How I Measure My Cold Email Outreach ROI in 2025

How do you measure whether you’re actually getting results from your work?

The answer is simple: OUTCOME.

The same goes for cold email outreach.

Whether it’s marketing, branding, selling, or any other strategy, the one thing that tells you if it’s working is ROI (Return on Investment).

Most marketers, growth professionals, and SDRs claim that cold emailing brings the highest ROI. 

But that’s their experience. What about you? Is cold emailing actually delivering results for your business?

I had the same question. When I looked for answers, most were generic or unclear. That made me think that if I had this doubt, my customers probably did too.

In the end, your actual results depend on how well your cold email campaign performs.

I’ve covered everything about cold email outreach ROI, including how to calculate it, key factors, and core metrics. Plus, I’ve shared a calculator to help you measure the ROI of your cold email campaigns. 

Let’s start with why measuring ROI is so important.

Why Measuring ROI is Important for the Success of Your Business?

Tracking your cold emailing helps you understand what’s working and what’s not. Without tracking, you’re guessing. (It’s a myth in your mind that your cold email campaign is successful) 

Here are the reasons why you should measure your cold emailing campaigns. 

These metrics help you to: 

By measuring these metrics, you can rework your strategy, improve your cold email campaign, and start getting results. (Yes, you actually start getting sales from your cold email campaigns)

6 Key Metrics to Measure Cold Email ROI

Basically, if you want to know the performance of your campaigns, you need to first know the important metrics. Once you know them, it is time to measure those metrics. 

1. Open Rate

In cold email campaigning, the very first metric to measure is how many cold emails are being opened.  

If your cold emails aren’t getting opened, there are very few chances of getting a new customer. 

That’s why knowing your open rate is important. 

If your open rate is best, it’s obvious that your subject lines are working fine and emails are landing in inboxes. 

As per the latest cold email statistics, 24% is considered a good open rate for cold email outreach. 

If you aren’t getting a proper or good open rate, then that’s the problem. 

Even if your cold email content is amazing, but your cold emails are getting bounced, landing spam, or getting ignored, then you aren’t getting any sales. 

If you ask me, how do you measure the open rates of your cold emails? 

Wait, here’s the catch.

Google’s recent update has raised concerns about email open tracking, but that’s not really bad news. 

We’ve described here what’s changing, how it impacts cold emailing, and how to adapt. For a detailed understanding, you can read our blog post on email open-rate tracking.

2. Response Rate

A reply rate is the percentage of recipients who respond to your cold email; whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral, every reply counts. 

A reply rate provides a direct measure of engagement with your cold emails. 

A low reply rate signals that the issues could be with subject lines, email copy, or targeting core elements of any cold email outreach strategy. 

Believe me, it’s an important metric that tells a lot about your cold email campaigns. 

Because if there are no replies, there is no conversion, and no conversion means there’s no ROI. 

You must track the reply rate because it’s a clear indicator of whether your cold emails work for which they are sent. 

3. Conversion Rate 

A conversion rate is the percentage of replies that turn into your desired outcome, whether it’s booked meetings, sales, or sign-ups. 

A conversion rate directly connects with ROI. 

As you know, conversion means where the money comes from customers. 

A cold email that provides conversion means your cold email is working as well as driving actions. 

A high conversion rate means your message is aligned with your goals and provides maximum return per email sent. 

If you aren’t measuring the conversion rate of your cold email campaign, you are blind whether your replies are just noise or an actual email progress. (At this stage, I think you are in serious trouble because you won’t know what your next step is)

4. Customer Per Acquisition (CPA) 

A customer acquisition cost is the total cost of your cold email campaign divided by the number of conversions. 

It’s simply a metric that helps you to know what each win costs you. This way, you get to know and compare cold emailing to other channels. 

By measuring CPA, you get to know that if the CPA is low, then your outreach is working well. However, if your CPA is high, you are spending too much within your campaign. 

5. Click rate

A click-through rate helps you to learn how many people have clicked on your email compared to emails delivered. 

In simple terms, it is the percentage of recipients who click a link in your email, whether it’s a link to the landing page, calendar invite, or resource. 

When should you consider this metric? 

Measuring this metric helps you to know in scenarios where you have placed a link or includes CTA, so how well your email drives that specific action. 

6. Email Deliverability Rate

The email deliverability rate is the percentage of emails you send that land in the recipient’s inbox. 

The email deliverability rate is an important metric to know how many emails didn’t land in inboxes.

If your email doesn’t land in inboxes, nothing else, like open rates, reply rate, CTR, or conversion rates, matters.

