I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been asked by clients to give them an idea of ‘industry average response rates’ for B2B email.  If only it were that simple.  As tempting as it is to just give a stock answer of 15% open rate 0.5% click through rate (CTR), open rates and CTRs depend hugely on the type of campaign and the audience.

So, I figured – Google it.  But try as I might there’s just no decent information out there to support what response rates you should expect campaigns to achieve.

Well, sending millions of emails for clients each year, we have learnt a thing or two about what to expect in terms of B2B email response rates.

Whether you’re sending lead gen emails, event invite emails, survey emails or a newsletter – typical email response rates vary greatly.

The details below are based on results from over 5 million emails we have sent in the last couple of years.  We’ll keep refreshing this list – as results do change over time.

B2B email response rates for prospects (cold contacts)

B2B email response rates for existing contacts (warm contacts)

B2B email response rates for both prospects and existing contacts (mixed contacts)

*Lead gen (competition) refers to lead generation emails that include some kind of competition / prize-draw.  As you can see in the cold contacts category we find these offers roughly double the CTR.  Which delivers a lot more value from the campaign.