same reason it has the lowest cold-email reply rate: prospect fatigue. But connection acceptance rates are less polarized — even SaaS still sees roughly 27.5% acceptance, suggesting the initial "connect" gesture has lower psychological friction than a cold-email reply ask.

The personalization premium on LinkedIn is large and well-measured. A connection request with a personalized note generates a reply rate of 9.36%, versus 5.44% with no note — a 1.72x lift from a single intervention. That same effect compounds further with signal-triggered outreach (referencing recent funding, content engagement, or job change).

On safe-sending caps: the widely-cited "100 per week" basic-account ceiling and "200 per week" premium ceiling are reverse-engineered from observed account-restriction patterns across multiple practitioner platforms. The unwritten rule among practitioners is roughly 20 invites per day on a basic account, scaling to about 25 per day on Sales Navigator. Bursts above 30 per day on a new or low-SSI account routinely trigger temporary restrictions, which is why responsible automation rate-limits below LinkedIn's enforcement threshold.

InMail response rates of 10%-25% are LinkedIn's own published range. The bottom of that range assumes generic templates; the top assumes well-personalized messages referencing recent activity. The 3%-5% figure for unpersonalized InMail is consistent with what most untargeted blasts actually achieve in practice.

Email Warmup Timeline Benchmarks

Warmup duration is the deliverability metric with the widest legitimate disagreement across published sources, because it depends on three independent variables: domain age, IP age (shared versus dedicated), and target steady-state volume. The table below reports the consensus ranges from primary warmup-focused publications.

The cleanest consensus is for the lowest end of the volume curve: a new domain warming to 50 emails per day takes 2-3 weeks. Above that, sources diverge based on assumptions about whether the IP is also new and whether authentication is fully aligned at start.

MetricTarget Daily VolumeAverage Warmup Duration
New domain (<30 days)50 emails/day [27][28]14-21 days (2-3 weeks)
New domain (<30 days)100 emails/day [29][30][31]4-8 weeks (28-56 days)
New domain + new IP (combined warmup)100 emails/day [31][32]6-12 weeks
Established domain (90+ days)100 emails/day [28][31]1-2 weeks (faster ramp)
Established -> 200+ emails/day200+/day [28]4-6 weeks
Reputation recovery (post-incident)50/day [29][33]4-8 weeks

Warmup duration is the deliverability metric with the widest legitimate disagreement across sources, because it depends on three independent variables: domain age, IP age, and target steady-state volume. The cleanest consensus is for the lowest end of the curve: a new domain warming to 50 per day takes 2-3 weeks. Above that, sources diverge based on assumptions about whether the IP is also new.

The 4-to-8-week range is the most-cited figure for a complete domain plus IP warmup to 100 per day, with high-volume guides extending to 12 weeks for sustained 200+ per day. The single largest mistake noted across all warmup-vendor guides is ramping too aggressively in week 1 — going to 50+ per day immediately on a new domain triggers Gmail's new-sender heuristics and burns the domain reputation before any positive engagement is built.

The dominant 2026 cold-email operational pattern, per multiple primary sources, is to use a secondary domain (different from the primary corporate domain), pre-warm Workspace or Microsoft 365 inboxes for at least four weeks, ensure fully-aligned SPF/DKIM/DMARC, then send 20-40 cold messages per inbox per day rotated through a sequencer. The typical weekly ramp consensus for a new domain plus new IP is: week 1 at 5-10 per day, week 2 at 15-25, week 3 at 30-50, week 4 at 60-90, weeks 5-6 at 100-180, and weeks 7-12 scaling in small steps while watching engagement metrics.

What Triggers Spam Filters in 2025-2026

The signals that drive emails to the spam folder have shifted meaningfully since the Feb 2024 Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender mandate. Authentication posture (SPF, DKIM, DMARC alignment) has moved from "important" to "mandatory for any sender exceeding the bulk threshold." Content-classifier signals (the classic "spam words" list) still matter but weight less than they did pre-2020 as machine-learned filters have grown more sophisticated.

The table below ranks the top spam-filter signals by their cited impact, drawn from publicly published guidance by mailbox providers and major deliverability firms.