If you have a high deliverability rate, it signals a good sender reputation. If you have a low deliverability rate, there might be issues of bad lead lists, spammy content, or technical issues.

Read this guide on email deliverability to get a detailed idea on this topic, fix all issues, and learn everything around. 

Now, let’s learn about the step-by-step process of calculating ROI in cold emailing. 

How to Calculate ROI for Cold Email Outreach Campaign

Here is the step-by-step process to calculate your cold email ROI. 

Step 1: Define Your Metrics and Goals

Before calculating ROI, you need to define the success metrics based on your goals. Some common goals include:

• Lead generation (number of qualified leads)
• Sales conversions (deals closed)
• Revenue generated

Key Metrics to Track:

• Emails Sent
• Open Rate
• Reply Rate
• Conversion Rate (leads/customers acquired)
• Revenue Per Customer 

(I’ve explained all these metrics in the above section. If you are still confused, you can refer again to the above section.

Step 2: Calculate the Total Cost of Your Campaign 

At this stage, you need to learn about the total investment that you have made to execute your cold email campaign. Your total investment in the campaign includes:

• Cold email and other software/tools costs: Subscription fees for cold email automation tools (Saleshandy, TrulyInbox, Namecheap, Maildoso, and more)
• Lead acquisition costs: The cost of buying leads or scraping data.
• Labor costs: The time and salary of employees writing emails, personalizing, and managing the campaign.
• Additional expenses (if any): Additional tools, domain warm-up services, or A/B testing.

Here is an example. 

In this example, I’ve taken all major investments that are done to execute a cold email campaign, such as email outreach tools, infrastructure, and lead acquisition. Check the following table. 

Step 3: Calculate the Revenue Generated from Your Campaign

To determine the revenue from the campaign:

• Imagine you successfully get 20 paying customers.
• Each customer pays $1,000 per month.
• Since we are calculating for a 3-month period (quarterly).

So, the total revenue would be 20 × 1000 × 3 = 60,000

The total revenue generated from the campaign is $60,000.

Step 4: Calculate the ROI of Your Cold Email Campaign

Now, you need to calculate the ROI of your cold email campaign.  

ROI = (Revenue Generated – Total Campaign Cost) / Total Campaign Cost × 100

Based on the example we took in the previous point (step 3), here is the estimated ROI of a cold email campaign. 

• ROI = ((60,000 – 30,197.50) / 30,197.50) × 100
• ROI = (29,802.50 / 30,197.50) × 100
• ROI = 98.69%

Final ROI: 98.69%

The ROI is 98.69%, meaning that for every $1 spent, the revenue is $1.98. 

Step 5: Analyze and Improve Your Cold Email Campaign

Once you know the ROI, analyze the results to improve your campaign further. 

Let’s say. 

To further improve the campaign’s ROI, consider the following strategies:

By implementing these improvements, you can potentially achieve higher conversions at a lower cost, further increasing profitability.

5 Factors That Impact Your Cold Email ROI

Figuring out if your cold email outreach is worth it means looking at what you spend versus what you earn and your return on investment. Let’s learn about them in the following section.

1. Sales Team and Employee Hiring Costs 

You send emails and turn cold prospects into warm leads, but how do conversions happen? 

Sales teams. Yes, they are the ones who convert warm leads into customers. 

And, of course, nothing comes for free. To convert your leads, you need to hire a team of sales professionals. 

So, you have to pay their salary. 

Sales professionals’ salary directly impacts your ROI beyond salaries like $50,000 to $1,00,000 annually per sales rep.

The factors that impact this are experience, onboarding, training, and management overhead. 

If your sales team is reaching out to bad or unverified leads, all your efforts, time, resources, and money get wasted. 

2. Cold Email Outreach Tool Costs

An outreach tool is an important part of the success of your cold email marketing campaigns. 

Depending on the features and scalability needed, the costs of your outreach tools will vary. 

As you know, a cold email outreach tool helps you: 

• Automate email sequences to save time.
• Personalize emails at scale to improve response rates.
• Track performance metrics like open rates, reply rates, and conversions.
• Maintain email deliverability and prevent spam issues.

The cost of cold email outreach tools can range from $50 to $500+ per month. 

The cost of the cold email software depends on: 

• The number of emails you send 
• The level of automation you require
• Additional features like AI personalization, lead generation, or multichannel outreach

So, you need to choose the right cold email software that allows you to improve your efficiency and minimize your manual work. 

3. Email Infrastructure and Technical Costs

Beyond tools for outreach, your email deliverability also plays an important role in ensuring that your cold emails reach inboxes. 

