Why email marketing is still essential for B2B businesses
August 5, 2025
In an age of social media dominance and emerging digital channels, some businesses question whether email marketing still delivers results. The answer, particularly for B2B companies, is a resounding yes.
Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for B2B lead generation, offering unparalleled reach, personalisation capabilities, and measurable ROI.
This article will look at:
- What is email marketing?
- Why email marketing is important for B2B businesses
- B2B email marketing software
- B2B email marketing tips
- Integrating your email marketing into broader campaigns
- Key metrics to track
- B2B email marketing benchmarks
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the practice of sending targeted, personalised messages to prospects and customers via email to build relationships, nurture leads, and drive business growth. For B2B companies, it serves as a direct communication channel that can deliver relevant content, product updates, industry insights, and promotional offers directly to decision-makers' inboxes.
What is B2B email marketing specifically? It's the strategic use of email communications to engage business customers throughout their buying journey. Unlike B2C email marketing, which often focuses on immediate purchases, B2B email marketing typically involves longer sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, and more complex decision-making processes.
Why Email Marketing is Still Important for B2B Businesses
Despite the proliferation of new marketing channels, email marketing continues to be a cornerstone of successful B2B marketing strategies for several compelling reasons:
Exceptional ROI
Email marketing consistently delivers one of the highest returns on investment of any marketing channel. For every £1 spent on email marketing, businesses can expect an average return of £42, making it particularly attractive for budget-conscious B2B companies.
Direct Access to Decision Makers
Email provides unfiltered access to key decision-makers and influencers within target organisations. Unlike social media algorithms or advertising platforms, email delivers your message directly to the recipient's inbox.
Precise Targeting and Personalisation
Modern email marketing platforms enable sophisticated segmentation and personalisation, allowing you to deliver highly relevant content to specific audience segments based on industry, company size, job role, or buying stage.
Measurable Results
Email marketing provides detailed analytics on open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and engagement metrics, enabling data-driven optimisation and clear ROI measurement.
If you choose to integrate your email marketing platform with a CRM you'll be able to track metrics all the way through to eventual conversion.
Nurture Long Sales Cycles
B2B purchases often involve extended research and consideration periods. Email marketing excels at nurturing prospects over time, maintaining top-of-mind awareness throughout lengthy buying cycles.
Integration with Other Channels
Email marketing works synergistically with other marketing efforts, amplifying the effectiveness of content marketing, events, webinars, and social media campaigns.
B2B Email Marketing Software Options
Selecting the right B2B email marketing software is crucial for campaign success. Here are some leading platforms that cater specifically to B2B needs:
Mailchimp
Popular among small to medium-sized businesses, Mailchimp offers user-friendly automation, audience segmentation, and integration capabilities. Its free tier makes it accessible for businesses just starting with email marketing, while advanced features support growing B2B companies.
HubSpot
As part of a comprehensive CRM and marketing automation platform, HubSpot's email marketing tools excel at lead nurturing and sales alignment. It offers sophisticated automation workflows, detailed analytics, and seamless integration with sales processes.
Campaign Monitor
Known for its intuitive drag-and-drop email builder and robust automation features, Campaign Monitor provides advanced segmentation capabilities and detailed reporting that appeals to B2B marketers focused on personalisation.
Pardot (Salesforce)
Designed specifically for B2B marketing automation, Pardot offers advanced lead scoring, progressive profiling, and deep Salesforce integration, making it ideal for organisations with complex sales processes.
Marketo
Now part of Adobe, Marketo provides enterprise-level marketing automation with sophisticated lead nurturing capabilities, making it suitable for larger B2B organisations with complex marketing requirements.
ActiveCampaign
Combines email marketing with CRM functionality, offering powerful automation workflows and machine learning-powered send time optimisation, making it attractive for growing B2B companies.
Tips to Excel at Email Marketing
To maximise the effectiveness of your B2B email marketing campaigns, implement these proven strategies:
Building a High-Quality B2B Email List
Starting with a solid foundation is crucial. Building a high-quality B2B email list is the cornerstone of effective email marketing. It requires time, patience, and strategy to curate a list that yields results.
