Benchmark your email response performance against industry standards. See how you stack up and where to improve.
Most businesses don't track how long they take to reply to emails. They should. Research from MIT and InsideSales found that if you respond to a lead within 5 minutes, you're 21 times more likely to qualify them than if you wait 30 minutes. The average business takes 42 hours. That's not a typo. Nearly two full days.
It gets worse. Between 35-50% of sales go to whoever responds first. So while you're drafting the perfect reply tomorrow morning, your competitor already closed the deal last night.
Take every email you replied to over the past week. For each one, note the time between when it arrived and when you hit send. Add those up, divide by the number of emails. That's your average.
In practice, nobody does this manually. Tools like EmailAnalytics or Ralivi connect to your inbox and calculate it automatically. The calculator above gives you a rough benchmark based on your estimate, but if you're serious about improving, you need real data.
It depends. Real estate and e-commerce move fast. Buyers are comparing options right now, so 1-2 hours is the target. SaaS companies typically aim for 1-4 hours during business hours. Healthcare and professional services can get away with longer windows (4-12 hours) for non-urgent requests.
Here's the thing though: you don't always need a complete answer to respond quickly. A simple "Got it, I'll have something for you by 3pm" buys you time while still showing you're on it. Ralivi helps by flagging which emails actually need a fast reply, so you're not treating every newsletter forward like a five-alarm fire.