Why Email Needs to Evolve
Most B2B companies rely on automated drip campaigns because they were effective when inboxes were quieter and journeys were simpler. Today’s buyers are savvier, inboxes are noisier, and “batch and blast” tactics can do more harm than good.
Email still earns its place: recent Litmus data shows $36–$50 returned for every $1 spent—when programs are executed well. However, that performance stems from precision, integration and a test-and-learn approach.
To push prospects down the funnel, email has to meet buyers where they are, reflect their role in the committee and connect to the broader campaign story.
Go Beyond Demographics With Sophisticated Segmentation
Most marketers segment their lists by company size, job title or industry. Today, those basic filters are table stakes. Advanced B2B teams layer firmographic, technographic and behavioral signals, then let segments update automatically:
- Firmographic: growth stage, funding round, region, compliance environment.
- Technographic: current stack (e.g., Salesforce + Snowflake), integration needs, contract renewal windows.
- Behavioral: high-intent pages (pricing, integrations), content depth (case study vs. homepage), webinar attendance, sales touches.
Advanced platforms enable you to create dynamic segments that update automatically as new data becomes available. That way, a prospect who clicks through to your product page doesn’t languish in a generic nurture track—they move seamlessly into a higher-intent stream.
Done right, segmentation means you’re no longer sending the same webinar invite to the CFO, the IT manager and the end-user champion. Each gets a message tuned to their perspective (and that’s where conversations begin).
Personalize the Message, Not Just the Greeting
Too often, brands reduce personalization to “Hi [First Name].” But true personalization means using data to deliver messages that actually reflect someone’s role, priorities and stage in the buying journey. It’s about aligning content and timing, so the buyer feels understood.
McKinsey’s cross-industry research ties real personalization to 10–15% revenue lift when companies execute well. In B2B, that shows up as faster stage progression and cleaner hand-offs to sales.
This goes beyond making emails “feel friendly”—it makes them relevant. With CRM and intent data integrated into your email platform, you can:
- Personalize content themes by role: technical leads get integration detail and architecture diagrams; finance leaders get payback math and risk mitigation.
- Adjust CTA by readiness: “See how it works” for researchers; “Build your estimate” for evaluators; “Request a demo” for deciders.
- Optimize send times by behavior: send on a prospect’s demonstrated engagement window, not a calendar cadence.
“In B2B, the challenge isn’t just getting someone to open an email—it’s earning the right to continue the conversation. That means every message has to do more than deliver information; it has to reinforce a strategic narrative that connects the buyer’s needs with your expertise.”
– Ryan Gould, COO, Executive VP of Client Strategy
How to scale it: Use dynamic content blocks keyed to role, industry or product interest; pull intent data to swap proof points; vary problem framing without changing the whole template.
Test Beyond Subject Lines (and Measure What Matters)
Most marketing teams stop at testing subject lines, which is like tuning a race car by only adjusting the paint color. Subject lines matter, but they’re not the only lever.
Every A/B test teaches you something about buyer preferences. Over time, those insights compound into a playbook that’s unique to your audience—and far more reliable than “best practices” found in generic benchmarks. Continuous optimization is crucial here—document your hypotheses, track results and apply learnings across campaigns.
To get the most value from your emails, build a test matrix that hits bigger levers:
- Offer types: case study vs. ROI tool vs. event vs. comparison guide
- CTA placement and style: first screen vs. bottom; button vs. inline text link
- Narrative structure: short “skim” vs. detailed “convince”
- Cadence and series length: weekly vs. bi-weekly; 4-touch vs. 6-touch
“If you’re not testing CTAs and send cadence, you’re guessing—and guessing is expensive.”
– Sean Frisbie, Sr. Director of Digital Marketing & Media
Expert tip – With Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) muddying opens, it’s helpful to calibrate your program against KPIs that align with the pipeline:
- Clicks and CTORs (click-to-open rates) to gauge content/offer resonance
- On-page engagement (dwell, scroll depth) tied to UTMs
- Down-funnel conversion, including form-fills and meeting-sets
- Holdout lift to understand if a campaign created an incremental impact
Also, keep a running list of results that includes what you tried, what you changed and what you will do next.
Why not rely on opens? As of March 2024, Apple MPP obscures a majority of opens, making open rate a weak primary KPI.
Make Mobile the Default Experience
Buyers are often reading emails between meetings or while commuting. If they can’t grasp the value in seconds, you’ve lost them. Approximately 42% of emails are opened on a mobile device—a rate that increases for younger audiences, with 59% of millennials primarily using email clients.
Yet, too many emails are still designed for desktop use. A multi-column layout, tiny fonts or an image-heavy design can all tank performance when viewed on a phone.
Mobile-ready emails should be designed like recipients are thumb-scrolling in a hallway. This means prioritizing:
- Preheader text that extends the subject with the “what’s in it for me.”
