35 B2B email marketing stats for beginners

If marketing is bread, email is butter. But with hundreds of billions of emails sent every day, starting your email marketing journey can be overwhelming. What do you need to get buy-in from your bosses? How should you be using it to promote your content? And why do you need to be mindful of email blasts?

Well, in this blog, we’ve got the answer to all of these questions and much, much more. We’ll be covering:

• The scale of email as a channel
• B2B email marketing ROI
• Content distribution with B2B email marketing 
• Email subject line best practices
• Open & click-through rates
• Mobile optimisation
• Segmentation & personalisation
• ​Email signature marketing

B2B email marketing stats

The scale of email

Email is big. Bryan Cranston after Breaking Bad big. In fact...

• According to Statista, 293.6 Billion emails were sent every day in 2019.

And in 2020...

• 306.4 billion emails are sent every day in 2020.

By 2023...

• 347.3 billion emails will be sent every day.

Key takeaway

This means that if you’re not using it as a channel for your business yet, you probably should be. Because preeeetty much every top B2B marketer is.

ROI

Good news! Your most important channel is also one of your most cost-effective. This should light up the eyes of your firm’s number crunchers. And get them to chuck a few quid your way.

For example...

• SuperOffice says that $1 spend on email marketing gets you more than $43 in return.

This is probably why...

• 31% of marketers say email has the biggest per-channel impact on revenue.

But let me shock you.

• A whopping 59% of companies still don't use email marketing.

Key takeaway

With so many businesses passing on email marketing, there’s room for you to edge ahead of your competition by doing it well.

Content distribution

Social, SEO and email are marketing’s answer to The Three Amigos. In fact…

• The Content Marketing Institute says email is the third most popular distribution channel for marketers, with 87% leveraging the channel.

Meanwhile...

• 89% of marketers use a company website or blog to promote their content.

And...

•  91% of marketers use social media.

Some marketers also go the extra mile to amp-up their content promotion efforts through email. For example...

• 32% of marketers use paid collaborations to promote content to their partners’ email databases.

Key takeaway

Email is a vital part of the marketing mix. It should be used in tandem with other key channels to generate traffic to content, leads and conversions.

Subject lines

The quality of your subject line is the difference between getting open and getting ghosted. In fact…

• According to OptinMonster, 33% of email recipients use the subject line as their sole basis for engaging with an email.

As a result, crafting the perfect one has become something of an art form among marketers. For example...

• Backlinko says that 82% of marketers stick to a subject line limit of 60 characters.

This is because they want to guarantee their key messages land. But when it comes to mobile, marketers have to be even more economical. That’s because...

• Only the first 30 characters of subject lines appear on iPhone's email app.

But even within such restraints, marketers still have to get creative.

• According to Snov.io, emails with a subject line emoji have 56% higher open rates.

Complicating matters even further is the minefield of words that kill an email recipient’s vibe.

• Backlinko also says including “free”, “help”, “percent off”, and “reminder” in subject lines is off-putting and likely to sap open rates.

Key takeaway

All of these variables suggest that no one size fits all email recipients. To best action these insights, you should start your own campaigns, bearing in mind tips and things to avoid. Then dig into your own data and see which cocktail of ingredients works best for your customers.

Open and click-through rates

Open and click-through rates (CTR) are a big deal. Basically, that’s because they show you the fruits of your labour. And according to the Content Marketing Institute, they’re becoming increasingly important to marketers.

For example...

• 90% of us say we look at open rates, CTR, and downloads to determine how successful a piece of content is. And we prefer them to website traffic and social media analytics. 

But what actually constitutes success in the email marketing game? Well, SaleCycle has a few useful benchmarks for you to follow...

• The average email open rate across industries is 22.86%.

Meanwhile...

• The average email CTR across industries is 3.71%.

But to juice these numbers well above average, marketers are using every weapon in their armoury.

• According to 99 Firms, video content in emails can increase CTR by 300%.

Also...

• 65% of users prefer emails to contain mostly images.

And...

• Dynamic product recommendations can boost CTR by 35%.

Key takeaway

Open rates and CTR are the currency of email marketing. Make sure you measure yours and test different techniques to pull your numbers up.

Mobile optimisation

People look at their phones. A lot. But this doesn’t stop some marketers from neglecting mobile experiences. If you want to succeed at email marketing, you just can’t afford to fall into this bracket. For example...

• HubSpot says 46% of all email opens happen on mobile.

Meanwhile..

• 35% of business professionals check email on mobile.

You also need to check you’re optimising for the email platforms your customers use. That’s because…

• Campaign Monitor estimates that 29% of all opens are on iPhone.

While...

• 27% of opens are on Gmail.

Key takeaway

Don’t kill your email marketing journey before you pass go. And remember … doing the basics right is crucial.

Segmentation & personalisation

Chances are you’ve read an email that opened with “Hi [first name]”? Then you tossed into your junk without a second thought. This is probably the most important lesson you can learn about personalisation. Because...

• According to Snov.io, 62% of emails are opened thanks to a personalised subject line.

And a minority are peeved when they don’t get it...

• 10% of recipients are annoyed by too little or no personalisation.

To scale personalisation, you need to segment your audiences. That means having different email lists for different customer personas. And taking the time to do this is likely to pay off…

• Segmented email campaigns have a 50% higher CTR when compared to scattergun campaigns.

To add the cherry on top of your segmentation and personalisation strategy, why not throw in a few millennial favourites, too?

• 68% of 22-38 year olds like email emojis, GIFs & stickers.

Key takeaway

Connecting with your audience is crucial to getting results with email marketing. Don’t take them for granted and show them what they could gain by converting.

Email signature marketing

Souping up your email marketing is easy as pie. And one of the best ways to do that is through email signature marketing. This allows you to include banners in every employee email signature to drive traffic to relevant content, offers, events & more. And outgoing emails quickly add up in big corporates....

• On average, people send 34 emails per day.

Next...

• An email sent to a known contact gets a whopping 2.5 opens per email on average.

As the B2B email marketing stats tell you, that’s miles above the average of 0.29 opens per email across industries. So if we take take these figures and apply them to big business, say with 100 employees...

• There are 250 working days per year. So 100 x 34 x 250 = 850,000 emails per year.

Then...

• 850,000 emails multiplied by an open rate of 2.5 is 2,125,000 impressions.

Next...

• With a modest CTR of 1%, that’s 21,250 clicks.

Finally...

• With a typical B2B cost per click (CPC) of £3 in Google Ads, that's £63,570-worth of marketing value.

Key takeaway

Email signature marketing is quick win in its truest form. To make sure you’re not missing out on easy revenue gains, book a demo.