The costs include: 

• Domain authentication setup: Setting up SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records for getting or improving your cold email deliverability. 
• Dedicated sending domains and email warm-up services: You can range between $20 to $100 per month. 
• Inbox rotation tools: This is an additional cost that is important to have when you want to send emails on a large scale. 

4. Lead Data Acquisition and Enrichment Costs

Your cold email campaigns are successful only when you have a proper lead list that’s verified and accurate. 

That’s why investing in the right leads is important for you and will make your outreach successful. 

Instead of buying a random list of leads, finding emails manually, or hiring interns to get email addresses manually from the web, all these efforts are a waste. 

You need to buy leads from reliable and authentic platforms like Saleshandy, Apollo.io, or Cognism. 

Apart from buying leads, you need to have lead verification services like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce.

You can also use enrichment tools to add missing details like job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and more. 

5. Ticket Size of Each Sale from Your Cold Email Campaign

A ticket size of each sale determines whether your cold email campaign is profitable or not. 

Your average deal size determines how many conversions you need to justify your cold email costs. 

For example, if your ticket size is $10,000+ per deal, then even a 1% conversion rate can result in a positive ROI. 

On the other hand, if you have $50 to $500 per deal, you need a good number of deals to get the average positive rate of conversion. 

So, you have the answer to measuring the ROI of your cold emailing. 

What should be your next step if your ROI is negative? I’ve covered you. Check the following section. (That’s why I wrote everything you need to know)

How to Improve Cold Email ROI: 5 Best Practices to Follow

1. Refine Your Lead List

A proper cold email lead list means that you are targeting the right audience. To refine your lead list, make sure you are targeting the right audience and reaching the right audience. 

You need to be clear with your ICP first and have a user persona in mind. 

As you get an idea, you know whom you need to target and create a lead list that aligns with your goals. 

Use tools like Saleshandy B2B lead finder, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, or Apollo to build lists based on specific criteria (like job title, industry, company size). 

Verify emails with services like Hunter or NeverBounce to reduce bounce rates.

By targeting the right people, you can waste effort, improve response rate, increase the likelihood of conversations, and help increase your ROI.

2. Write Cold Emails That Convert

If you have a proper lead list, a software tool, a good email sender reputation, and a good product to sell, what if you aren’t able to write a proper cold email?

A cold email copywriting matters!

When your cold email content isn’t proper, then readers won’t engage. 

And you won’t get any conversions. 

You need to take care of cold email contents like subject lines and personalized messages.

Here are the tips that will help you to convert your cold prospects into warm leads. (This is how everyone does it.) 

Your cold emails should resonate and get opened, read, and replied to. This allows you to get better engagement, which means more opportunities to close deals.

3. Choose the Right Cold Email Tool for Every Stage of Your Outreach

With so many cold email outreach tools available, you need cold email software. Your chosen email outreach tool should help you to reach the right prospects to automate the entire process. 

Well, while choosing the right cold email software, you must find one that allows you to do the following.

• Find leads 
• Automate the outreach process 
• Track and optimize campaigns

You need to look for an all-in-one cold email software that allows you to handle finding leads, personalization, automation, and analytics in a single tool. 

However, if you are short on time, you can choose Saleshandy, which allows you to find leads to automate your cold email campaigns, all in a single place. 

If you are using a proper cold email software, then you can avoid labor costs. That’s where a smart cold email outreach tool pays off by scaling your efforts without scaling your expenses.

4. Track and Analyze the Results of Your Campaign

To know the performance of your cold email campaign, metrics are important. Right? 

As you know, which metrics are a must to track? 

The metrics are email deliverability rate, open rate, response rate, bounce rate, and conversion rate. 

Based on the insights, you can check and test variables like subject titles and send times and also review the performance of your campaigns weekly. 

Making data-driven changes helps you to refine your approach over time, remove tactics that aren’t working, and double down on what’s working for your campaign. 

This way, you achieve and gain the highest level of engagement possible in your cold email campaigns.

5. Write a Perfect and Strong Call to Action in Your Cold Email

How do you get the most conversions in your cold email campaigns? The answer is placing the right CTA. 

A clear and compelling CTA is a bridge between interest and action. 

If you don’t have one, even the best email won’t get you results.

Make sure you have specific CTAs that connect with your audience in the cold email. You also need to add urgency within your cold email that’s natural. 

A strong CTA drives responses and moves prospects into your sales funnel. More replies mean more conversions, which directly tie your email efforts to measurable revenue gains.

Now, let’s learn about the industries where cold emailing works the best. 

