The numbers
| Measure | Heads of Marketing | Dataset average | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prospects contacted | 28,900 | – | – |
| Reply rate | 27.4% | 32.3% | 13th of 14 |
| Meeting rate | 3.8% | 4.7% | 13th of 14 |
| Average deal size | €33,100 | €39,006 | 9th of 14 |
| Pipeline per 1,000 prospects | €1,258,000 | – | 9th of 14 |
Reply rate is 4.9 points below the dataset average and meeting rate is 0.9 points below it.
What the data says about this persona
Heads of marketing reply at 27.4 percent and book at 3.8 percent, the second worst on both measures. The €33,100 average deal is middling. This is the persona most likely to be recommended in generic advice and least likely to perform.
Two reasons show up in the data and in the campaigns behind it. Marketing leaders receive more vendor outreach than any function except sales, and they are professionally trained to recognise the mechanics of a sequence. The second is that marketing budgets are more contested and more frequently frozen than technical or operational ones, so a real interest converts to a meeting less often.
The one thing that moved the number for this persona was naming a competitor. Across the dataset, naming the prospect’s own product or a direct competitor doubled reply rate from 17.1 to 34.5 percent, and marketing leaders are the group most likely to have an opinion about a named competitor and least able to resist correcting you.
What to put in the message
A competitor by name. Something specific from their own campaigns or site. One question, ideally one they will want to argue with.
What to leave out
Marketing language of any kind. They wrote it first and they will recognise it.
The format itself does not change by persona. Across every segment we tested, the winning first message was two and a half sentences, ended in a question, named something of theirs, said nothing about us and landed between 240 and 420 characters. That version replied at 44.5% against 18.6% for the same message with solution detail added.
Method
Figures for this persona come from 28,900 prospects inside a wider dataset of 389,890 prospects and 15,018 meetings, run for 17 clients across 41 programmes between 2018 and 2026. Prospects were split at random inside each client account, so industry, geography, seniority and company size are held constant on both sides of every controlled test. Meetings are counted at the point one was accepted in the client’s calendar; we do not track what happens after that.
Full method, all fifteen tests and the breakdowns by company size and region are on the 2026 outbound benchmarks page.
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Cite this page as: Prospectio.ai, Outbound benchmarks for Heads of Marketing, 28,900 prospects, 2018 to 2026.