Email benchmarks for 2024: Here’s what you need to know

We’ve combed through 4 million recruiting outreach emails to identify the key trends that are shaping email outreach in 2024. We’ll be sharing a few highlights here, but you can download our 2024 Guide to email outreach and benchmarks if you’d like to explore the data in more detail.

Key takeaway #1: Passive talent is more receptive to outreach

Compared to our previous benchmarks report in 2022, the 2024 report shows that open rates are a touch lower, but reply and interested rates are both higher. The overall message? Passive talent is more open to outreach, as long as your email has the right hook to capture their attention.

Key takeaway #2: When it comes to sequence length, 5 is the magic number

Just like in sales, follow-ups are the key to success in recruiting. Sending follow-up messages increases your response rates and interested rates. A five-stage sequence, for example, receives two times more replies and achieves nearly 68% higher interested rates compared to one-off emails. After the fifth email, engagement starts to flatten. What does this mean for you? Don’t give up after the first message, but at a certain point it makes sense to cut your losses and move on!

Key takeaway #3: Weekends are the hidden “Gem” for sends

Our data shows that few recruiters send emails on weekends, but these messages perform well (with open rates of about 66%). If you can schedule emails, we recommend experimenting with sending on weekends. You’ll either catch candidates when they have a free moment, while they’re preparing for the week ahead, or first thing Monday morning.

Key takeaway #4: Personalize subject lines with tokens

Using tokens like the candidate’s first name or your company name can increase open rates by up to 5% in absolute terms. Personalization is key to standing out from the crowd. If you’re a Gem customer, it’s easy to add personalization tokens to your subject lines. But even if you don’t use Gem, you can reap the benefits of personalization by manually updating your subject lines (it’ll just take you a little more time to do this!).

Our data shows that larger companies tend to include the company name in the subject line. This makes sense since bigger brand names are more likely to capture candidates’ attention.

Smaller companies tend to use the job title as a way of catching the candidate’s interest, which makes sense since they may be able to attract them with a more impressive sounding title.

Overall, SMBs are the most likely not to include any tokens in their subject lines, which could be a missed opportunity to personalize their messaging and attract more candidates.

Key takeaway #5: Send outreach on behalf of hiring managers

SOBO ("Send on behalf of”) is where emails are sent on behalf of someone else in the company, often a hiring manager or executive. This approach adds a personal touch by using the credibility and authority of the person the email is "from." It can be especially effective because candidates are more likely to engage with messages that appear to come from a senior leader. 

Gem’s data reveals that this tactic drives higher response rates. Only 22% of recruiters are using this tactic, yet sending on behalf of the hiring manager or senior leaders can improve replies by 50% or more.

Key takeaway #6: Keep your emails short and sweet

In aggregate, the majority of our customers tend to stay in the 170–210 word count range for the initial message of their outreach sequence.

We’d recommend keeping your initial messages short and sweet—ideally in the 101–150 word count range. The “shorter is better” strategy echoes what LinkedIn studies have shown about best practices for InMail: “InMails under 400 characters tend to be met with 22% higher response rates than the average response rate for all InMails.”

Remember: you can deliver the essentials—a personalized mention, a compelling detail or two about the opportunity, a call to action—in fewer than 10 sentences. And the first email is only the beginning of the conversation. If you’re following our recommended best practice of sending a multi-stage sequence, you’ll have plenty of other opportunities to get into the finer details later.

Looking for even more data-driven email outreach tips and tricks? Get your copy of the 2024 edition of Gem’s Guide to email outreach and benchmarks here.