In 2025 vendor data, mixed B2B and B2C senders saw a 43.46% MailerLite median open rate but a 20.73% Brevo average without Apple machine opens.
For B2B-only data, DMA’s 2024 UK figures show a 37.4% open rate and a 2.9% unique click rate. Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) opens are mostly counted there (a contributor quoted in DMA’s report notes only some platforms filter them).
In Validity’s 2025 seed-list tests, Microsoft (Hotmail and Outlook.com) inbox placement trailed Gmail’s by 12.4 points (our calculation from Validity figures). Below are 55+ B2B email marketing benchmarks, checked in October 2026 and marked B2B-only or mixed. These B2B email marketing statistics are sourced and free to cite.
Key B2B Email Benchmarks at a Glance
These are the core B2B email marketing benchmarks in one place, one sourced row per metric and scope.
| Category | Statistic | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Open rate, as reported (MPP counted) | 43.46% median open rate across 3.6 million campaigns, mixed B2B and B2C senders, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data |
| Open rate, MPP opens removed | 20.73% average open rate across 175,000+ Brevo customers, all industries, calendar 2025 | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
| B2B open rate (B2B only, MPP opens mostly counted) | 37.4% open rate for B2B emails, UK data pooled from seven ESPs, B2B segment, full year 2024; Apple MPP opens mostly counted (a contributor quoted in DMA’s report notes only some platforms filter them) | DMA, 2025 |
| Click-through rate | 2.9% unique click rate for B2B emails, UK data pooled from seven ESPs, B2B segment, full year 2024, click base not published | DMA, 2025 |
| Click-to-open rate | 6.81% median click-to-open rate, mixed senders, MPP opens in the denominator, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data |
| B2B email conversion rate | Software companies convert 4.0% of email-sourced traffic into a qualified lead or sale, against a 4.9% average across 13 industries, Ruler’s current table (data period and base not stated) | Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data |
| Bounce rate (hard bounces) | 1.46% average unknown-user rate, senders in Validity’s data, mixed B2B and B2C, 2025 | Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data |
| Median unsubscribe rate per campaign | 0.22% median unsubscribe rate per campaign, mixed B2B and B2C, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data |
| Spam complaint limit | Gmail asks senders to keep the spam rate below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, all senders to Gmail accounts, in force since Feb 2024 | Google, Email sender guidelines |
| Inbox placement | 87.2% average inbox placement in Validity’s seed-list tests (customers who pool data), mixed B2B and B2C, 2025 | Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data |
| Inbox placement at business hosts (B2B only) | 83.0% average inbox placement for B2B senders at business hosting platforms (mostly Office 365 and Google Workspace; Validity’s Major Hosting Platforms), Validity’s seed-list tests, 2025 | Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data |
| Cold email reply rate (cold outbound) | 3.43% average reply rate, all replies including follow-ups divided by emails sent, thousands of Instantly workspaces, 2025 | Instantly, 2026, vendor data |
| Email ROI | 35% of marketing leaders get $10 to $36 back per $1 spent on email, survey of nearly 500 marketers in B2B and B2C, 2025 | Litmus, Jul 2025, vendor data |
| B2B channel use | 71% of B2B marketers used email newsletters to distribute content, 980 B2B marketers surveyed (1,186 total responses), Jun to Aug 2024 | Content Marketing Institute, 2025 |
We took every number from its original publisher, opened it on the source page and checked it in October 2026. All data is from 2023 or later, and each row states its sample.
Vendor data, small samples and our calculations are labeled, and older recycled figures appear only in the table of stats that don’t hold up.
