Importances of B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks
B2B email marketing benchmarks are essentially standards against which you measure the performance of your campaigns.
They offer insights into how your emails perform when compared to industry averages and can be valuable in setting realistic goals.
Common benchmarks include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more, which will be explained in this article.
But why should you care about benchmarks, and why are they important?
They allow you to see what's working, what needs improvement, and how you measure up against your competitors. Benchmarks provide useful context, helping you set realistic expectations.
Whether you want to engage with your audience, make announcements, or collect feedback, you can increase the effectiveness of your B2B company's email marketing activities.
You can understand your audience better by looking at the key metrics and industry benchmarks.
Seeing your open rates, click-through rates, and click-to-open rates can help you optimize your subject lines and email content overall.
Exploring conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates can help you understand what works and what doesn't.
By examining these details regularly, you can identify areas for optimization and get the most out of your B2B email marketing campaigns.
It can also be helpful to get to know your audience, their interests, and needs as well.
Key Metrics & B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks in 2024
B2B email marketing includes key metrics, and benchmarks can be understood with these metrics properly.
These key metrics comprise the backbone of B2B email marketing, and exploring insights into these can be helpful.
Let's explore some of the B2B email marketing benchmarks related to key metrics:
Open Rates
Email open rates are the first interaction point with your audience. It's the percentage of recipients who open your email that can give you a glimpse into how well your subject lines capture attention.
B2B email open rates are significant as they are a key indicator of audience engagement.
High open rates state that your emails capture attention and resonate with your audience. Having a high open rate can lead to increased brand trust and potential conversions.
They can also influence other key metrics like click-through rates and conversions, which we will get to later on.
Monitoring open rates can provide insights into the effectiveness of your email's first impression and help you optimize this step.
You can calculate the open rate with these formulas:
Open rate = (# of unique opens) / (Total email recipients) x 100
Open rate = (# of unique opens) / (Total email recipients - Bounced emails) x 100
As Moosend states in its article about email marketing statistics, the average email open rate for B2B is 15.1%.
According to Smart Insights' email marketing statistics, the average open rate was 16.97%, with a CTR of 10.29% in 2023.
As Mailmodo states in its article about B2B open rate statistics, the open rate for B2B was around 15.14% in 2023.
B2B businesses have a 22% unique open rate, as stated in Demand Sage's article about email marketing statistics.
Click-Through Rates (CTR)
Click-through rates measure the percentage of recipients who clicked on one or more links in your email. A high CTR indicates that your content is engaging and compelling enough to drive interaction.
A low CTR can show that your audience is not interested in the links you have added to your email.
If your main goal is to drive engagement to the links you have included, low CTR shows that you need to optimize your strategy.
You can easily calculate the CTR of your email campaigns with this formula:
CTR = (Number of recipients who clicked a link / Number of emails delivered successfully) x 100
According to Mailmodo's statistics about open rate, the click-through rate was around 21% in 2023.
New product and feature announcement emails have the highest click-through rate, according to B2B marketers. (Source: Fluent CRM's email marketing statistics article)
Click-through rates are 47% higher for B2B when compared to B2C email campaigns. (Source: Wordstream's email marketing statistics
Click-to-Open rate
Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the percentage of recipients that open an email campaign and then click on a link inside that campaign.
Click to open rate can be calculated with this formula:
CTOR = (Unique click rate / Unique open rate) x 100
As stated in Demand Sage's article about email marketing statistics, the click-to-open rate of B2B is 15%, while it is 13% for B2C.
It is also stated that B2B marketing emails outperform B2C emails by 23% in terms of click-to-open ratio in Backlinko’s article about email marketing statistics.
According to Plezi's B2B email marketing statistics, the average click-to-open rate of B2B services, human resources, finance, consulting emails is 11.35%.
Plezi also states that the average CTOR is 9.90% to 13.24%, bad CTOR is less than 9.90%, and good CTOR is more than 21.78%.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rates indicate the percentage of recipients who completed the desired goal or action.
Your goal can be making a purchase, upgrading a subscription plan, clicking a link, or downloading a resource.
