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The median sender personalizes 75% of cold emails with a custom variable beyond the first name or company. The top 25% personalize every email. The bottom 25% personalize 14% or fewer, and the bottom 10% personalize none.
Share of each sender's cold emails that use a custom variable beyond the first name or company. Built from more than 850 million emails sent through Smartlead.
| Sender | Emails personalized |
|---|---|
| Top 25% | 100% |
| Median | 75% |
| Bottom 25% | 14% or fewer |
| Bottom 10% | 0% |
Most senders personalize most of their emails. Half of all senders put a custom variable in three out of four emails or more, and a quarter put one in every email.
The range is wide. The middle half of senders runs from 14% to 100%, so two senders who both call themselves personalized can be doing very different amounts of work.
A real share of senders skip it. The bottom 10% send no custom personalization at all, only first names or plain templates.
An email counts as personalized when it uses a custom variable beyond the first name or company, such as a tailored first line, a recent trigger or a pain point specific to the role. Emails that only merge in a name or company name count as not personalized.
Most guides explain how to personalize, not how often. Vendor studies report that well-personalized campaigns earn up to twice the replies of basic templates, but they rarely report what share of a sender's emails get personalized. This page fills that gap.
It shows how often senders personalize, not whether it worked. The data doesn't compare reply rates by personalization level, and it can't judge whether a variable was relevant to the person reading it.
The median sender personalizes 75% of emails with a custom variable beyond the first name or company, and the top 25% personalize every one. Personalizing 14% or fewer puts you in the bottom quarter of senders.
Go beyond the first name and company. A tailored first line, a recent trigger such as a new hire or funding round, or a pain point specific to the role all count as personalization in this data.
A quarter of senders do, and the median sender personalizes three in four. This data doesn't show whether the last quarter changes reply rates, so treat full personalization as common practice, not a proven requirement.
More than 850 million emails sent through Smartlead, using combined, anonymous platform data only. Only senders with at least 500 emails sent in the period are included. Each sender's rate is the share of their cold emails that used a custom variable beyond the first name or company.
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