MetricImpactNotes
Missing or misaligned SPF/DKIM/DMARCHighest — single largest spam-folder driver since Feb 2024 [12][34][35]Gmail and Yahoo reject bulk mail that fails to pass at least one of SPF or DKIM, with DMARC alignment required at p=none minimum.
Poor sender reputation (domain and IP)High — measurable inbox-rate impact [36][37]Sender Score below 70 is "needs immediate action"; 80+ is healthy; 90+ is excellent. A drop from 83 to 70 has been measured to reduce delivery by roughly 20%.
High spam complaint rateHigh — Gmail enforces a hard 0.30% ceiling [12][13][14]Above 0.30% sustained in Postmaster Tools, Gmail throttles or rejects. 0.10% is the recommended target.
Low engagement signalsMedium-high — drives ML-filter scoring [38][39]Open rates, click-through rates, and read-time below the sender baseline cause Gmail and Microsoft to increase filtering.
Inconsistent sending volumeMedium — sudden spikes flagged as compromised-account [40][41]Volume spikes 3x or more above baseline are interpreted as spammer behavior. Smooth, consistent patterns score better.
Image-heavy or all-image emailsMedium [40][41]Messages over 70% image area, or with no body text, trigger image-only-email filters at both Gmail and Microsoft.
High link-to-text ratioMedium — Microsoft especially [40]More than 3-4 links per 100 words triggers content-based scoring.
Missing or buried unsubscribe linkHigh — mandatory since Feb 2024 [12][34]One-click unsubscribe became required for bulk senders under the Gmail/Yahoo mandate. Burying it now triggers automated penalties.
Spam-trap hitsHigh [42][43]Old recycled addresses and pristine traps signal poor list hygiene. Microsoft SNDS surfaces spam-trap-hit volume explicitly.
Sending to scraped or purchased listsHighest — drives multiple bad signals simultaneously [41][38][40]Drives bounce rate, complaint rate, and trap hits all upward at once.
Content classifier triggers (spam phrases, all-caps)Low-medium — weight reduced versus pre-2020 [40][41]Phrases like "Act now," "Free," all-caps subject lines, excessive punctuation still score against the email but matter less than they used to.

The ranking above reflects the dominant 2024-2026 pattern: authentication and list-source quality are the two structural drivers of inbox placement. The classic "spam words" content classifiers still exist, but modern machine-learned filters weight engagement signals and sender history far more heavily. A well-authenticated sender mailing a clean list can use words like "free" or "act now" with limited impact; an unauthenticated sender mailing a scraped list will be filtered regardless of how carefully they avoid trigger phrases.

The Feb 2024 Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender mandate consolidated this trend. Before the mandate, missing DMARC was a yellow flag. After the mandate, for any sender exceeding 5,000 messages per day to Gmail accounts, missing DMARC is a hard fail. The Nov 2025 transition from warning to enforcement on the 0.30% spam-complaint threshold extends the same pattern: thresholds that were advisory are now operational.

DMARC/SPF/DKIM Authentication Compliance

Email authentication — the three protocols SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — moved from "best practice" to "operationally required" with the Feb 2024 Gmail and Yahoo bulk-sender mandate. The table below reports adoption rates from primary surveys and large-scale domain audits published in 2024-2026.

An important nuance to keep in mind when reading authentication-adoption numbers: "has a DMARC record" is not the same as "has DMARC protection." A record at p=none (monitor-only mode) has no rejection effect. Roughly 57% of domains that publish DMARC do so at p=none, meaning the policy is informational only.

MetricValueSource Year
Domains with any valid DMARC record (top 1M sites)~33.4% [44]2024
Senders with both SPF and DKIM66.2% [45][46]2024 survey
Senders implementing DMARC~54% (up from ~43% in 2023) [45][46]2024 survey
Year-over-year DMARC adoption growth (informed senders)+11 percentage points [45][47]2023 -> 2024
Domains with DMARC at p=none (no enforcement)57.2% of those with any DMARC record [48]2026
Domains with DMARC at p=reject or p=quarantine~42% of those with any DMARC record [48][47]2026
Domains worldwide with effective DMARC protection~30.8% (11.2% reject + 19.6% quarantine/partial) [49]2026
Domains worldwide without effective DMARC protection69.2% [49]2026
Informed senders who made changes for Feb 2024 mandate49.5% [45]2024 survey
Of senders who made changes — updated authentication~80% [45]2024 survey

The Feb 2024 Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender mandate produced the largest jump in email-authentication adoption since DMARC was published in 2015. Survey data shows DMARC adoption among informed senders grew from roughly 43% in 2023 to roughly 54% in 2024, an 11-point step-up in a single year. Tracking of the top 10 million domains shows roughly half a million additional domains added DMARC records in the first half of 2024 specifically as a response to the mandate.

However, "has a DMARC record" is not the same as "has DMARC protection." The 2026 adoption studies converge on the same headline finding: roughly 57% of domains that publish DMARC do so at p=none (monitor-only mode), meaning the policy has no rejection effect. Genuine protection — domains at p=reject or p=quarantine — covers only about 30% of the global domain base. The 69.2% of domains without effective DMARC protection represents the long tail of small senders who added a DMARC record to satisfy the Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender rule (the 5,000-per-day threshold) but never advanced past monitoring.

