WAITLIST

Email outreach for recruiters: 2026 benchmarks and best practices

Recruiting outreach is getting harder. Here's what the data actually shows.

Open rates are down. Inboxes are crowded. And without benchmarks to compare against, it's hard to know where to focus.

We analyzed 6.2 million email sequences and 15.5 million messages sent through Gem in 2025 — so you can stop guessing and start optimizing.

Join the waitlist. Be the first to get Gem's 2026 Email Outreach Benchmarks report when it drops.

What's inside:

  • How sequence length affects reply rates

  • Subject lines that actually get opened

  • Which email in your sequence matters most

  • Send-on-behalf-of (SOBO) insights

  • Ideal email length by company size

The benchmarks are in. See where your team stacks up.