B2B Email Metrics: Formulas and What Good Looks Like
B2B email metrics use six standard formulas, and only four have a performance line published by the data owner. The averages sit in the Key B2B Email Benchmarks at a Glance table.
| Metric | Formula | Top performers | Concerning | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | Unique opens ÷ delivered × 100; Apple MPP machine opens inflate it | 44.02%, top 10% of Brevo senders, MPP opens removed, 2025 data | No published line | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
| Click-through rate | Unique clicks ÷ delivered × 100 (some ESPs divide by recipients) | 5.22% per recipient, top 10% of Brevo senders, 2025 data | No published line | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
| Click-to-open rate (CTOR) | Unique clicks ÷ unique opens × 100 | No published band | No published line | Definition |
| Conversion rate | Conversions ÷ delivered × 100; in B2B a conversion is a lead, demo request or MQL, not a purchase | No published band | No published line | Definition |
| Bounce rate | Bounced ÷ sent × 100 | No published band | Above 2%; account review at 5%, sending may pause at 10% (Amazon SES policy, current) | Amazon SES, sending review FAQ |
| Unsubscribe rate | Unsubscribes ÷ delivered × 100 | No published band | Above 0.5% is a warning signal, Brevo guidance with its 2025 data | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
No data owner publishes a band that answers what is a good CTOR for email marketing, so that cell stays open. The same gap applies to what is a good email conversion rate.
Ruler Analytics measures conversions from email-sourced traffic; Ruler does not state the base. Its rates may not share the delivered-email base of the table’s email conversion rate formula.
Click rate and CTR count the same unique clicks, but some ESPs divide by recipients and others by delivered emails, while CTOR divides by opens. For paid social, see our LinkedIn ads CTR benchmarks. The table’s formula is how to calculate click rate in email marketing on delivered emails; two click rates compare only when they share that base.
A 35% open rate is good on MPP-filtered data: it sits above Brevo’s 20.73% average for 2025 and below the 44.02% top-10% line. On raw data that counts Apple machine opens, the same 35% says little about real readers.
How B2B Email Performs: The Questions Behind the 2026 Benchmarks
B2B email numbers differ from all-sender email marketing benchmarks, so each answer below marks its scope: B2B or mixed senders, period and method.
What Is the Average B2B Email Open Rate, and Why Do Sources Disagree?
The only B2B-only benchmark for B2B email open rates is 37.4%, from DMA’s 2024 UK data (DMA, 2025). Apple MPP opens are mostly counted there (a contributor quoted in DMA’s report notes only some platforms filter them).
Mixed-sender benchmarks run from a 20.73% Brevo mean (MPP removed) to a 43.46% MailerLite median, 22.73 points apart (our calculation from MailerLite and Brevo figures).
| Benchmark report | Reported open rate | What it measures | Data period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite Email Marketing Benchmarks 2025 | 43.46% | Median open rate, mixed B2B and B2C senders, Apple MPP opens counted, 3.6 million campaigns | Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data |
| DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2025 | 37.4% | B2B segment only, pooled data from seven UK ESPs, Apple MPP opens mostly counted (a contributor quoted in DMA’s report notes only some platforms filter them) | 2024 | DMA, 2025 |
| Brevo 2026 Marketing Orchestration Benchmark | 33.87% | Average open rate, all Brevo customers (175,000+), all industries, Apple MPP opens counted | 2025 | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
| Brevo 2026 Marketing Orchestration Benchmark | 20.73% | Average open rate, all Brevo customers, all industries, Apple MPP bot opens removed | 2025 | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
The average open rate for email campaigns moves with how a report counts it, so the four figures are never averaged. Apple MPP opens in or out, a B2B-only or mixed sample, and a median or a mean each shift the figure.
In the same DMA 2024 UK data, B2C emails opened at 40%, 2.6 points above B2B (our calculation from DMA figures).
Takeaway: Compare your own open rate only with a benchmark that measures it the same way: MPP treatment, sample and statistic.
How Much Does Apple Mail Privacy Protection Inflate Open Rates?
In Brevo’s 2025 data, Apple Mail Privacy Protection adds 13.14 points to the average open rate (our calculation from Brevo figures). About 38.8% of recorded opens in Brevo’s 2025 data are machine opens, not people (our calculation from Brevo figures).
Validity’s 73.11% measures something else: Apple’s share of pixel open events, Jan to Aug 2024 (Validity, 2024), vendor data.
