What are considered good email marketing metrics for open and click rates in B2B, and what other metrics should I focus on?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 15 Apr 2025
Updated 17 Aug 2025
7 min read
Understanding email marketing metrics, especially for B2B, can feel like navigating a maze. We often focus heavily on open and click rates, but their true value and the benchmarks for what's considered good have shifted. The landscape of email engagement is constantly evolving, influenced by new privacy features and sophisticated bot activity. It's no longer just about the numbers themselves, but what they truly represent about your audience's interaction and your overall email program's health.
My goal is to help you decipher these metrics and identify which ones truly matter for your B2B email strategy. While open and click rates provide a snapshot, a holistic view requires looking at a broader set of indicators. This approach helps ensure you're not just sending emails, but effectively driving business objectives and maintaining a strong sender reputation.
Understanding open rates in B2B
Open rates have traditionally been a primary metric, indicating how many recipients opened your email. For B2B, average open rates often hover around 20-25%. However, this metric has become increasingly unreliable due to privacy features like Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and sophisticated bot activity. These technologies can trigger false opens, making your reported open rates artificially high. This means a high open rate might not always reflect genuine engagement. I find myself increasingly questioning if this is the best metric to measure.
Despite their limitations, open rates can still be useful for trend analysis. A significant drop in your open rate might indicate a deliverability issue, a dip in subscriber interest, or even that your email service provider is better filtering bot opens. It's important to consider the impact of AI assistants and MPP when interpreting these numbers.
Ultimately, while a high open rate can feel encouraging, it's rarely the sole indicator of campaign success in B2B. A good open rate for B2B can vary significantly by industry and audience, often falling anywhere from 15% to 30%, though some exceptional campaigns may exceed 40-50%.
The challenge with open rates
Traditional open rate metrics are increasingly skewed by proxy opens from mailbox providers and security scanners, leading to inflated or inaccurate figures. This makes it difficult to ascertain actual human engagement.
Evaluating click-through rates (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) is often a more reliable indicator of engagement because it requires an explicit action from the recipient. For B2B emails, where the goal might be lead generation, content downloads, or booking demos, CTR directly reflects how compelling your content and calls to action are. Benchmarks for B2B CTR typically range from 1% to 5%, with anything above 2-3% often considered good performance, depending on your industry and campaign goals.
A higher CTR indicates that your subject lines and email content successfully convinced recipients to take the next step. If your B2B CTR is lower than desired, consider refining your message, personalizing content, or testing different calls to action. For more in-depth advice on improving this, you can look into best practices for improving click rates.
While industry benchmarks provide a general idea, your specific audience and campaign type will heavily influence what constitutes a good CTR for you. For example, a newsletter focused on thought leadership might have a different expected CTR than a direct sales outreach email. Always analyze your CTR in context.
Industry
Average B2B open rate
Average B2B click-through rate
Software and internet
20-25%
2-3%
Manufacturing
22-27%
2.5-3.5%
Consulting and professional services
20-24%
2-3%
Beyond open and click rates: essential B2B metrics
While open and click rates are key, relying solely on them gives you an incomplete picture. Other metrics are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of your B2B email performance and overall deliverability. These metrics often provide a more direct link to business outcomes.
Conversion rate: This is arguably the most important metric for B2B. It measures how many recipients completed a desired action after clicking, such as downloading a whitepaper, registering for a webinar, or requesting a demo. Your conversion rate tells you the true ROI of your email campaigns.
Click-to-open rate (CTOR): This metric is calculated by dividing unique clicks by unique opens. It provides insight into the effectiveness of your email content itself, beyond just getting the email opened. A good CTOR for B2B typically ranges from 10-15%.
Bounce rate: This measures the percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered. High bounce rates can negatively impact your sender reputation. It's crucial to distinguish between hard and soft bounces and maintain a clean list.
Unsubscribe rate: This indicates how many recipients opted out of your emails. While some unsubscribes are natural, a high rate suggests your content isn't relevant or you're sending too frequently. A rate below 0.5% is generally good.
Reply rate: For B2B, especially sales or outreach emails, replies can be a powerful engagement signal. They demonstrate direct interest and a willingness to engage further, often indicating a more qualified lead than a simple click.
I always emphasize that looking at these metrics together provides a much clearer picture of your email campaign's health and effectiveness. For example, a high open rate combined with a low CTOR might mean your subject lines are great, but your email content isn't delivering on its promise.
To improve your B2B email performance, the focus should shift from vanity metrics to actionable insights. This involves a continuous process of testing, analysis, and optimization across various aspects of your email program.
Content optimization
Personalization: Tailor your email content to specific segments or even individual recipients based on their industry, role, or past interactions. Generic emails rarely cut through the noise in B2B. Always consider what resonates with your B2B audience.
Value proposition: Clearly articulate the value you offer in your subject lines and the first few sentences. B2B professionals are busy and need to quickly understand why they should open and click.
Technical deliverability
Authentication: Ensure your emails are properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. This helps prevent your emails from being flagged as spam. Understanding the basics of these protocols is critical.
List hygiene: Regularly clean your email list by removing inactive subscribers and bounced addresses. A clean list improves your sender reputation and overall deliverability.
Beyond these, don't neglect the strategic elements of your email marketing. Consider segmenting your audience further, A/B testing different subject lines and content formats, and optimizing your sending frequency. These tactical adjustments can significantly impact both your engagement rates and the ultimate success of your B2B campaigns.
Finally, monitor your IP and domain reputation diligently. Being listed on a blacklist (or blocklist) can severely hinder your deliverability, regardless of how good your content is. Proactive blocklist monitoring is a crucial preventative measure for any serious B2B sender.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Maintain consistent sending patterns; sudden volume changes can raise flags with inbox providers.
Segment your audience based on engagement levels and tailor content accordingly for higher relevance.
Prioritize email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to build and maintain domain reputation.
Common pitfalls
Over-reliance on open rates as a primary success metric due to the impact of MPP and bot activity.
Ignoring other critical metrics like conversion rate and reply rate in favor of vanity metrics.
Failing to regularly monitor blocklists (or blacklists) and domain reputation, leading to hidden deliverability problems.
Expert tips
Shift your focus to more actionable email marketing KPIs like click-to-open rate (CTOR) and conversion rate, which provide a clearer picture of campaign success.
Consider direct feedback by encouraging replies to your emails, which humanizes the engagement process.
Differentiate between 'unique opens' and 'total opens' in your analytics to avoid inflated metrics from automated systems.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says that while a 50% open rate is uncommon, anything under 30% might indicate a problem. A 5% click rate is considered good for some clients.
2024-04-22 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that open rates are best for trending analysis and are a broken, useless metric at this point for measuring true engagement due to tracking pixel requests from various sources like virus scanners and caching by mailbox providers.
2024-04-22 - Email Geeks
Key takeaways for B2B email metrics
For B2B email marketing, defining good metrics goes beyond simply hitting industry averages for open and click rates. While these provide context, the real success lies in understanding the complete user journey and the impact your emails have on your business goals. Focusing on conversion rates, CTOR, and actively managing your deliverability through proper authentication and list hygiene will provide a far more accurate and actionable measure of your email marketing effectiveness.
By adopting a comprehensive approach to email metrics, you can move beyond superficial numbers and gain deeper insights into what truly drives engagement and conversions for your B2B audience. This ensures your efforts are aligned with achieving tangible business results.
20-25%
22-27%
effectiveness of your email content itself, beyond just getting the email opened. A good CTOR for B2B typically ranges from 10-15%.
