How to Improve B2B Email Marketing for Better Results

When you open your inbox in the morning, you likely see polished campaigns from B2C and eCommerce companies. It’s true, email marketing is a big player in B2C digital marketing, but don’t count out its impact for B2B companies.

Email marketing for small-to-mid-size B2B businesses offers a content distribution channel that aids in lead nurturing and customer retention. However, many of these companies face the same hurdles: smaller contact lists, slower turnaround times, and expensive design-heavy campaigns that don’t deliver proportional results.

Suppose your current email approach isn’t generating enough results, or you’ve avoided the channel altogether. If that’s the case, this guide can help you shift your approach or illustrate how email marketing can fill gaps in your digital marketing strategy.

Common Problems with Traditional B2B Email Campaigns

Most SMB B2B marketers either inherited an approach built for consumer sales or adopted one based on what agencies and other brands have done: beautiful, heavily designed templates. While these work well for retail brands, they often miss the mark for B2B lead generation. Why?

It comes down to longer turnaround times, higher costs, and less impact:

• HTML-heavy templates take days to create and approve. These extended production cycles lack speed and slow marketing momentum.
• Templates that are HTML-heavy may not load in every user’s inbox.
• There’s a high cost per send, given that more design time is required.
• With specific targets, B2B lists are often smaller than an eCommerce list, so flashy visuals don’t add enough ROI when you’re working with niche audiences.

B2B businesses must avoid forcing a square peg (popular B2C email trends) into a round hole (the needs of their customers and industry). That’s why many businesses in the sector rarely utilize email outside individual sales communications.

That’s another significant factor: the lack of integration with the sales process. B2B email marketing is at its best when integrated tightly with the sales process. Integration with your CRM is crucial to aligning your sales teams and email campaigns.

However, avoiding email marketing altogether means you don’t have a fully integrated digital marketing strategy. It’s crucial to meet your buyers where they are at–that means places like search, AI, social, and their inbox.

Building a Successful B2B Email Strategy

To build an authentic content strategy that earns results, start with a plan!

Ready to try or improve your B2B email marketing? Start with a strong foundation that considers your unique business needs and customers:

• Baseline Audit: Assess your current email maturity and systems to understand where you stand.
• Email Service Provider (ESP) Selection: Choose a platform that integrates with your CRM, or start fresh with a flexible tool like Klaviyo.
• Template Setup: Create a core template that reflects your brand, looks professional, and ensures consistency in every send without design-heavy elements. Think clean and lean with your brand logos, fonts, and colors. It’s the messaging that will matter later.
• Campaign Strategy: Map out automation workflows and a campaign calendar to ensure a steady cadence and opportunity for engagement.

At its core, B2B email marketing is about building relationships and addressing customer pain points with real solutions. B2B emails thrive on authentic and helpful content delivered at the right time. An overly designed email can actually hurt your success by stripping away some of that authenticity.

Shifting Strategy to Light, Text-Based Email Campaigns

The most effective SMB B2B email strategies are lean and personal. That’s why the best practice is primarily text-based emails—supported by light HTML design only when it truly adds value.

This approach focuses on:

• Compelling copy over complex visuals, letting your message shine.
• A template library for rapid deployment that includes five to seven flexible templates you can customize in minutes.
• Creating campaigns and sequences that use proven B2B scenarios for nurturing leads, such as following up on RFQs, case studies, videos, how-to guides, and other assets helpful in decision-making.

We know your follow-up questions: when does design truly add value?

• Brand introduction: Welcome emails benefit from a clean, branded look to establish credibility and brand recognition.
• Products and complex concepts: Product images and information, such as charts and diagrams, that align with user intent can simplify technical information more effectively than text alone.
• Event promotions: Trade shows, webinars, or workshops often perform better with banners, logos, or schedules embedded.

Your last question is likely, how can you back this up? Data matters, and we have some stats to share.

Why Plain Text Emails Win in B2B

HubSpot conducted an A/B test comparing identical content formatted in plain text versus HTML. Sent to over 100k B2B contacts, the results showed plain text emails had 21% higher open rates, scored an average 3.3% CTR, and had 8x higher reply rates than HTML-heavy designs.

Why does plain text work? B2B buyers value authenticity. Inboxes can feel impersonal and automated when filled with marketing-heavy messages and graphics. Sometimes, a user’s ESP won’t render HTML-heavy emails, making it a poor user experience. Meanwhile, text emails, even when automated, look and feel like honest one-to-one communication, which builds trust and invites replies

Email Campaigns as a Lead Follow-Up Tool

For SMB B2B companies, email isn’t just for newsletters—it’s one of the most effective ways to follow up with leads after initial contact. Whether it’s an RFQ submission, a trade show conversation, or a content download—timely, targeted follow-ups can turn interest into action.

An email campaign can provide lead nurturing and follow-up with:

• Immediate, scalable outreach: One well-crafted email can reach dozens—or thousands—of prospects instantly.
• Personalization without the extra workload: Merge tags, segmentation, and light templates make each message feel tailored.
• Automated consistency: Workflows ensure every lead gets a relevant follow-up, even if your sales team gets swamped.

Example sequences that drive results:

• RFQ Nurture Flow: Send a quick thank-you, followed by a case study, then a soft CTA to book a meeting.
• Event Follow-Up: Share event highlights, then follow with a personalized offer or resource.
• Reactivation Campaigns: Reach out to leads who went quiet with new insights or a special incentive.

When done right, these follow-up campaigns shorten sales cycles, keep your brand front and center, and ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks.

The Retention Advantage

A streamlined, personal email approach doesn’t just drive new leads—it keeps existing customers engaged and loyal. In B2B, relationships are everything, and consistent, authentic communication helps maintain those relationships between sales cycles.

By increasing the frequency of high-value touchpoints without adding significant cost, you:

• Stay top-of-mind: Regular, relevant emails keep your brand in mind for a future purchase.
• Reinforce expertise: Sharing insights, tips, and relevant updates builds brand authority and expertise over time.
• Nurture dormant accounts: Light, friendly check-ins can reignite stalled opportunities or upsell existing clients.

It’s standard business knowledge that retaining a customer costs less than acquiring a new one—and this lighter email approach makes those retention touches far more affordable and scalable.

Keep Testing, Keep Improving

No email strategy is ever “set it and forget it.” The most effective B2B programs treat marketing like an ongoing experiment—testing subject lines, messaging, and workflows to optimize performance over time.

Most B2B email marketers average around a 15% open rate—and while that may seem low, remember: unopened emails still work. Subject lines get scanned, brand names get stored, and awareness builds over time. Performance should also be measured by reviewing the whole marketing ecosystem. Looking at site or social visits from emails or notes about emails in lead forms are good indicators of success.

For SMB B2B companies, the winning email strategy is leaner, faster, and more personal. By focusing on text-first campaigns backed by a smart template system, you can:

• Reduce production time and costs
• Increase engagement and replies
• Deliver a more authentic experience to your prospects

In B2B email marketing, the goal isn’t just to be seen—it’s to be trusted. There’s no spam in this strategy. Just helpful content, authentically presented to keep leads nurtured and customer retention high.