Firstly, focus on organic growth. Engage potential contacts through website sign-ups and events. Incentivising sign-ups with valuable content can be highly effective.
Purchasing lists can be tempting but is generally unadvisable. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) require explicit consent from individuals before sending them marketing emails. Therefore, purchasing email lists in the EU/UK can expose you to unnecessary risk due to the difficulty in ensuring that the individuals on the list have provided the necessary explicit consent for your specific use.
Bought lists also often contain unengaged, irrelevant contacts. This approach can harm your sender reputation and lead to deliverability issues.
Segment Your Audience
Once you have started to build your database, the next step to successful B2B email marketing is effective segmentation. Divide your audience based on criteria such as industry vertical, company size, job function, engagement level, or position in the sales funnel. This enables you to deliver highly relevant content that resonates with specific audience segments.
Address Specific Pain Points
Your emails should provide genuine value by addressing the specific challenges and pain points your audience faces. Research your target market thoroughly to understand their daily struggles, business objectives, and information needs. Frame your content as solutions to these challenges rather than generic promotional messages.
Provide Clear Value Propositions
Once you’ve established your audience pain-points – you should now offer a solution. Every email should offer clear value to the recipient. Whether it's industry insights, practical tips, exclusive research, or early access to resources, ensure subscribers understand what they gain from opening and reading your emails.
Implement A/B Testing
Continuously optimise your campaigns through systematic A/B testing. Test elements such as subject lines, send times, email length, call-to-action buttons, and content formats. Even small improvements in open rates or click-through rates can significantly impact overall campaign performance.
Automate Your Processes
Implement email automation workflows to nurture leads efficiently without constant manual intervention. Automated workflows generate 30x higher returns compared to one-off email campaigns. Set up automated sequences for new subscribers, lead nurturing campaigns based on behaviour triggers, and re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers. Automation ensures consistent communication while freeing up time for strategic activities.
Craft Compelling Subject Lines
Your subject line determines whether recipients open your email. Create compelling, specific subject lines that clearly communicate value. Avoid spam triggers and focus on benefits rather than features.
Personalise Beyond First Names
Go beyond basic personalisation by incorporating company names, industry-specific content, or references to recent interactions. Personalised emails are 6 times more likely to drive conversions. Use dynamic content to show different messaging to different segments within the same email.
Consider these personalisation tactics:
- Using recipient names in subject lines
- Sending content tailored to browsing history
- Offering product suggestions based on past purchases
- Timing emails based on recipient's previous engagement patterns
Integrate Email Marketing into Broader Campaigns
Email marketing achieves maximum impact when integrated with other marketing initiatives rather than operating in isolation:
Event Marketing Integration
Use email to promote upcoming webinars, conferences, or industry events. Follow up with attendees to share presentation materials, additional resources, and continue the conversation. Create email sequences for event registration, pre-event preparation, and post-event engagement.
Website and Content Marketing Synergy
Align email content with your website's conversion goals and content marketing strategy. Use emails to drive traffic to specific landing pages, promote new blog posts or whitepapers, and guide subscribers through carefully crafted customer journeys.
Social Media Amplification
Encourage email subscribers to follow your social media channels and share email content. Use social proof in emails by highlighting social media mentions, customer testimonials, or industry recognition.
Sales Enablement
Ensure your email marketing supports sales efforts by providing sales teams with insights about prospect engagement, sharing relevant email content for sales follow-ups, and creating automated handoffs from marketing to sales at optimal moments.
Multi-Channel Campaign Coordination
Coordinate email messaging with advertising campaigns, PR initiatives, and other marketing activities to create consistent, reinforcing messages across all touchpoints.
