Link building statistics from 4,175 real outreach emails

Now twelve weeks of tracked outreach, and September is the first full month at scale. The per-email reply rate moved from 4.4% in July to 5.6% in August to 7.1% in September.

Monthly send volume grew from 273 to 1,265 to 2,285 over the same months. The rate rose as volume grew roughly eightfold instead of falling apart, which is the more meaningful read than any single month's number.

October's 7.4% is provisional. It's only five days deep, and a slice that short will always move around.

All four known-DR tiers clear the 20-prospect minimum, and the spread between them is narrow. DR 40-60 leads at 13.6%, then DR 20-40 at 12.4%, DR 60+ at 12.4%, and DR 0-20 at 11.2%.

The upward slope with Domain Rating from the last refresh (DR 60+ at 14.3%) did not hold on twice the sample, so it was a small-sample artifact rather than a pattern. With 18 to 120 replies per tier on 145 to 884 prospects, the honest read is that Domain Rating shows no clear relationship with reply rate yet. Every known tier lands within about two and a half points of the others.

A separate group of 35 prospects has no recorded Domain Rating and replied at 5.7% (2 of 35). It just clears the minimum, so treat that rate as indicative at best.

Mentiohunt scores how well a specific article fits a specific site before any outreach goes out. That filter is still doing its job almost too well to compare against: 2,033 of 2,056 contacted prospects (99%) score 0.9+ on fit, and they replied at 12.7%. The three middle tiers remain at zero contacted prospects.

"Very low fit" has grown from 16 to 20 prospects, exactly the 20-prospect minimum, with 1 reply. That is a 5.0% rate resting on a single reply, so it shouldn't be read as a finding.

This isn't a sample-size problem more time will fix. It's the intended effect of screening for fit before sending, which means there's still no genuine low-fit cohort to compare the 0.9+ tier against.

Every prospect Mentiohunt finds is tagged with the kind of link opportunity it is, and reply rates differ more by type than by Domain Rating or site fit.

Guest post pitches reply at 27.4% (26 of 95), roughly double the 13.1% of competitor-backlink prospects (152 of 1,160) and the 12.0% of listicle roundups (49 of 408). Resource-page inclusions are the weakest of the four large types at 6.9% (21 of 304).

The three smallest types (unlinked mentions, user-submitted and broken-link building) each clear the 20-prospect minimum, but on 3 to 4 replies apiece. Their rates (8.6%, 14.3%, 15.4%) are indicative, not findings.

These are replies, not links. Customers have marked 12 opportunities as won so far: 7 competitor backlinks, 4 listicle roundups and 1 resource page. That is too few, and too self-reported, to rate.

62% of replies arrive within 24 hours of the email being sent, and 76% arrive inside three days. Only 10 of 259 replies have taken longer than two weeks, and 17 more fell in the 7 to 14 day window.

The shape has held as the sample grew from 102 to 259 replies since the last refresh. Fast responses dominate, though the within-three-days share has eased from 81% to 76% as a slower tail of 3 to 7 day replies filled in.

Of 1,295 inbound messages received, 878 were bounces and 52 were automated out-of-office replies. Both are excluded here, since neither is a real reply.

The 365 genuine messages were read and sorted by what the sender wanted. 200 (55%) quote a price or ask for a budget. 57 (16%) show interest without asking for anything, 29 (8%) propose a link exchange or post swap, 19 (5%) decline, and 6 (2%) ask for a free product, licence or test access. The remaining 54 (15%) are questions, forwards, order logistics or messages too unclear to place.

The platform's automatic labels hid this picture. 196 of the 200 payment asks were filed as "human reply" or "needs review", and only 4 as "negative reply".

Counting each replying prospect once, by the strongest thing they asked for, 159 of 259 (61%) asked for payment. Another 33 (13%) were interested without asking for anything, and 28 (11%) sent questions, forwards or messages too unclear to place.

Only 20 prospects (8%) proposed a link exchange or post swap, and 4 (2%) asked for a free product, licence or test access. 15 (6%) declined.

The mix differs by opportunity type. 110 of 152 replying competitor-backlink prospects (72%) asked for payment, against 16 of 26 guest post pitches (62%), 20 of 49 listicle roundups (41%) and 5 of 21 resource pages (24%). Resource pages and roundups also proposed exchanges more often: 4 of 21 (19%) and 5 of 49 (10%), against 9 of 152 (6%) for competitor backlinks.

Many replies come from sites that sell links and quote a price to anyone who emails them. This measures who asked for payment, not who wanted Mentiohunt's product.

Measured against everyone contacted, not everyone still in the sequence. The initial email had produced replies from 9.2% of the 2,056 contacted prospects by the time each got a first follow-up. The first follow-up lifted that to 11.5%, and the second to 12.6%.

Per step, replies arrived from 9.2% of the 2,056 who got the initial email, 3.8% of the 1,271 who reached a first follow-up, and 2.6% of the 848 who reached a second. It's the same declining-but-positive pattern seen in earlier refreshes, now on a sample twice the size.