Important B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2023

B2B (business-to-business) email marketing benchmarks can differ from B2C email marketing benchmarks. Since B2B customers have different needs and will interact with email content differently, it is essential to measure your email campaign’s success based on industry-specific benchmarks. This article will outline the most important B2B benchmarks and provide tips on improving B2B email engagement campaigns. Keep reading to learn more. 

What Are the Most Important Email Marketing Benchmarks?

B2B companies trying to optimize their email marketing campaigns should aim to hit benchmarks for specific email marketing metrics. The most important B2B email metrics you should be tracking are:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Click-to-open rate
• Bounce rate

The following sections will outline B2B benchmarks for each email marketing metric. 

B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks 2023

B2B email benchmarks can vary by industry. However, you can use the following recommendations as a base guideline to measure the success of B2B email campaigns. 

B2B Open Rate Benchmark 

B2B open rates are typically lower than B2C (business to consumer) emails. The average B2B email open rate is 20.8%, (without Apple MPP opens.) The industry average sets a good benchmark for the average open rate per email you should be trying to achieve. 

B2B Click-Through Rate Benchmark

B2B emails tend to have higher click-through rates than B2C emails. The average B2B click-through rate is 3.2%. This industry average sets a good goal for you to aim for with B2B email campaigns. 

B2B Conversion Rate Benchmark

B2B email conversion rates can vary by industry. Oftentimes, conversion rates are affected by pricing, with higher-priced products resulting in lower conversion rates. This makes it essential to base B2B conversion rate on industry-specific standards. The average B2B conversion rates in major industries are:

• B2B e-commerce: 3.2%
• B2B services: 3.5%
• B2B tech: 1.7%

These industry-specific benchmarks provide a good baseline for B2B conversion rates that you should aim to achieve. 

B2B Click-To-Open Rate Benchmark

It’s recommended to aim for a click-to-open rate between 10-15% on B2B emails. Being in this range shows that your email content and call to action are effective at getting viewers to click a link after opening your email. 

If you’re getting below a 10% click-to-open rate on B2B emails, there are some steps you can take to improve this metric. Ways to improve B2B click-to-open rates are:

• Body content: Ensure the body content of your emails is valuable, relevant, and easy to read. A great way to improve your content’s value is to think of the major pain points of your target audience and show how your products or services can solve those major problems.
• Design: The design of your B2B emails should be on-brand and provide a good reading experience. Design qualities that emphasize key points, important images, and your call to action will help increase your click-to-open rate. 
• Call to action: Your B2B emails must have a clear call to action, so your readers know what you want them to do next. For example, a clear call to action such as “learn more” or “contact us today” are great ways to encourage link clicks from email subscribers. 

Improving these elements of your emails will help you meet B2B click-to-open rate benchmarks. 

B2B Bounce Rate Benchmark

The acceptable bounce rate for B2B emails is 2%. Aiming to be at or below a 2% bounce rate helps ensure that your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes. 

One of the things that causes emails to start bouncing is low open rates. If your subscribers are ignoring your emails or instantly deleting them, receiving domains may stop accepting them or will mark them as spam. 

Once emails start bouncing, it’s more difficult to recover open rates, since subscribers won’t see your emails in the first place. This makes it essential to maintain engagement and re-engage or remove inactive subscribers as soon as possible. AudiencePoint’s email insight software can help by analyzing your email list and identifying any inactive subscribers.  

What Are Good Email Open Rates?

Good email open rates for B2B are anything above the industry standard of 20.8% (without Apple MPP opens). If your emails are getting open rates above the industry average, it’s a great sign that you are likely outperforming compared to your competition. 

How to Increase B2B Email Open Rate

The best ways to increase B2B email open rates are:

• Create subject lines that catch attention, show the email’s value, and highlight keywords that are relevant to your audience. 
• Consistently provide value in your emails that makes subscribers want to keep reading your new email content. 
• Optimize send times, so your emails show up when subscribers are most likely to check their inboxes. 
• Track data from emails to ensure you hit relevant benchmarks based on your goals.

Using each of these tips will help you get high open rates for B2B email campaigns. 

Impact of Apple MPP on Open Rate

Apple’s new mail privacy protection (MPP) has impacted the relevance of the open rate metric. Emails sent to the mail app on Apple devices are now opened on Apple proxy servers before landing in inboxes. This inflates open rates tracked with email analytics tools. 

AudiencePoint is aware of this and has taken steps to ensure data tracked through our email insight software is up to date with today’s email marketing standards, and that you still get accurate metrics about your email campaigns. 

How AudiencePoint Can Help with Your Email Marketing Strategy

AudiencePoint can help with your email marketing strategy by tracking open and clickdata and analyzing your email list to provide you with actionable insights into how you can increase email engagement. Insights from AudiencePoint will help you optimize send times, re-engage inactive subscribers, and send relevant content based on the needs and wants of your audience. Contact us today for more information about how AudiencePoint can help you master email marketing.