- How MPP works: Apple Mail downloads remote content, tracking pixels included, when a message arrives, not when it is read (Apple, Mail user guide).
- The 2024 shift: Apple’s share of pixel firing was about 77% from January to March 2024 and about 70% after April 2024 (Validity, 2024). Vendor data. Apple changed its pre-fetch timing that April, which lowered reported open rates.
Takeaway: Use opens only to track trends inside one list, and leave Apple MPP opens out of subject-line tests and re-engagement or sunset rules.
What Is the Average B2B Email Click-Through and Click-to-Open Rate?
The average B2B email click through rate was 2.9% across full-year 2024 in DMA’s UK data, against 2.3% for all UK senders (DMA, 2025). The median click-to-open rate across mixed senders was 6.81% from Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 (MailerLite, 2025), vendor data.
The table sets four email click through rate benchmarks side by side with the base each one divides by. DMA does not publish its click base.
| Benchmark report | Click-through rate | Click-to-open rate | Scope (B2B or all senders, period) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DMA 2025 report, B2B segment | 2.9% | Not published | B2B only, UK, full-year 2024, unique clicks, base not published | DMA, 2025 |
| DMA 2025 report, all senders | 2.3% | Not published | All senders, UK, 2024, unique clicks, base not published | DMA, 2025 |
| MailerLite 2025 | 2.09% | 6.81% | Mixed B2B and B2C, clicks per recipient, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data |
| Brevo 2026 benchmark | 2.27% | Not published | All Brevo customers, all industries, clicks per recipient, 2025 | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
MailerLite’s click-to-open rate rose from 5.63% in its 2024 data to a 6.81% median in its Dec 2024 to Nov 2025 data (MailerLite, 2025). Vendor data.
Takeaway: Apple MPP fires pixels, not clicks, so report click rate per delivered email to leadership instead of opens. Read CTOR knowing machine opens sit in its denominator.
What Conversion Rate Do B2B Emails Get?
Software companies convert 4.0% of email-sourced traffic into a qualified lead or sale, against a 4.9% average across 13 industries (Ruler Analytics, May 2026). Vendor data. Ruler states neither the data period nor the base.
Ruler recommends the current table for planning; its archived 2025 B2B rows are in the table for reference.
The Omnisend row is a B2C ecommerce email conversion rate benchmark, shown only for contrast with the B2B lead event.
| Conversion measured | Rate | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email traffic to qualified lead or sale, software | 4.0% | Ruler’s current table, published May 2026, email-sourced traffic, data period and base not stated | Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data |
| Email traffic to qualified lead or sale, average across 13 industries | 4.9% | Ruler’s current table, published May 2026, 13 industries including B2C, data period and base not stated | Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data |
| Email traffic to qualified lead or sale, B2B tech | 2.5% | Ruler’s archived 2025 table, calendar 2025, email-sourced traffic, base not stated (quarters ranged 0.8% to 3.7%) | Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data |
| Email traffic to qualified lead or sale, B2B services | 2.2% | Ruler’s archived 2025 table, calendar 2025, email-sourced traffic, base not stated | Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data |
| Campaign email conversion rate (B2C ecommerce, for contrast; Omnisend does not define the base) | 0.08% | Omnisend, 20 billion+ campaign emails from 27,000+ ecommerce brands, 2025 | Omnisend, May 2026, vendor data |
We multiplied DMA’s 2.9% B2B click rate (UK, 2024) by the 2.5% B2B tech row in Ruler’s archived 2025 table. Our calculation from DMA, 2025 and Ruler Analytics, May 2026 figures: about 7 leads per 10,000 delivered emails, roughly 1 per 1,379. It chains two sources and Ruler does not state its base, so treat it as a rough reference, not a planning threshold.
Takeaway: Turn your lead goal into list size and send volume before you rework copy.
How Do Newsletters, Automated Emails and Cold Emails Compare?
