B2B marketers are increasingly relying on email as a vehicle to engage with and sell to new clients, despite acknowledging that it is most effective as a customer retention or maintenance tool.

This is according to B2B Marketing's annual email marketing survey, sponsored by Newsweaver, which reveals that 90 per cent of B2B marketers are currently using email to communicate with prospects. This is despite the fact that less than 20 per cent believe it is most effective at achieving this objective. The survey also revealed that ‘prospecting' is the joint most popular use of email amongst B2B marketers, closely followed by ‘generating new sales leads' (see Figure 2).

The growing importance of email as a channel generally was also highlighted by the survey, with 78 per cent of respondents describing email as a ‘critical' or ‘very important' part of their marketing strategy. Only four per cent described it as ‘not important'. Correspondingly, the level of understanding of the intricacies of email marketing was also high, with 54 per cent of respondents describing their level of understanding as ‘good', whilst less than half believe their knowledge is either ‘average' or ‘poor'. No respondents suggested their understanding was ‘terrible'.

Traffic on the up

The level of interest in email marketing has unsurprisingly resulted in an increase in both the frequency of campaigns and the volume of individual emails sent. Seventy-one per cent of respondents had increased the number of email marketing campaigns they sent in the last 12 months, whilst only five per cent had sent fewer campaigns. A similar number (70 per cent) had increased the volume of email they were sending, whilst this had declined for only six per cent of respondents.

Just under half of respondents send out an email campaign at least once a fortnight, and over 70 per cent send one at least once a month. In terms of the volume of individual emails sent, over 30 per cent send over 10,000 a month. But despite the volume of activity being conducted, the budget invested in email marketing remains relatively limited. Over half of respondents (54 per cent) spend under 10 per cent of their budget on email, whilst more alarming 15 per cent currently ‘don't know' how much money they are investing in this channel.

The fact that email is used so widely and so frequently, and yet costs so little, cannot be unrelated. B2B marketers are being entirely pragmatic, and focusing their attention on channels that are cheap. Whether they are being as effective as other routes to market for all objectives, however - particularly those targeting new customers - remains open to question.

Pressure on inboxes

The effectiveness of email marketing activity continues to vary widely, although almost half of respondents (45 per cent) report less than 20 per cent average open rates for campaigns. At one end of the spectrum, a small minority (ten per cent

of marketers) report exceptional open rates of over 40 per cent, whilst more worryingly six per cent say they ‘don't know' what their open rates are.

In terms of click-through rates, a similar figure (48 per cent), generate under five per cent of click-through rates from marketing emails. Open rates and click-through rates were shown to overwhelmingly be the most popular metrics, although unsubscribe rates and bounce rates were both monitored by approximately half of the respondents.

The survey confirmed the growing concern regarding inbox overload, and the impact that this is having on the effectiveness of email as a business-to-business marketing medium. Twenty-eight per cent of respondents cited this as the biggest challenge facing B2B email marketing, placing it marginally ahead of the perennial issue of spam. Access to email addresses was the third most pressing concern.

However, despite these issues, optimism remains high regarding use of email as a marketing channel going forward. When asked ‘What do you think the future holds for B2B email marketing?', the largest group (45 per cent) said ‘marketers will find new ways of using email marketing', whilst only 37 per cent said ‘email will be used more selectively'.

B2B Marketing Email Report

The results of this survey in full are available to purchase - call Dominic Rooke-Allden on 020 7438 1379 or email dominic.rookeallden@b2bm.biz.

The comprehensive results document includes responses to all questions, plus historical trend information and analysis.

The B2B Marketing Email Report is available for £100 to subscribers and £150 to non-subscribers.

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