Key Metrics to Track for B2B Email Marketing Success
Measuring the right metrics is essential for understanding your email marketing performance and identifying areas for improvement. Here are the key metrics every B2B marketer should monitor:
Open Rates
Open rates indicate how many recipients opened your email and serve as a primary measure of subject line effectiveness and audience interest. A good open rate suggests your subject lines are compelling and your sender reputation is strong. However, it's important to note that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has inflated open rates since 2021, making this metric less reliable than before. Focus on open rate trends over time rather than absolute numbers, and use this metric to test different subject line approaches, sender names, and send times.
Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates (CTR) measure the percentage of recipients who clicked on links within your email, making it one of the most reliable indicators of content engagement. CTR is currently the most accurate indicator of email engagement since it's not affected by privacy changes. This metric reveals whether your email content resonates with your audience and motivates them to take action. Low CTR might indicate poor content relevance, weak calls-to-action, or insufficient link placement within your emails.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rates measure the percentage of email recipients who completed a desired action, such as downloading a whitepaper, registering for a webinar, or requesting a demo. This is arguably the most important metric for B2B marketers as it directly correlates to business outcomes and revenue generation.Track conversions by integrating your email platform with analytics tools and CRM systems to measure the full customer journey from email click to completed action.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rates indicate the percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered to recipients' inboxes. Hard bounces occur when emails are sent to invalid or non-existent addresses, while soft bounces happen due to temporary issues like full inboxes or server problems. High bounce rates can damage your sender reputation and affect deliverability, so regular list cleaning and email validation are essential for maintaining healthy bounce rates below 2%.
Additional Metrics to Consider
Beyond these core metrics, consider tracking unsubscribe rates (indicating content relevance and frequency appropriateness), list growth rate (measuring audience expansion), and email sharing/forwarding rates (showing content value and viral potential). Click-to-open rates (CTOR) can also provide insights into content effectiveness independent of subject line performance.
B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks
Understanding industry benchmarks helps you gauge performance and set realistic expectations for your campaigns. The average CTR for B2B email marketing varies significantly by industry and campaign type:
- Professional Services: Companies in professional services typically see open rates of 21-23% and click-through rates of 2.3-2.8%. These businesses often benefit from thought leadership content and industry-specific insights that demonstrate expertise.
- Healthcare: Healthcare organisations generally achieve open rates of 22-24% and click-through rates of 2.5-3.2%. Compliance requirements and the technical nature of healthcare content can impact engagement, but targeted, educational content performs well.
- Manufacturing: Manufacturing companies typically experience open rates of 20-22% and click-through rates of 2.1-2.6%. Technical specifications, case studies, and industry applications tend to drive engagement in this sector.
- General B2B Average: Across all B2B sectors, average open rates range from 18-22%, while click-through rates typically fall between 2.3-2.8%. However, highly targeted, personalised campaigns often achieve significantly higher engagement rates.
- Factors Affecting Performance: List quality, sender reputation, content relevance, and sending frequency all impact these benchmarks. Well-segmented lists with engaged subscribers often achieve open rates of 25-30% or higher.
It's important to note that benchmarks should serve as guidelines rather than absolute targets. Focus on improving your own performance over time rather than obsessing over industry averages. A smaller, highly engaged list often delivers better business results than a large, disengaged database.
Conclusion
Email marketing remains a vital component of successful B2B marketing strategies. When executed properly with the right software, strategic segmentation, valuable content, and proper integration with broader marketing efforts, email marketing continues to deliver exceptional ROI and business growth.
The key to B2B email marketing success lies in understanding your audience, delivering consistent value, and continuously optimising based on data and feedback. By implementing the strategies outlined above and tracking performance against relevant benchmarks, B2B businesses can leverage email marketing to generate qualified leads, nurture prospects, and drive sustainable growth.
As digital marketing continues to evolve, email marketing's direct, personal, and measurable nature ensures its continued relevance in the B2B marketing toolkit. The businesses that master email marketing today will be best positioned to build lasting relationships with their target audiences and achieve long-term success.
The Richmond Marketing Consultancy works with B2B businesses looking to make the most of email marketing. If you would like to discuss if email marketing i right for your business with one of our experts please get in touch.
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