Automated and transactional emails averaged a 7.39% click-through rate on Brevo in 2025 (Brevo, May 2026, vendor data). Brevo’s marketing campaigns, which include newsletters, averaged 2.27%. Cold outreach is judged by replies instead, averaging 3.43% on Instantly in 2025 (Instantly, 2026, vendor data).
Brevo publishes no separate newsletter row or average newsletter open rate, so newsletters sit inside its campaign average. Brevo does not say how it treats MPP opens in the 30.63% automated open rate, so compare automated emails with campaigns on clicks only.
| Email type | Open rate | Click or reply rate | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated and transactional (Brevo customers, all industries, 2025, Apple MPP treatment not stated) | 30.63% | 7.39% CTR | Brevo, May 2026, vendor data |
| Cold outbound (Instantly platform, all replies per email sent, 2025) | Not published | 3.43% reply | Instantly, 2026, vendor data |
| Cold outbound (Belkins-managed campaigns, unique replies per email sent, open tracking off, 2025) | Not tracked | 0.45% reply | Belkins, 2026, vendor data |
The two cold reply rates differ mainly by denominator. Instantly counts all replies, follow-ups included, while Belkins counts unique replies to net-new contacts, auto-replies excluded.
The nearest current answer to what is a good open rate for cold email is an average, not a target. Hunter users averaged a 30% cold email open rate across 31 million emails in 2025 (Hunter, 2025), vendor data. Hunter says deliverability problems hold it down. Belkins ran its 2025 study with open tracking off, so replies are the cold benchmark.
Takeaway: Automated and transactional emails beat Brevo’s campaign averages on clicks, which Apple MPP can’t inflate. Put your next build-out or test into triggered and lifecycle emails.
How Many B2B Marketing Emails Reach the Inbox?
B2B senders reached the inbox 83.0% of the time at business hosting platforms in Validity’s 2025 seed-list tests (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data). These are mostly Office 365 and Google Workspace, which Validity groups as Major Hosting Platforms.
The overall average in Validity’s 2025 seed-list tests was 87.2%, so B2B placement ran 4.2 points lower (our calculation from Validity, Mar 2026 figures).
Office 365 accounts for 60.3% of B2B hosting-platform market share in Validity’s 2025 data (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data). Google Workspace (Google Apps in Validity’s report) accounts for 35.9% of B2B hosting-platform market share in the same data (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data).
Inbox placement at the four big consumer mailbox providers, Validity’s seed-list tests, 2025 and 2024:
| Mailbox provider | Inbox placement 2025 | Inbox placement 2024 | Change in points (our calculation) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | 89.8% | 87.2% | +2.6 | Validity, Mar 2026 and Validity, Mar 2025, vendor data |
| Yahoo | 87.3% | 86.0% | +1.3 | Validity, Mar 2026 and Validity, Mar 2025, vendor data |
| Apple Mail | 82% | 76.3% | +5.7 | Validity, Mar 2026 and Validity, Mar 2025, vendor data |
| Microsoft consumer (Hotmail and Outlook.com) | 77.4% | 75.6% | +1.8 | Validity, Mar 2026 and Validity, Mar 2025, vendor data |
Validity does not publish placement by provider at business hosts, so the 77.4% Microsoft consumer figure is not an Office 365 rate.
Gmail and Outlook.com set the same authentication rule for bulk senders:
- Gmail treats senders of more than 5,000 messages a day as bulk senders, who must set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC (Google, Email sender guidelines).
- Outlook.com (Microsoft’s consumer mailboxes) requires domains sending more than 5,000 emails a day to pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC, enforced from May 2025 (Microsoft, 2025).
Takeaway: Seed-test placement at Office 365 and Google Workspace addresses separately from consumer inboxes before you judge a B2B send.
B2B Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry
MailerLite’s 2025 benchmark splits results by sender industry, using medians from 3.6 million campaigns sent from Dec 2024 to Nov 2025. B2B and B2C senders are pooled within each industry, and Apple MPP opens are counted.
