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Free tools/Email response time benchmark
Free tool · No sign-up required

How fast do you reply to email, really?

Four inputs. We'll turn your reply speed into a rough estimate of the conversions a slow inbox is costing you, and tell you whether it's worth fixing.

Email response time benchmark hero illustration

Your inbox stats

40
6h
If you don’t track this, guess on the high side
70%

Your numbers

Your median reply time

6h

Estimated conversion drop

35%

Est. leads lost / month

15

Reply speed band

average

What this means

Worth a 30-minute look

At this speed, competitors who reply faster are picking off your warm leads. The free quiz surfaces three quick wins.

Book an Assessment £799
Optional

Get the three email triage patterns

A one-page follow-up with the three inbox patterns we usually set up inside an Assessment — Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai for call summaries, templates for the top 10 repeat replies, and a triage rhythm. No spam.

We’ll be in touch with the follow-up. Your email stays with us.

Free

Personal score + 3 quick wins to try

The 9-question AI readiness quiz. Two minutes, no sign-up. We send your score and three small things you can try this week.

Take the free quiz

From £799

AI workflow assessment

60-minute interview, then a custom report with named tools, exact steps and a 7-day plan delivered within two working days of your call. Money-back if we don’t surface 5+ hours a week.

Book an Assessment £799

Done for you

Done-for-you Agent Build

We design, build, and hand over the AI agent. Scoped on a call, priced by complexity band. Best for owners short on time, not ideas.

See Agent Build

How this works

Response time is one of the few things in small business marketing where the evidence points one way: the faster you reply to an inbound enquiry, the more likely it is to convert, and the drop-off is steepest in the very first hour.

This tool works from your own numbers: your reply time and your inbox volume. Not an industry benchmark. We used to compare you to a per-industry median, but when we checked the sources behind those figures we couldn’t find anything solid behind them, so we took the comparison out rather than dress up a guess.

For the conversion estimate we use a rough rule of our own: every hour past the first knocks roughly 7% off your chance of converting an enquiry, capped at 50%. It is a simplification, not a measurement. The direction of it is backed by Harvard Business Review’s “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (2011), which found the odds of qualifying a lead fall away sharply after the first hour. We pair the rule with an assumption that 5% of your inbound email is sales-relevant to estimate leads lost per month. Treat both as directional, not a forecast.

Quick FAQ

Questions about this tool.

No. We used to show a median reply time for each industry, but there was nothing solid behind those figures, so we removed them. The tool works from your own reply time and inbox volume, and nothing else.
It is a rough rule of our own: every hour past the first knocks roughly 7% off your chance of converting an enquiry, capped at 50%. The direction of it is backed by Harvard Business Review's "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" (2011), which found the odds of qualifying a lead drop sharply after the first hour. Our 7% figure is a simplification for the maths, not a research finding. Treat it as directional.
We assume 5% of your inbound email is sales-relevant. Volume × 5% × conversion-drop % gives a rough number. It's a sense-check, not a forecast.
Only if you opt in to the email follow-up. The tool runs entirely in your browser otherwise.
A 60-minute interview, then a custom report with named tools, exact steps and a 7-day plan delivered within two working days of your call. £799, money-back if we don’t surface 5+ hours a week. See what’s in the report.