Data · Our campaigns, July to October 2026
Backlink outreach benchmarks from 2,326 of our own emails
By Arthur Teboul, founder · Updated October 30, 2026
We ran backlink outreach for two of our own products, a Mac app and a B2B SaaS. Here is every step of the funnel, the reply rate by type of site, and what failed, so you can compare your own campaign to a real one.
The short version
- About 1 linking site per 90 first emails across both apps (2,326 emails, 26 sites, 24 dofollow).
- Reply rate depends on how close the site is to your topic: 26% for blogs about the product's exact subject, 9% for personal /uses pages.
- Only about 1 yes in 3 became a live link when the yes meant writing a guest post.
- A yes became a live link in 2.5 days at the median.
The full funnel, per app
| Mac app | B2B SaaS | |
|---|---|---|
| What the email offered | a free licence | a guest post, often a link back |
| First emails | 1,169 | 346 |
| People who replied | at least 233 (21% of delivered) | 43 (12%) |
| Said yes | about 160 | 23 (1 in 15) |
| Live dofollow links, Oct 28 | 15 | 6 (8 live, 2 nofollow) |
| First emails per linking site | 78 | 43 |
A third run for the SaaS, 811 emails sent through a generic SMTP setup and offering only link swaps, produced 3 links, all swaps: 1 per 270 emails. Across all three runs, 2,326 first emails led to 26 sites linking to us, 24 of them dofollow.
Mac app replies are a lower bound: before October 2, a reply was only counted if it left a trace in our log. The Mac app's rate is higher partly because a free licence is an easy yes; don't read it as a SaaS benchmark.
Reply rate by type of site
In October, the Mac app's campaign tagged every site by why it was chosen. Same email, same offer, same sender. What changed the reply rate was the site.
| Type of site | First emails | Replied | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blogs that write about Markdown | 62 | 16 | 25.8% |
| Mac app lists and Mac blogs | 128 | 23 | 18.0% |
| Writing and note-taking blogs | 107 | 18 | 16.8% |
| Developer documentation blogs | 42 | 5 | 11.9% |
| Posts about working with AI | 285 | 29 | 10.2% |
| Personal /uses pages | 122 | 11 | 9.0% |
757 first emails sent from October 2 to 27, 2026, bounces excluded; 11 more went to productivity blogs (2 replies) and are left out of the table as too few. A reply is any human answer, yes or no.
The pattern held across the table: the closer the page's own subject is to what the product does, the more people answer. Broad pages that mention many tools (posts about AI workflows, /uses pages) answered half as often as blogs about the product's exact subject.
What happens after a yes
- Most of the drop is after the yes. On the SaaS, 23 sites said yes, mostly to a guest post. We wrote and sent 14 articles and 8 were published. One was turned down as “mostly AI-generated”.
- Every SaaS link took something in return: a guest post we wrote for all 8, and a link back for 7 of them.
- Some ask for money. 5 of the 50 replies on the SaaS asked to be paid; on the Mac app, 16 people offered a paid placement. We never paid.
- Links move. Of 23 pages our log recorded as linking to the Mac app, 7 no longer did by October 28.
- When it works, it's fast: 2.5 days from yes to live link at the median, 6 days on average (8 cases).
What we'd change, from these numbers
- Pick sites by topic, not by authority. The 26% segment was chosen for its subject alone.
- Ask for something small. Being added to an existing list needed one line; a guest post needed a 1,000-word article and lost two thirds of the yeses.
- Follow up after the yes, not only before it.
- Check every link a week later, then monthly.
Questions
What is a normal reply rate for backlink outreach?
On our own campaigns, 12% of the sites we emailed for a SaaS replied (43 of 346), and at least 21% replied for a Mac app whose email offered a free licence (233 of 1,127 delivered). By type of site, October replies ranged from 9% for personal /uses pages to 26% for blogs that write about the exact topic of the product.
How many outreach emails does it take to get one backlink?
About 90 first emails per linking site across our two apps (2,326 first emails, 26 sites). It was 1 per 43 for a SaaS offering a guest post and a link back, 1 per 78 for a Mac app offering a free licence, and 1 per 270 for a generic run offering only link swaps.
How long between a yes and a live link?
A median of 2.5 days and a mean of 6 days, on 8 links for our SaaS.
How many yeses turn into a live link?
On our SaaS, 23 sites said yes, we sent 14 guest articles and 8 were published: about 1 yes in 3 became a link.
How we counted
Emails come from each campaign's send log; replies from the reply log; links from a crawl of each page on October 25 to 28, 2026, checking that the link exists and is not nofollow. We don't name the two apps and we don't report a Domain Rating gain: both apps were hit by a wave of spam links this autumn, which moved every authority score without any outreach. The method behind these campaigns is what the free Skill runs.