Which Industries Benefit Most from Cold Emailing?

In this section, I’ll describe the industries that benefit most from a cold emailing marketing channel, whether it’s about acquiring new customers, generating leads, or increasing signups. 

1. SaaS Software Business 

B2B SaaS companies need to sell their subscription-based software to businesses. 

And the most common challenge? Acquire new users and drive product adoption as much as possible. 

As you know, B2B SaaS software offers subscription-based pricing and requires demos or trials, so outreach helps. 

With cold emailing, it becomes easy and fast to target the decision-makers of the companies and pitch your SaaS software solutions to resolve their pain points. 

It provides you a medium to pitch your product through personalized demos, case studies, and problem-solving ideas. 

Apart from that, cold emailing works better compared to saturated inbound marketing channels like SEO and ads, which take a longer time to get customers. 

If you leverage cold emailing with segmented outreach based on technology stack, company size, and industry challenges, there are better chances of getting more clients within your business. 

2. Marketing and Advertising Agencies 

Marketing agencies provide services like SEO, paid ads, social media management, branding, and content marketing. 

However, many businesses don’t actively search for all these services until they are struggling. 

Either most businesses lack in-house marketing expertise and don’t realize how much revenue they’re leaving on the table. 

Let’s take an example. 

Cold emailing helps marketing and advertising agencies to find and reach out to businesses before they start looking for alternatives. 

Approach potential prospects with a strong cold email that has a case study or testimonial that can increase trust and credibility. 

3. Recruitment and IT Staff Agencies 

Recruitment agencies look for talented candidates that can be placed in proper companies where everybody wins. 

Recruitment and staffing agencies bridge the gap between job seekers and employers. Two of the major challenges faced are: 

• Finding the right candidate for the right job. 
• Convincing companies to use their services. 

Cold emailing is a powerful way for recruiters because it allows you to 

Reach passive candidates who might not be actively looking for jobs but are open to new opportunities. 

Connect with businesses or companies that are struggling to find the right candidate. 

Speeding up the hiring process by getting direct responses from decision makers instead of waiting for job postings or applications. 

4. Real-estate and Property Investment

Whether you’re an agent, broker, or property investor, you need to find buyers, sellers, and investors before your competitors do. 

The real estate industry is about making connections and timing. You can’t deny that no other way is better than cold emailing. 

Here are the reasons why cold emailing is better.

Cold emailing helps to find property investors looking for high-return opportunities. 

It helps to connect with homeowners who may be open to selling but might not consider that option if the offer is given. 

You can showcase the exclusive listings to serious buyers instead of waiting for buyers to find you. 

5. Financial Companies 

The financial industry revolves around trust, credibility, and problem-solving. Whether it’s accounting, investing, or insurance, most people and businesses don’t actively look for new financial services providers until or unless they are in actual trouble. 

Cold emailing resolves this issue by connecting business owners and individuals to figure out the finances as required.

It allows you to educate your audience or customers about new cost-saving opportunities.

You can place a case study or success stories to build the trust between your business and potential prospects. 

Apart from that, you can even offer free financial consultations to establish credibility. 

TL;DR on Measuring Cold Email Outreach ROI

Cold emailing is about reaching the right people and getting real results. 

But how do you know if it’s working? 

By tracking key metrics like reply rate, conversion rate, and deliverability, you can see what’s going well and what needs to improve.

If you’re not getting the expected results, don’t worry. 

You need to start with small changes like improving your email list, writing better subject lines, and following up the right way. All these small changes can make a big difference. 

Keep testing and refining, and you’ll start seeing better responses.

Want to make cold emailing easy, automated, and fast? Saleshandy helps you send emails that land in inboxes, track performance, and get better results.

FAQs About Cold Email Outreach ROI

1. What is a good ROI for a cold email campaign?

A good ROI for cold email campaigns varies based on industry, tools, strategy, and techniques to execution. A few studies show that cold emails can generate an ROI of $44 for every $1 spent (4,400%). Basically, when you optimize your cold email campaigns in the right way, it provides you with great ROI.

2. How do I calculate the ROI of my cold email campaigns?

To calculate ROI, you need to subtract your total campaign costs (including email tool subscriptions, sales team expenses, and lead acquisition costs) from the revenue generated. Afterward, divide the amount by the total costs and multiply by 100 to get the percentage.

3. Does cold emailing really work?

Yes, cold emailing is useful when done right. Businesses use it to generate leads, build relationships, and drive sales. Response rates are between 1-5% with well-crafted emails with personalization, and follow-ups can significantly improve engagement and conversions.