Many analysts and email experts have tried to move the industry away from the use of open rates as an overall success metric and limit their use to gauge the effectiveness of subject lines. While the factors used to determine open rates are often inconsistent (i.e., the percent of total email vs. percent of delivered email), the open rate is still valuable as a comparative period-to-period measure of the interest level in a given email.
B2B email marketing often focuses on personalization and relationship-building tactics that will increase the recipient’s familiarity and trust in the sender. This is the primary reason that response rates for email targeting business prospects and customers are higher than email targeting consumers. Impersonal B2C marketing programs may benefit significantly from adopting this proven B2B relationship marketing approach.
Email newsletters generally contain far more links to information and offers than non-newsletter emails. Because of this, clickthrough and conversion rates become more important as indicators of email newsletter performance.
Email newsletters to consumers have an edge over B2B newsletters in terms of response rate performance across the board.
