Table of Contents
- Who replies to cold email most often?
- Why do founders and C-suite executives reply more than the advice predicts?
- Should you stop emailing directors and VPs?
- Does the best title to target change by company size?
- What does this mean for how you build a target list?
- The 3-step way to rebuild a target list around who actually replies
- How do SaaS founders fit into this pattern?
- Key Takeaways
- See what your own reply data says
- Related reading
Ask around the outbound industry who to target and the advice is consistent: skip the C-suite, they are buried in email and someone else screens their inbox, and aim one or two levels down at directors and VPs who feel the pain but still answer their own messages. Who replies to cold email inside Danish Lead Co's own operational data does not support that advice. Across 916 positive replies in the last 90 days where we recorded the respondent's seniority, founders and C-suite contacts accounted for 53 percent of them, more than four times the share that came from directors.
This is not a theory piece. It comes from 1,875,536 emails sent across 648 campaigns and 3,127 qualified positive replies logged on the Danish Lead Co operating platform, the same aggregate dataset behind our outbound benchmarks. Here is what it actually shows about who replies, why the common advice is backwards for a meaningful share of buyers, and what it should change about how you build a target list.
Who replies to cold email most often?
Founders and C-suite executives reply more than any other seniority band in our data, not less. Seniority is recorded on 916 of the 3,127 positive replies in the window (29 percent of the total; the rest were not tagged with a title), and within that group the split looked like this:
| Seniority | Share of recorded positive replies |
|---|---|
| C-suite | 27% |
| Founder | 27% |
| Director | 13% |
| Senior individual contributor | 9% |
| VP | 7% |
| Partner | 5% |
| Manager | 3% |
| Owner | 2% |
Mid-level, head of, entry-level and intern titles each sat under 3 percent and are left off the table above for readability. Read the top two rows together and founders plus the C-suite made up just over half of every seniority-tagged positive reply, roughly four times the combined share of VPs and directors.
Why do founders and C-suite executives reply more than the advice predicts?
Because the advice to "go one level down" assumes every senior inbox is screened, and for a large share of DLC's own client base that assumption is wrong. Our department breakdown tells the same story from a different angle: of the 864 positive replies where department was recorded, c-suite titles were the single largest group at 19 percent, and "entrepreneurship" (founder-led, no formal department structure) was second at 14 percent, ahead of sales, marketing and business development combined. A founder running a 20-person company, or a managing partner at a boutique advisory firm, reads and answers their own email. An assistant screening a Fortune 500 CEO's inbox is the exception DLC's client base is built around, not the rule.
Should you stop emailing directors and VPs?
No. Directors and VPs still generated 20 percent of seniority-tagged positive replies between them, which is real volume worth keeping in a target list. What the data argues against is the blanket rule that avoiding the top of the org chart is always the smarter play. Who replies to cold email depends on company size and structure more than on title alone: a founder-led company has no director layer to target in the first place, and at that size the founder is the correct and only senior contact.
Does the best title to target change by company size?
Yes, and this is where the two data points connect. Smaller, founder-run organisations collapse the seniority ladder: the founder is simultaneously the decision maker, the budget holder and the person who opens their own inbox, which is exactly the profile our best company size for B2B outbound analysis already flags as a strong responder segment. At larger organisations with a real management layer, directors and VPs become the more reachable senior contact, because that is where the C-suite assumption about a screened inbox starts to hold.
What does this mean for how you build a target list?
It means seniority should be a variable you test by account size and vertical, not a fixed rule copied from generic outbound advice. A target list built only on "avoid the C-suite" quietly excludes founders and partners, who are among the strongest responding segments in our own data. The 3,127 positive replies behind these figures sit across 28 active clients spanning private equity, manufacturing, SaaS and professional services, so the pattern is not one industry's quirk.
The 3-step way to rebuild a target list around who actually replies
- Segment by company structure before you segment by title. At a founder-led or partner-led organisation, target the founder or partner directly rather than inventing a director layer that does not exist.
- Keep directors and VPs in the mix at larger accounts. They still account for a fifth of seniority-tagged positive replies in our data, so dropping them loses real volume at enterprise and mid-market accounts.
- Test, do not assume. A PE portfolio company with a thin management bench behaves differently from a 2,000-person manufacturer, and only your own reply data tells you which pattern your list follows.
How do SaaS founders fit into this pattern?
They are one of the clearest examples of the founder-reply effect in practice. Early-stage SaaS companies are almost always founder-led, with no VP of sales or dedicated revenue operations function yet, which is why our B2B SaaS outbound infrastructure work targets the founder directly rather than searching an org chart for a title that does not exist. One SaaS client built $72,000 in new ARR this way, a result documented in the case study.
See what your own reply data says
Danish Lead Co reviews your account's reply data in the first working weeks of every engagement, which is how we catch whether your buyers follow the founder-heavy pattern above or the larger-enterprise pattern where directors and VPs lead. Book a call and you will leave it with a specific seniority and title recommendation for your own market, built from your reply data rather than a generic rule, plus a view of how we would structure the first list. You can also read more about how Danish Lead Co builds outbound systems and see client results before the call.
