Who actually replies to cold email, by seniority
Founders, owners and partners reply positively at 13.51%. VPs reply positively at 2.87%. That is a 4.7x gap, and it runs the opposite way to how most target lists are built.
Positive reply rate by seniority
| Seniority | Replies | Positive | Positive rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder, owner or partner | 925 | 125 | 13.51% |
| C-suite | 816 | 70 | 8.58% |
| Manager or senior individual contributor | 1,909 | 122 | 6.39% |
| Entry level | 101 | 5 | 4.95% |
| Director or head of | 696 | 30 | 4.31% |
| VP | 453 | 13 | 2.87% |
Based on 4,900 replies carrying a seniority classification, out of 13,750 classified replies in the window. Seniority is not recorded on every prospect, so this is a 36% sample, not the whole set.
A founder owns the problem and the budget. A VP owns the problem and not the decision.
The mechanism
A founder owns the problem and the budget, so a relevant message is worth answering. A VP or director owns the problem but not the decision, so replying creates work without authority.
This is not about seniority being unreachable. It is about who can act on the answer.
What this changes about targeting
Targeting "decision makers" by job level is the wrong filter. The better filter is who personally bears the cost of the problem.
In a 30-person company that is the founder. In a 3,000-person company it is rarely the VP whose title matches your product.
Methodology
- Source
- Danish Lead Co's own delivery platform, the system that runs client campaigns day to day. All figures are aggregate and anonymised. No client, campaign or prospect is identifiable.
- Window
- 25 June to 23 September 2026, a 90-day window.
- Population
- Client campaigns only: 45 client companies, 344 campaigns, 1,160,919 emails, 520,706 unique prospects. Danish Lead Co's own prospecting and its sub-brand campaigns are excluded.
- Classification
- Replies are classified by our own inbox system, not by the sending tool. Positive means the prospect asked a real question, asked for a call, or referred us on. Out-of-office is counted separately and never as positive.
The rest of the study
The parent report
Every headline figure in one place, with the full methodology and what we deliberately do not report.
Deliverability by email gateway
Google Workspace against Microsoft 365 across 13,722 classified replies. The gap is delivery, not interest.
Cold email benchmarks
Every denominator published, and how to compare your own tool's numbers to them honestly.
LinkedIn outreach benchmarks
11,701 connection requests across 10 clients. 83.6% of the funnel is lost before a single message is sent.
Frequently asked questions
Should we stop targeting VPs and directors?
No, but expect roughly a third of a founder's positive rate, and write to them differently. A VP needs something they can forward upward, not a request for a call.
Why is entry level higher than VP?
The sample is 101 replies, so treat it as directional. The likely explanation is that entry-level recipients forward rather than decline.
Does this hold outside B2B services?
This is 90 days across 45 clients in B2B outbound. The founder effect is consistent across them, but a single vertical will vary.
Is this about company size rather than title?
Largely, yes. Title is a proxy for who carries the problem, and in smaller companies that is the founder.
Want these numbers run on your own list?
Targeting by job level is the wrong filter. If your list is built that way, the call is where we rebuild it around who actually carries the problem.
Source: Danish Lead Co delivery platform / Window: 25 June to 23 September 2026 / Population: 45 client companies, 344 campaigns, 1,160,919 emails, 520,706 unique prospects / Aggregate and anonymised. Danish Lead Co's own campaigns excluded. / Updated quarterly. / Seniority sample: 4,900 of 13,750 classified replies, 36% coverage.