Email marketing for B2B most important marketing channel

Email marketing is doing well. Still is. Also in B2B. For the fourth time in a row, this marketing method was voted the most important online marketing channel...

Read the more recent post on email marketing in 2021.

Within online marketing, email marketing is the oldest and most important field. This year, 33 percent of companies are increasing the budget for email marketing, including inB2B. And for 73 percent, email marketing will play an even more important role this year. These are just some conclusions from e-Village's Email Benchmark 2017 research.

The Email Benchmark 2017 consists of figures and email ratios from more than 3.5 billion emails and over 17,000 campaigns from 750 online players from the Netherlands. The research is complemented by qualitative research among Dutch marketers.

The research once again proves the power of email marketing in B2B. Indeed, mailings in the B2B market do better than emails aimed at consumers. The research is very useful for email marketing consultants who can take advantage of this and adapt their email marketing strategy accordingly.

B2B emails score better on relevance, are opened more often and benefit from a higher click rate. About 30 percent of B2B mailings are opened. For B2C, that rate is 22.84 percent. The click rate of B2B mailings is 5.23 percent, compared to an average of 3.45 percent for B2C.

Key email marketing goals

Whereas lead generation was the main goal of most email marketers last year, this year it is generating traffic to the website. Increasing the number of website visits is most important to the majority of those surveyed. In second place is providing service, by this is meant the after-sales process or informing customers.

Driving sales (cross selling or repeat purchases) is in third place, followed by branding. Only in fifth place is lead generation.

Marketing Automation remains the biggest challenge for marketers, as it did last year.

Email marketing remains the most important online marketing tool for B2B

Email marketing is doing well. Still is. Also in B2B. For the fourth time in a row, this marketing method was voted the most important online marketing channel. Over 94 percent(!) of those surveyed considered this technique more important than SEO (45 percent), SEA/Adwords (39 percent) and social media (25 percent). An increase of 25 percent compared to last year.

That mailings are very important is evident from the budget allocated to them. Some 33 percent of those surveyed are increasing the budget this year. Some 66 percent of companies are maintaining the existing budget and only 6 percent of companies are spending less money on email marketing. On average, people spend about 10,000 euros on this marketing method.

"Some 33 percent of companies increase budget for email marketing"

62 percent of email marketers are rated on conversion rate. The click rate ranks a close second at 60 percent, followed by the open rate at 51 percent. ROI ranks relatively low at 25 percent.
A notable result of the survey is that cell phones and tablets beat desktop for the first time. Opening emails this year happens more often on a smart phone than at a computer. In B2B, though, emails are still more often opened on the desktop.

The difference is minimal, but the desktop wins out over the smart phone. Narrowly. Some 54.22 percent of users open mailing on the cell phone, while 45.78 percent open digital mail on the computer.