Email marketing b2b: strategies and trends

By Roberta Salzano

Published: 28 April 2025

The basis of a BtoB e-mail marketing strategy is essentially the sending of professional e-mail groups and messages.

This practice is essential in the context of prospecting, with effective results for potential customers. However, there are some key figures and rules of BtoB emailing to know in order to make your campaigns a success.

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B2B Emailing: key figures in business development

To help you understand the scale of the B2B email marketing business let's take some statistics from Megamarketing on 2019. It is a booming phenomenon with extremely encouraging results, but at the same time a weapon that can lead to risks if badly exploited.

93%: percentage of B2B companies using it in their marketing campaigns
40%: B2B marketers who make it a primary strategy
Approximately 60% of marketers put email marketing as a major source of ROI

There are other interesting facts that can emerge from the statistics; in fact, for millennials it is the preferred method of communication to be contacted by companies (pay attention, they are currently the generational segment with the most impact in terms of the labour market) and above all, most users prefer to read emails from mobile devices. What does this mean? When designing your email marketing campaign, it will be essential to consider a design that makes it easy to read even from a mobile device (nobody likes to zoom and scroll to finish reading a line) .

Another trend (but also fun fact) concerns emoji and GIFs: if you have always held back from sending them for fear of not being taken seriously, well you will be heartened to know that they are actually great for increasing conversion rates.

4 best practices for successful BtoB campaigns

To set up effective BtoB emailing strategies and increase sales and return on investment, here are four tips and best practices to implement:

1. Define sales and marketing objectives

Before launching your email prospecting campaign, you need to define precise and achievable business goals. Do you want to acquire new customers, qualify your contacts or retain subscribers to your mailing list?

To create effective real-time and long-term messages, keep these marketing goals in mind during your professional campaigns.

2. Segment targets and leads

Your BtoB emailing campaign must meet the real expectations of your target group of potential customers. This is a fundamental principle inherited from inbound marketing: to activate the right decision levers, you need to send the right message at the right time and to the right people.

To make the recipient want to respond to your e-mails, segment your mailing lists according to different criteria:

their position
their function (sales manager, manager, sales representative, decision maker)
their preferred content
their purchase history

3. Choosing the right time to send messages

Choosing the right time to send your BtoB emailing campaign is crucial. To find out the most efficient time slots for your business sector and your company, carry out tests with different sending times.

A golden rule: the longer an e-mail stays in an inbox, the less chance it has of being opened. The best time to send BtoB e-mails is therefore in real time, when your customers check their inbox:

preferably at 8 a.m.
and in the early afternoon, preferably at 2 p.m.

4. Analysing e-mail campaign statistics

You can gain valuable information on the effectiveness of your email campaign by analysing performance indicators: opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, spam alerts, etc.

A low or high deliverability rate gives you an idea of the quality of your strategy. The open rate gives you information on the relevance of your BtoB e-mail objects. While click rate and response rate are indicators of the quality and personalisation of your campaign content.

Which marketing tools to optimise your campaigns and improve your statistics?

In the BtoB emailing market, many solutions allow you to easily and quickly manage all marketing automation criteria. However, all these software are different and not all of them allow a complete and almost automatic management of the emailing campaign.

Marketing automation allows, as the name suggests, the automation of marketing actions according to predefined behaviours. In the context of email campaigns, it is an essential tool for segmentation and the creation of content and scenarios adapted to the needs of targets.

Here are the main criteria to consider when choosing the right BtoB email campaign management tool:

Deliverability

Whether you are a small company or a large corporation, having an up-to-date and reliable database of decision-makers is the guarantee for good deliverability of your professional emails. This type of solution that integrates marketing automation can provide a deliverability rate of up to 97%. The must for a top emailing database is to be able to be informed in real time of the latest appointments of decision-makers.

The value of data

A sales and marketing intelligence solution gives you easy biographical access with precise targeting of your campaigns according to many criteria: function, career path, workforce, etc. The guarantee of the right message, the right contact, the right time and thus an optimal conversion rate.

Sales management

Many BtoB emailing software develop a range of services to meet the most specific needs: lead generation and customer acquisition, retention, corporate communication, recruitment, etc.

Simplified contacts, relaunch of clickers and openers, identification of new business opportunities... all to facilitate your business management and commercial prospecting!

The software we recommend

Mailup

Mailup doesn't stop at email marketing campaign automation but goes even further to predictive marketing and SMS campaigns. It is truly a tool for everyone: marketers, entrepreneurs, IT or marketing agencies. It is available in cloud mode and can therefore be used anywhere. Prominent features include:

A/B testing
customised domain
pre-set email templates

4dem.co.uk

4dem.co.uk is a highly successful all-in-one platform. How did it do it? has an interface that is intuitive, pleasant to use and above all makes life easier rather than more complicated. To better track your email and SMS marketing campaigns, you can view the results in real time so that you can make corrective actions in a timely manner. Among the features we like

Dragon Editor with responsive drag & drop
automatic sending to those who have taken a specific action or based on a specific interest
high levels of deliverability

Zoho Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns is a smart marketing tool that will bring you a precise and successful campaign. Like Zoho's other products, it has an international reputation for quality and reliability. The management of your email marketing will start from design to intelligent result analysis tools.

Features:

autoresponder
mailing list segmentation
dynamic content