- Single-column layouts for easy scrolling, with a generous line height and a minimum 16px body text.
- CTAs that are large and tappable with a thumb and placed above the fold.
- Short paragraphs and scannable subheads, with one idea per section and 2-3 sentences max.
- Compressed images for faster load times, add alt text and test dark-mode compatibility.
Treat Email as a System Inside Your Campaign
An email is just one touchpoint in a larger buying journey. The biggest lifts happen when email reinforces and amplifies your campaign themes across channels. This means integrating email with paid, social, content and sales outreach to create a cohesive narrative.
For example:
- Launching a new white paper? Use paid ads and social posts to drive top-of-funnel engagement, then follow up with an email that speaks to the download and routes high-intent readers to sales.
- Running an ABM campaign? Align your nurture emails with sales cadences, mirroring value props from ads and landing pages so prospects see consistent messaging across channels. Be sure to suppress email once a rep has engaged in a live conversation with a prospect.
- Hosting an event? Use email to invite and remind registrants, then retarget attendees with personalized follow-up and next actions based on sessions they viewed.
“Marketers spend a lot of time polishing email templates, but the real boost in performance comes from how those emails interact with the broader campaign. When you connect email to paid, social and sales touchpoints, it becomes a conversion driver.”
– Kelly Radack, Sr. Account Director
Expert tip: Use consistent tracking parameters—UTM tags and CRM campaign IDs—so every click maps to the right campaign.
Protect Deliverability Like a Revenue Asset
If your messages don’t land, none of the above matters. Deliverability affects your sender reputation and vice versa.
Providers like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo score your reputation based on how recipients react to your emails. This means they’re monitoring spam complaints, low engagement, invalid addresses, purchased or scraped email lists (which often contain trap addresses), suspicious sending behaviors and domain authentication.
In 2024, Gmail and Yahoo tightened bulk sending requirements. To avoid deliverability and reputation issues:
- Turn on Domain Authentication on your email platform to prove your emails are really from you.
- Support one-click unsubscribe and honor requests quickly.
- Watch spam reports and aim for almost 0. If 3 out of 1,000 people mark you as spam, your deliverability will suffer.
- Cap how often a person can hear from you in a week to avoid flooding inboxes.
- Use a real “From” address and include your company address in the footer.
Expert tip – Keep your list clean, use:
- Sunset policy: After X days with no clicks, run a re-engagement; then suppress to protect sender reputation.
- List sourcing: Only use permission-based lists; never purchase lists.
- Frequency governance: Cap sends per contact per week; avoid channel collisions with SDR outreach.
- IP/domain warming: Ramp volumes for new domains; monitor blocklists.
- Preference center: Let subscribers choose topics and frequency for fewer unsubscribes and a better match of content to intent.
Use Automation Without Losing the Human Touch
Automation is critical for scale, but rigid workflows can create robotic experiences. Instead, use automation to respond to buyer signals in real-time.
The human touch becomes more important with automation. The point isn’t to automate for efficiency alone—it’s to maintain relevance without overwhelming your team. This means paying attention to:
- Late-stage content signals: If a prospect hits pricing/integrations or downloads a technical implementation guide, switch them into a higher-intent nurture stream, such as comparison content and invite a working session.
- Cooling behavior: If a prospect goes cold, pause messaging for a period rather than continuing to send irrelevant content. Try a value-add recap or a different problem angle after a couple weeks.
- Cross-channel intent: If a prospect shows intent signals outside email (e.g., visiting pricing pages), trigger an alert for sales follow-up. Be sure to include a talk-track and recent activity for a seamless experience.
“Every email you send teaches the buyer something about your brand—whether you intend it to or not. The question is, are you teaching them to tune out, or to trust you?”
– Ryan Gould, COO, Executive VP of Client Strategy
Email Is Still One of the Most Direct Ways to Connect With Buyers
Email hasn’t lost its edge, but it is competing with more noise. The companies winning with email are the ones that:
- Segment at the buying-committee level
- Personalize what they say and when they say it
- Test offers, cadence and layout (not only subject lines)
- Design mobile-first
- Connect email to the rest of the campaign—and to sales
- Treat deliverability as table stakes
- Build human touch into automation
When those parts work together, email stops being a checkbox and becomes a reliable driver of pipeline and revenue.
Ready to Build Email Programs That Get Results?
If your email strategy still runs on a calendar instead of customer signals, let’s fix that. At Elevation Marketing, we help B2B teams build segmented, personalized and measurable email programs that tie directly to campaigns and pipelines.
Want to see where the quick wins and biggest lifts are in your current setup? We’ll review your segmentation, templates, deliverability and measurement and provide you with a prioritized plan that you can act on now.
Let’s talk about how to build email programs that actually move the needle.
