Introduction
Does cold outreach work equally well in every industry? No. We sorted 20,978 contacted people by the industry of their employer and compared reply rates. Between the strongest and the weakest industry sits a factor of 2.8.
The numbers
| Industry | contacted | replies | reply rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| IT services | 1,183 | 83 | 7.02 % |
| Healthcare & life sciences | 4,146 | 271 | 6.54 % |
| Software & technology | 2,034 | 127 | 6.24 % |
| Professional services | 781 | 45 | 5.76 % |
| Construction & engineering | 684 | 38 | 5.56 % |
| Wholesale | 413 | 22 | 5.33 % |
| Real estate | 401 | 20 | 4.99 % |
| Energy & utilities | 2,501 | 96 | 3.84 % |
| Automotive | 614 | 21 | 3.42 % |
| Manufacturing & industrial | 3,428 | 117 | 3.41 % |
| Food & beverage | 744 | 24 | 3.23 % |
| Retail & e-commerce | 619 | 20 | 3.23 % |
| Financial services | 915 | 28 | 3.06 % |
| Transport & logistics | 724 | 18 | 2.49 % |
The average across everything is 5.05 percent.
What sits at the top, and why
IT services, healthcare and software lead the field. These are industries where purchasing decisions are frequent and the contact decides about their own tooling. A relevant message there is not read as an interruption but as information.
At the bottom sits transport and logistics at 2.49 percent. Financial services is low too. Our reading: both are heavily regulated with long procurement paths. Write to them and you rarely reach someone who can decide anything at short notice.
Good target markets differ from weak ones in how close the recipient sits to the decision.
What you should NOT conclude from this
A low reply rate does not mean the industry buys nothing. It means the first contact gets answered less often.
Manufacturing sits at 3.41 percent and is still one of our strongest revenue sources. The deals are bigger and the cycles longer. Selling there takes more contacts for the same revenue, but the revenue ends up higher.
So never plan with the reply rate alone. Plan with reply rate times deal size.
What this means for your planning
If you sell into transport and logistics, the same target takes roughly three times the contacts it takes someone selling to IT service providers. That is not bad news, it is a planning figure. You just need to know it before you plan your quarter.
At SalesXMachina you see your own reply rate per industry in the dashboard. That way you plan with your numbers rather than ours.
Next steps
Next we are looking at whether the industry gap shifts when a buying signal is present. It seems likely that a concrete trigger does more in the slow industries than in the fast ones.
Goal
We want to tell every customer before they start what reply rate they can expect in their target market. Happy selling, Axel