Software and web apps is the closest row to B2B SaaS email marketing benchmarks. For growth and margin numbers, see our broader SaaS industry benchmarks. Business and finance is nearest to financial services.
| Industry | Open rate | Click rate | CTOR | Unsubscribe | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software and web apps | 39.31% | 1.15% | 5.4% | 0.2% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
| Business and finance | 43.34% | 2.37% | 7.96% | 0.16% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
| Consulting | 45.96% | 2.41% | 7.67% | 0.23% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
| Legal | 42.58% | 4.90% | 14.72% | 0.09% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
| Manufacturing | 37.36% | 4.22% | 14.82% | 0.3% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
| Insurance | 44.4% | 1.36% | 3.19% | 0.27% | MailerLite, 2025, vendor data, medians, B2B and B2C pooled, MPP opens counted |
Across all 46 industries, 2025 median click-to-open rates ran from 2.96% to 14.82% (MailerLite, 2025). Vendor data. The highest industry CTOR is 5.0x the lowest (our calculation from MailerLite, 2025 figures).
Takeaway: Software and web app senders get the fewest clicks here, so judge your SaaS click rate against that row, not the all-industry figure. Insurance is opened often but rarely clicked, so its work sits after the open: the offer and content.
B2B Email Benchmarks by Region
The region split for B2B email marketing pools B2B and B2C senders, because MailerLite’s 2025 benchmark groups all campaigns by sending region. Every figure here is a median from MailerLite’s vendor data for Dec 2024 to Nov 2025, with Apple MPP opens counted.
We found no dataset from 2023 or later that splits B2B email by sender company size, so this page splits by region instead.
- Australia: 47.69% open rate in 2025, the highest of MailerLite’s regions (MailerLite, 2025).
- Europe: 45.08% open rate in 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- US and Canada: 44.49% open rate in 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- LATAM: 31.97% open rate in 2025, the lowest of MailerLite’s regions (MailerLite, 2025).
#1 Australia
Campaigns sent in Australia had a 2.82% click rate in 2025, the highest of the four regions (MailerLite, 2025).
- 8.30% click-to-open rate in Australia, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 0.37% unsubscribe rate in Australia, 2025, the highest of the four regions (MailerLite, 2025).
Takeaway: If you mail Australian lists, track unsubscribes per send before you add sends to the calendar.
#2 Europe
Campaigns sent in Europe had a 2.04% click rate in 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 6.46% click-to-open rate in Europe, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 0.23% unsubscribe rate in Europe, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
Takeaway: If you benchmark a European list against Australia, compare clicks, not opens, since opens run almost level but clicks fall behind.
#3 US and Canada
Campaigns sent in the US and Canada had a 2.14% click rate in 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 6.73% click-to-open rate in the US and Canada, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 0.20% unsubscribe rate in the US and Canada, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
Takeaway: Compare a US or Canadian list against MailerLite’s all-industry rows, the fairest yardstick here. This region sits closest to those medians on open rate and click-to-open rate only.
#4 Latin America (LATAM)
Campaigns sent in Latin America (LATAM) had a 1.40% click rate in 2025, the lowest of the four regions (MailerLite, 2025).
- 6.56% click-to-open rate in LATAM, 2025 (MailerLite, 2025).
- 0.10% unsubscribe rate in LATAM, 2025, the lowest of the four regions (MailerLite, 2025).
Takeaway: Judge your LATAM campaigns against the LATAM row, not against all-region figures.
