B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
11.9%
11.9% -- email reply rate for cold emails under 100 words (May 2026)
Cold emails under 100 words sent by students achieved an 11.9% reply rate.
- Small sample size (n=59)
- Reply tracking under-counts replies outside the tracked thread/inbox
- Sent by students for internship and career outreach rather than B2B sales
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
11.9%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
May 2026
Entity
Sample Size
59
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
95
Source Trust
50
Citation Chain
90
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
78
Source
Whali
Primary
Tier A
https://whali.co.uk/blog/cold-email-data-study-students-2026 ↗
Source Article
Cold Email for Students 2026: What 6,337 Emails Reveal
Cold Email for Students 2026: What 6,337 Emails Reveal
Last updated: May 2026 | Whali Internal Data Study
We analysed 6,337 cold emails sent by students through Whali between November 2025 and May 2026 to figure out what actually works in 2026. The headline numbers: a 74.7% open rate, a 14.6% click …
Original Research
Whali
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Analysis of cold emails sent through Whali by students.
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Channelcommon_crawl
Cite this stat
Plain Text
cold emails under 100 words: 11.9% email reply rate. Source: Whali (May 2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/short-emails-reply-rate-2026
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/short-emails-reply-rate-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>11.9%</strong> -- email reply rate for cold emails under 100 words<br><small>Source: Whali (May 2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/short-emails-reply-rate-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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