The practical implication for cold-email and marketing senders is that even after the 2024 mandate, the median sender outside the top 10K is not authenticating their mail in a way that fully protects against spoofing. This is why Gmail's November 2025 enforcement step-up matters: it shifts the cost from "the spammer who spoofs you" to "the sender who hasn't done their authentication work." Operators who finished their DMARC rollout to p=reject in 2024 are now benefiting from a measurable inbox-placement advantage versus those still at p=none.

Methodology & sourcing

Source-quality tiers. Citations are drawn from three tiers. Tier A is primary measurement: independent deliverability firms (Validity, Sinch Mailgun, Litmus), platform telemetry studies (Expandi, Belkins, Botdog), mailbox-provider documentation (Google Workspace Admin Help, Microsoft SNDS, LinkedIn Sales Solutions), and established outreach-tool benchmark reports (Mailshake, Apollo, Lemlist, Mailmodo). Tier B is secondary aggregators that cite Tier A — MailReach, dmarcian, Valimail, dmarcreport. Tier C is industry commentary, used only to corroborate, never as sole source.

How missing data is handled. If no Tier A or Tier B public benchmark exists for a row, the cell reads "No public benchmark available" with a note explaining the gap. Numbers are never imputed, averaged across non-comparable sources, or filled with internal platform data.

Why Wayback URLs. Industry benchmark reports are routinely revised, gated behind email walls, or removed entirely when a vendor changes positioning. Each citation on this page carries a Wayback Machine archive link so the cited claim remains verifiable years later. The archive pattern used is https://web.archive.org/web/2*/<source-url>, which resolves to the nearest snapshot.

Refresh cadence. This page is reviewed and refreshed semi-annually. The most recent review date is shown at the top of the page; if more than 180 days have passed since the last review, a "data may be stale" notice is displayed. Corrections and source suggestions are welcome via the correction form linked in the footer.

Compilation. Compiled and maintained by WarmySender's research team as a neutral reference. No vendor rankings appear on this page, and no products are promoted in the body of the analysis.

A note on cold-email open rates. Apple Mail Privacy Protection (launched 2021, extended 2024) automatically pre-fetches tracking pixels regardless of whether the recipient actually views the message. This systematically inflates reported open rates by roughly 10-20 percentage points across all major outreach tools. Reply rate is now the more trustworthy engagement metric. Where this page reports open rates, they are reproduced as published; readers should treat year-over-year open-rate comparisons with that caveat.

References

Every cited number on this page traces back to one of these primary sources. The "Archived" link points to the Wayback Machine snapshot captured on the access date, so the cited claim stays verifiable even if the original page is later moved or removed.

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Frequently asked questions

Where does this data come from?

Every number on this page is sourced from a named primary study — independent deliverability firms (Validity, Sinch Mailgun, Litmus), mailbox-provider documentation (Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn), and large-N outreach-tool benchmark reports (Mailshake, Apollo, Lemlist, Mailmodo, Belkins, Expandi). Each citation in the References section carries both a live URL and a Wayback Machine archive link with the access date so the claim stays verifiable years later.

How is it refreshed?

The page is re-verified semi-annually (every 180 days). The "Last reviewed" stamp at the top shows the most recent review date; if more than 180 days have passed without a refresh, an amber stale-data banner appears automatically. Corrections and new source suggestions are welcome via the correction form linked in the page header.

Why are some cells empty or labelled "No public benchmark available"?

Where no Tier-A or Tier-B public study breaks out a specific number, the cell reads "No public benchmark available" with a brief note explaining the gap. Numbers are never imputed, averaged across non-comparable sources, or filled with internal platform data. Honest "we do not know" beats a fabricated figure on a citation source.

Can I cite this page in my own article?

Yes — that's exactly what the page is built for. We recommend citing the primary source directly (each row points to the underlying study); if you're writing a survey article that pulls many figures together, citing this page as the compilation source is fine. The Wayback URLs make sure the references survive even if individual source pages move.

Why does the page treat open rates with a caveat?

Apple Mail Privacy Protection (launched 2021, extended 2024) automatically pre-fetches tracking pixels regardless of whether the recipient actually views the message, which systematically inflates reported open rates by roughly 10-20 percentage points across all major outreach tools. Reply rate is now the more trustworthy engagement metric for cold email. Where this page reports open rates, they are reproduced as published — readers should treat year-over-year open-rate comparisons with that caveat in mind.

Spotted a stale figure or a better primary source?

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