What to Do If Your B2B Email Numbers Look Like This
Each row starts from a signal you can check in your own B2B email marketing reports, then gives the first fix and its stat.
| Signal | What to do first | The stat behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Opens around 40% or higher, clicks under 2.9% or under your industry’s row in the table by industry | Work out your MPP-adjusted open rate (example a), then judge the send on clicks | 2.9% unique click rate for B2B emails, the B2B-wide line, UK, full-year 2024 (DMA, 2025); 20.73% average opens with Apple opens removed, 2025 (Brevo, May 2026, vendor data) |
| Bounce rate above 2% | Verify the list, remove invalid addresses and pause the riskiest segments | Amazon SES’s 2% alert line (Amazon SES, sending review FAQ); 1.46% average hard bounces, 2025 (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data) |
| Spam complaints above 0.10% | Cut frequency to cold or inactive segments and check how consent was collected | Gmail asks senders to stay below 0.10% and never reach 0.30% (Google, Email sender guidelines) |
| 5,000+ emails a day to Gmail or Outlook.com without SPF, DKIM and DMARC | Authenticate the sending domain before any copy or list work | Bulk-sender rules at Gmail (Google, Email sender guidelines) and Outlook.com, enforced from May 2025 (Microsoft, 2025) |
| Seed tests at Office 365 or Google Workspace addresses place under 83.0% in the inbox | Split the misses into spam folder and missing for each host before changing content | 83.0% inbox placement for B2B senders at business hosting platforms (mostly Office 365 and Google Workspace; Validity’s Major Hosting Platforms), 2025 seed-list tests (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data) |
| Under 4.0% of email-sourced traffic becomes a qualified lead or sale at a software company, or under your industry’s row in Ruler’s current table | Fix the landing page and form that email traffic reaches before rewriting the email | 4.0% for software and 4.9% across 13 industries in Ruler’s current table, data period and base not stated (Ruler Analytics, May 2026, vendor data) |
| Unsubscribes above 0.5% per send | Find the segment that drives it and slow its cadence | Brevo’s 0.5% warning line (Brevo, May 2026, vendor data); 0.22% median (MailerLite, 2025, vendor data) |
| Cold reply rate (all replies / emails sent) under 3.43% | Narrow the targeting before rewriting copy; compare only with a benchmark using your denominator | 3.43% average, 2025 (Instantly, 2026, vendor data); 0.45% on unique replies, 2025 (Belkins, 2026, vendor data) |
Worked example (a): a raw 40% open rate on a list with Brevo’s average Apple share is about 24.5% human opens. That is 40% x (20.73 / 33.87), Brevo’s 2025 averages without and with Apple opens (Brevo, May 2026, vendor data).
Worked example (b): on 10,000 emails, one point of inbox placement is 100 emails. Validity’s 2025 seed-list tests put B2B inbox placement at business hosting platforms (mostly Office 365 and Google Workspace) at 83.0% (Validity, Mar 2026, vendor data). So 1,700 of every 10,000 miss it.
We scaled the raw open rate by Brevo’s ratio of MPP-filtered to MPP-counted opens, which assumes Brevo’s average Apple share. We applied Validity’s 2025 B2B hosting-platform rate to a 10,000-email send.
B2B Email Stats You’ll See Quoted That Don’t Hold Up
These eight B2B email numbers still circulate on ranking pages, and each trail ends at old, mislabeled or missing data.
| The statistic | Where it circulates | What the trail shows |
|---|---|---|
| “Email returns $36 to $42 for every $1 spent” | 4 ranking pages plus large stats roundups | Litmus’s 2020 survey; its 2025 survey reports bands, not an average. The $42 end is a 2019 DMA UK tracker. |
| “B2B open rate 15.1%, B2B click rate 3.18%” | 3 ranking pages | DMA’s 2018 report on 2017 data; its 2025 edition replaces it. |
| “Average B2B open rate 42.35%, CTR 2.00%” | 2 ranking pages plus HubSpot | MailerLite’s 2024 all-industry figures, B2B and B2C pooled; superseded by the edition in the open-rate table. |
| “Typical B2B open rate 20 to 30%, CTR 2 to 5%, CTOR above 20% is strong” | 3 ranking pages | No page names a dataset, and no data owner publishes these ranges. |
| “Email databases decay 22.5% a year (2.1% a month)” | 2 ranking pages plus large vendor blogs | HubSpot’s decay page credits MarketingSherpa research with no title, link or year; its other sources date to 2013 and 2014. No such study was found. |
| “Only 8.5% of outreach emails get a response” | 3 ranking pages | Backlinko and Pitchbox, April 2019, on link-building and PR outreach, not B2B sales. |
| “B2B deliverability: Office365 inbox 77.43% to 50.70%” | 2 ranking pages | GlockApps all-user seed tests from 2024 to 2025, relabeled as B2B; its 2026 edition shows Outlook rising again. |
| “Open rate by employee size, 0 to 25 employees 21.11%” | Benchmark Email’s page, cited in Google’s AI Overview | The same table sits on archived copies from 2021 and 2023, now shown as 2026 data with no period. |
What the Latest B2B Email Numbers Say
Apple Mail Privacy Protection adds about 13 points to Brevo’s 2025 average open rate, so judge B2B email on clicks, conversions and inbox placement.
