The document summarizes the findings of a survey on email marketing effectiveness in B2B environments. Key findings include: - While email remains the top marketing channel, only 28% felt email marketing was becoming more effective. - 61% reported average open rates below 15%, lower than the industry average of 19.7%. Open rates varied significantly by industry. - Many marketers were ignorant of the impact of invalid addresses, catch-all addresses, and high-risk emails in their databases on effectiveness. - 62% did not know their email reputation score, and those who did had an inflated view of it.

1. B2B Email Marketing Effectiveness
Benchmarks, Insights & Advice
Navigating the Minefield to Inbox Placement
© 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Sponsored By:
Benchmarking Report

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
3
4
5
6
9
11
Introduction
Executive Summary
Research Methodology
Email Marketing Landscape
Email Performance
The Email Marketing Minefield
20
21
22
Analyst Bottom Line
Acknowledgements
About Demand Metric
16
18
Email List Maintenance
Email Reputation

3. INTRODUCTION
Research conducted earlier this year by Demand Metric confirmed that email is still the most favored marketing channel for
businesses. Even with the growing popularity of social media, email remains at the top of the heap. Does email remain popular,
email effectiveness in B2B environments and measure the impact of forces working against it.
This report details results from the Demand Metric study on B2B email marketing effectiveness, whose goal was to understand
how effective email is as a marketing channel, specifically to understand the impact of each of these factors known to negatively
impact email marketing effectiveness:
Catch-all email addresses. These are addresses set up on a mail server to catch email sent to any address at that domain,
whether the address is actually associated with a real person or not. The purpose of a catch-all address is to prevent email
message was delivered, when in fact it sits in a catch-all inbox which is rarely, if ever, checked by a human.
Expired or invalid email addresses. Quite simply, these are emails that may have once been valid, but are no longer, often
due to employee retirement or departure.
High-risk email addresses. These are email addresses of individuals who have previously opted-out of other email
campaigns, not necessarily yours, or they have reported email as spam. Including these individuals in your email database
poses risk for your email marketing effectiveness.
Thank you to all those who participated in the survey. We really appreciate your input!
Jerry Rackley, Chief Analyst
Demand Metric

4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A survey was used to collect the data for this study, and its analysis provides these key findings:
Email
However, only 28 percent of survey respondents report that their email marketing or lead generation efforts are becoming
more effective.
A participants (61 percent) reported average email open rates of below 15 percent. By comparison, the
-
average email open rate of 19.7 percent.
Participants from different industries reported significant variation of open rates, with Financial Services doing the worst (71
percent reporting an open rate of 15 percent or less) and Manufacturing doing the best (54 percent reporting an open rate of
15 percent or less).
Ignorance abounds with respect to understanding of the impact of catch-all, invalid and high-risk email addresses. Thirty six
-
-risk emails
addresses that are in their databases.
A majority of marketers (62 percent) in this study do not know what their digital reputation is as an email sender, as measured
by Sender Score (www.senderscore.org). Of those who claim to know, they have a dramatically inflated view of it, with merely
three percent reporting a Sender Score of 70 or lower, compared to a recent Sender Score rolling average of 38.3. This is
despite the fact that it takes only minutes to obtain a Sender Score online, and it is free.
This report details the results and insights from the analysis of the study data.

5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The Demand Metric B2B Email Marketing Effectiveness Survey was administered online over a period of July 5th through July
16th, 2013. During this period, over 530 responses were collected, 478 of which were complete and not duplicates and were
therefore included in the analysis.
All members of the Demand Metric community received email invitations to participate in the survey, and participation was
encouraged through a random draw incentive for an iPad Mini. While respondent email addresses were collected in order to
facilitate the prize drawing, no identifying information was considered in the analysis of the survey data.
Summarized below is the basic information that was collected about survey respondents to enable filtering and analysis of data:
Number of Employees:
Zero to 25 (48%)
26 to 100 (13%)
101 to 250 (12%)
251 to 1,000 (11%)
1,001 to 10,000 (12%)
Over 10,000 (4%)
Type of Organization:
B2B (64%)
Both B2B and B2C (30%)
B2C (6%)
5

6. EMAIL MARKETING LANDSCAPE
A recent Demand Metric study identified email as the
top marketing channel for the organizations
surveyed.
This B2B email study took a slightly different
approach in trying to understand the email marketing
landscape with the question:
Which of the following statements best describes
as a marketing or lead generation tool
Most organizations 91 percent in
this survey continue to market
using email.
Of
generation, they are primarily small companies, 12
percent of which reported not using it, compared to
only three percent of large companies.
6
9%
26%
42%
23%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Do not use
Rarely use
Regularly use
Constantly use
Email use for Marketing or Lead Generation

7. This understanding of email usage begs a more important
question: how well is it working? To find out, the survey
asked:
Which of the following statements best describes the
effectiveness of your email marketing or lead generation
efforts
An almost equal number of survey respondents feel that
email effectiveness is declining as improving, with the
Reviewing this effectiveness data by company size reveals
that there is no relationship between how effective email is
and the size of the company using it for marketing or lead
generation. In other words, company size does not
influence the perception of how well or how poorly email
is performing.
The relationship that does exist is a linear one between
effectiveness and use: the more a company reported that it
uses email for marketing or lead generation, the more likely
it is to also report that it is effective.
EMAIL MARKETING LANDSCAPE - EFFECTIVENESS
6%
19%
47%
22%
6%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Declining
significantly
Declining
slightly
Holding
steady
Improving
slightly
Improving
significantly
Email Marketing or Lead Generation
Effectiveness

8. EMAIL MARKETING LANDSCAPE SYSTEMS
The email landscape with respect to the systems
in use to send bulk email is diverse:
Internal, server-based solutions
lead the way, followed by a
combination of marketing
automation, CRM and dedicated
email marketing systems.
Finally, company size is related to the number of
surprisingly, smaller companies maintain and
use smaller databases, and larger companies
have larger ones.
8
107
96
45 44
29
22 18 15
7 6 6 5 5 3 3 3
96
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
Bulk Email Systems in Use

9. EMAIL PERFORMANCE OPEN RATES
There are a number of indicators that help email
marketers understand how any given email has
performed.
Study: An Analysis of Messages Sent Q1-
reported that the average open rate in 2012 was 19.7
percent, with top performing companies enjoying an open
rate almost twice the average. In this study, the
pessimistic:
61 percent of companies are reporting
open rates well below this average.
Open rates vary by industry. For the top six industries in
this study, the open rates were reported as follows:
Financial Services 71%
Education 70%
Software/Tech 66%
Professional Services 58%
Media & Publishing 58%
Manufacturing 54%
9
17%
23%
21%
15%
12%
12%
5% or less
6 to 10%
11 to 15%
16 to 20%
21 to 25%
More than 25%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Email Open Rate