8 facts that define the current state of business-to-business email marketing

1. There are 929 million business email accounts.¹
Isn’t it difficult to remember how we conducted business before email? In 2013 a Radacti report stated there were 929 million business email accounts in existence. Business users are not only likely to continue using email, we’ve become dependent on it. I think many of us have even convinced ourselves that email allows us to multitask and stay on top of things when we are in meetings or on the go.

Our organization opens a new employee’s email account before their first day. After all, how could we expect them to be productive without email on day one? This email marketing fact demonstrates that the growth and usage of business-to-business email marketing is truly astounding.

2. 77% of marketers agree that the most important use of business-to-business email marketing is customer retention.²
The reality is business-to-business email marketing is best suited for customer communications. Acquisition emails aren’t always faced with tremendous receptivity. As a matter of fact, many business email users feel that unsolicited emails, where there are no existing relationships with the sender, are spam. Many company firewalls also limit the delivery of unknown emails, impacting a marketer’s sender reputation.

The most successful email marketing campaigns are targeted at either customers or users that have an existing relationship or actively provided their email addresses. This includes lead nurturing, behavioral emails as well as customer emails from current and past purchasers. Don’t allow email’s favorable cost per contact tempt your company into using email marketing for pure acquisition.

3. 61% of business-to-business marketers stated “click-through rate” was the most important metric when analyzing email campaign performance.³

While this rate may seem low in comparison to its consumer counterpart, the reality is that business email users’ inboxes are even more cluttered than the average user. Additionally, marketers don’t always consider the use of mobile devices in opening and reading of emails.

5. 17% of marketers do not track or analyze email metrics for their business.⁵
This email marketing fact may surprise some – that any organization isn’t tracking all email marketing efforts. Consumer email marketing efforts often afford large quantities for testing and analyzing. The reality is that smaller sample sizes still tend to yield meaningful results in email marketing.

Business-to-business marketers may be missing opportunities to test, learn and optimize their email marketing channel. Many business-to-business email marketers aren’t applying the same discipline to their business email marketing as they are to consumer marketing.

Are you one of these marketers? If you are not analyzing business email metrics, it’s unlikely you are optimizing your email marketing effectiveness to deliver the most successful email marketing campaigns. Defining metrics and measuring campaign efforts are keys to successful email marketing.

6. About half of business-to-business organizations allocate at least 10% of the marketing budget to email marketing.⁶
The cost per contact for email marketing is a fraction of the cost per contact for other channels. According to HubSpot, the cost per contact for email is 95 to 100 times lower than direct mail. The cost per contact underscores the significant percentage that a 10% budget allocation can represent within a total marketing budget.

7. 64% of those responsible for making decisions are reading emails at least part of the time on mobile devices.⁷
Most marketers realize the email marketing fact that more and more emails are being read on mobile devices. Many marketers might not realize that optimizing for mobile is just as important for business-to-business email marketing as for business-to-consumer email marketing. Successful email marketing campaigns can’t ignore mobile optimization if they are to be successful.

Marketers often make the mistake of assuming that business users are opening all emails from a desktop computer. How many business emails have you opened this week on a mobile device? Business-to-business marketers should realize that a successful email marketing campaign must be mobile-optimized.

8. 72% of business-to-business customers are likely to share useful content via email.⁸
It’s not surprising that 3 out of 4 marketers are integrating content marketing into their email communications. Content marketing is one of the key strategies many business-to-business marketers are currently employing for lead generation and lead nurturing. Email marketing is a natural for repackaging content that is intended for inbound marketing efforts. To learn more about how to leverage content marketing to get more traffic and leads, sign up for J&C’s content marketing assessment.

1. The Radicati Group, Inc.
2. Email Stat Center
3. ExactTarget
4. Epsilon
5. HubSpot
6. Email Stat Center
7. ExactTarget
8. Sales Force