Free tool

Lead list size calculator: how many leads do you need?

Start from the number of meetings you want each month. The calculator works back to how many verified emails you need to send, and how many businesses your list needs to hold.

1,905verified emails to send to
5,443businesses in your list
$49/moLeadraft Growth covers it (100,000 businesses, 5,000 checked emails)

The defaults are assumptions for illustration, not Leadraft results: replace them with your own numbers. Formula: emails = meetings ÷ (reply rate × positive share × booking rate); businesses = emails ÷ email coverage.

The math behind it

A cold email campaign is a funnel, and each stage has a rate. Work backwards from the goal:

  1. Meetings ÷ booking rate = positive replies you need.
  2. Positive replies ÷ positive share = total replies you need.
  3. Replies ÷ reply rate = emails you need to send, to verified addresses.
  4. Emails ÷ email coverage = businesses your list needs.

Worked example with the defaults: 10 meetings ÷ 50% = 20 positive replies; ÷ 35% = 57 replies; ÷ 3% = 1,905 emails; ÷ 35% coverage = 5,443 businesses. These rates are illustrations, not benchmarks. Put your own in.

Choosing your email coverage

Coverage is the share of businesses in your list that end up with a verified, sendable email. It depends on the trade (restaurants and salons often rely on social media; law firms and dentists usually publish an address) and on how hard you look. In our own measurements, about ~54% of business websites gave up an email address (found, before verification.). Coverage across a whole list is lower than that, because some businesses have no website and some addresses fail verification.

Three things the numbers teach

  • List size is rarely the bottleneck; list quality is. Doubling the reply rate halves the list you need. Better targeting beats a bigger list.
  • Only send to verified addresses. Unverified addresses add bounces, not replies. Catch-all addresses are a maybe: test them in a small batch.
  • Local markets run out. There may be only 600 qualifying businesses in your area. Know the size of your market before you plan volume, and add new businesses as they open with a monitor.

Questions

How many leads do I need for cold email?
Divide the meetings you want by your reply rate, the share of replies that are positive, and the share of positive replies that book. At a 3% reply rate, 35% positive and 50% booking, 10 meetings need about 1,905 emails to verified addresses.
What reply rate should I assume?
Use your own past campaigns if you have them. If you don't, start conservative and adjust after your first few hundred sends: reply rates vary widely by offer, list quality and copy.
Why is 'businesses with a usable email' so much lower than 100%?
Not every business has a website, not every website publishes an email, and not every email passes a mailbox check. You need more businesses than emails.
Does the calculator use Leadraft's results?
No. Every rate is an editable assumption. The only Leadraft number referenced on this page is our measured email-found rate on business websites, shown with its caveat.

More free tools

Want the whole list, with emails already checked?

Leadraft finds every business of a kind in the place you choose, finds their emails on their own websites and checks each mailbox. 500 businesses free every month.

Start free