In Validity’s 2025 tests, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Outlook.com mailboxes trailed Gmail’s inbox placement by 12.4 points. B2B mail to business hosts reached the inbox 4.2 points less often than all mail tested.
MailerLite’s median click-to-open rate climbed to 6.81% in its latest data, up from 5.63% a year earlier. Which of these does your own data confirm, starting with your click rate per delivered email?
Our B2B growth hacking guide shows how to test a fix with an account holdout when your list is too small for a split test.
FAQs About B2B Email Benchmarks
Is email marketing effective for B2B?
Yes, by marketers’ own rating: 54% of B2B marketers named email newsletters a top channel for thought leadership in 2025 (Content Marketing Institute, 2026). In that survey of 1,015 marketers, only LinkedIn ranked higher, at 76%. These email marketing effectiveness statistics measure how marketers rate the channel, which is a different question from how many teams send newsletters at all.
What is a good email marketing ROI?
65% of marketing leaders report $10 to $50 back per $1 spent on email (our calculation from Litmus, Jul 2025 figures). Within that, 35% get $10 to $36 and 30% get $36 to $50 (Litmus, Jul 2025), vendor data. Litmus reports bands, not an average ROI for email marketing. In the same survey, 21% of marketing leaders didn’t measure email ROI at all, down from 36% in 2023 (Litmus, Jul 2025). Measure your own return before you compare it with a band.
How many follow-ups should a B2B cold email sequence have?
At least one: on Instantly’s platform in 2025, the first cold email captured 58% of replies and follow-ups brought in the other 42% (Instantly, 2026). Vendor data. A B2B cold email sequence that stops after the first message gives up the replies that came from later steps in that data. The report splits replies by step, so it supports sending follow-ups but sets no exact count. It covers cold outbound only, not email to opted-in lists.
How fast does a B2B email list decay?
At least 23% of an email list decays within a year, by ZeroBounce’s count of 11 billion+ addresses validated in 2025 (ZeroBounce, 2026). Vendor data. The figure covers all business sizes and industries, not B2B lists alone, and it measures the share of submitted addresses found invalid. It replaces the annual decay rate listed among the stats that don’t hold up. If your list hasn’t been verified in a year, re-verify it before a large send.
What conversion rate do B2B cold emails get?
About 1.6 meetings per 10,000 cold emails (our calculation from Belkins, 2026 figures): Belkins booked over 1,200 appointments from 7.5 million cold emails in 2025. Vendor data. Counted from replies, 3.5% of the 34,393 replies became a meeting (our calculation from Belkins, 2026 figures). Both rates are floors, because Belkins gives the meeting count as a minimum. The data covers agency-managed outbound, so compare your own reply-to-meeting rate with that scope in mind.
How many B2B marketers use AI in email marketing?
36% of B2B marketers say their organization uses AI email tools for campaign optimization and personalized content, per a 2025 survey (Content Marketing Institute, 2026). The question asks about tools in use, not results, so it shows adoption rather than impact. If you are weighing an AI email tool, the two uses the survey names, campaign optimization and personalized content, are where peers already apply it. For prospecting, see our guide to AI lead generation tools.
