Latest Research:  How Effective is Your Digital Outreach?

by | May 1, 2026

Live conversations and appointments are the most important lead measures for hires.

But digital outreach is an important building block in making these lead measures happen.

How effective is your digital outreach?

Texting

If you’re texting (and you should be), here are some of latest outreach benchmarks:

The average text personal response rate across all industries and functions surveyed is 34.7%.

The average bulk text response rate across our survey lands at approximately 19-20%.

42% of users report that more than a quarter of their text exchanges turn into multi-message conversations.

25% of respondents reported receiving replies to their texts within 30 minutes, and 9% received replies within five minutes.

57.7% of people unsubscribe because brands text too much. Restraint and relevance aren’t just polite–they’re strategic.

Scheduling, nurturing, onboarding, support, and retention all rank among the top use cases in our survey.

Compare these texting benchmarks to the performance you’re experiencing with your outreaches and make adjustments.

Email

What about email?

Outreach email only gets an 8.5% average response rate.

Before you completely abandon email, recognize it usually serves a different function.

Texting is good at getting responses, but email is better at informing and relaying more detailed information.

Both are needed at different points in the recruiting dialog to turn a prospect into a hire.

 

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