This metric shows the success or failure of your email campaign, so it is a valuable metric you should focus on.
You can easily calculate the conversion rate of your email campaigns using this formula:
Email conversion rate= (Number of conversions (people who completed desired actions) / Number of delivered emails) x 100
Conversion rates are used by 60% of marketers to assess the performance of an email campaign. (Source: Backlinko's email marketing statistics)
According to Ruler Analytics' statistics related to conversion rates by industry, average lead conversion rates for B2B e-commerce emails is 2.5%, while it is 2.2% for B2B Services and 2.5% for B2B tech.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rates show the percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered to the recipient's inbox. Bounces can be categorized as either hard bounce or soft bounce.
Hard bounces are about permanent delivery failure. Soft bounces indicate temporary issues like a full inbox.
You can calculate the bounce rate of your email campaigns with this formula:
Email bounce rate: (Total bounced emails / Total attempted emails) x 100
As GetResponse states in its email marketing benchmarks report, the average email bounce rate is 2.57% for all sectors.
According to Plezi's article about email marketing statistics, the average bounce rate for B2B email campaigns is 0.96%.
It is also stated that the bad bounce rate is more than 1.62%, the good bounce rate is 0.25% to 0.96%, and the excellent bounce rate is less than 0.35%.
The same article suggests that the bounce rate in B2B varies depending on the source and sector, ranging from 0.35% to 1.62%.
The bounce rate for B2B is 1.2%, while for B2C, this number is 1.1%, as stated in Demand Sage's article about statistics related to email marketing.
Unsubscribe Rates
Unsubscribe rates reflect the percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your mailing list. These recipients opt out of receiving future emails from you.
While it can be upsetting to see people leave, it's a valuable metric for understanding the relevance and effectiveness of your content.
Keeping track of your unsubscribe rates is important if you want to improve your email marketing campaign.
You can calculate the unsubscribe rate of your email campaigns with this formula:
Unsubscribe rate: (Number of unsubscribers / Number of messages delivered) x 100
As Demand Sage states in its article about email marketing statistics, the unsubscribe rate for B2B is 0.12%, while this rate is 0.22% for B2C.
According to Smart Insights' email marketing statistics article, the average unsubscribe rate for B2B and B2C markets is 0.14%.
The average unsubscribe rate is 0.21%, the bad unsubscribe rate is more than 0.31%, the good unsubscribe rate is 0.10% to 0.21%, and the excellent unsubscribe rate is less than 0.10%. (Source: Plezi's B2B email marketing statistics article.)
Wrap Up
Thanks to email marketing benchmarks of B2B, you can have a better understanding of your campaigns' results. Regularly evaluating key metrics and exploring industry benchmarks can be helpful in improving your B2B business' email marketing campaigns.
Don't forget to regularly check the analytics of your campaigns and compare them with the industry benchmarks.
Considering these, you can create subject lines that increase B2B email open rates, email templates, and content that convert recipients to loyal customers.
Apart from these, you can also decide on strategies that will help you to boost the conversion rate and reduce the bounce rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is A Good B2B Email Open Rate?
While average open rates can differ by industry, a good B2B email open rate typically is around the range of 15-25%. It's crucial to compare your rates to industry benchmarks and, more importantly, to your own data for informed decisions and accurate insights.
How Can I Improve B2B Email Open Rates?
Improving open rates involves including compelling subject lines, sending emails at efficient times, personalizing content, optimizing for mobile, and delivering valuable content.
A/B testing these elements allows you to refine your approach based on audience preferences.
What's The Importance of Audience Segmentation In Email Campaigns?
Audience segmentation allows you to optimize your emails to specific audience segments to increase relevance.
By understanding which segments have higher open rates, you can refine your targeting strategy and deliver more personalized content.
Explore these blog posts about email marketing before you leave:
- 50+ Email Marketing Statistics: Surprising Insights and Tips
- When to Send a Correction Email? (Common Reasons & Tips)
- 14 Best Email Outreach Tools to Supercharge Email Campaigns
- 10 Email Whitelisting Best Practices for Deliverability
