Beyond Opens and Clicks_Measuring what Matters in B2B email marketing_eBook
BEYOND OPENS AND CLICKS
MEASURING WHAT MATTERS IN B2B EMAIL MARKETING
EMAIL: THE ULTIMATE
BEYOND VANITY METRICS
ANALYZE LANDING PAGES FOR MORE INSIGHT
STRUCTURE EMAIL TEMPLATES FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT
MEASURE EVERY SEND TO DRIVE IMPROVEMENTS
TIE EMAILS TO TANGIBLE BUSINESS OUTCOMES
In B2B email marketing, too many teams treat opens and clicks as the ultimate measure of success. Yet, these metrics only skim the surface. Looking deeper—tracking how prospects actually engage and eventually convert—pays off with higherquality leads, better campaign ROI, and real revenue growth.
This guide shares how to break away from “vanity” email metrics, determine what’s missing, and align your program with real business value.
Yours in influence,
Zee Jeremic CEO + Founder MASS Engines
WHO WE ARE: MASS Engines helps companies drive more revenue from email marketing.
Measure marketing ROI
Run demand generation
Increase lead conversions
Most B2B email marketing is basic or underutilized. Traditional email strategies often focus on “batch-and-blast” approaches—announce a new product, drive event registrations, and push promotions—while only measuring success by simple open and click rates.
But open rates alone don’t confirm whether your audience finds genuine value or if your campaign truly influences pipeline and revenue. In this eBook, we’ll show you how to move beyond basic reporting to insights that will drive measurable improvements in your email program.
EMAIL: THE ULTIMATE RELATIONSHIP BUILDER
Email is one of the most cost-effective and versatile owned channels for delivering meaningful insights and staying top of mind. Instead of sending a one-size-fits-all broadcast, treat email as an ongoing conversation that helps both current and prospective audiences discover how your solutions address real challenges—focusing on their needs rather than just announcing your latest product audience.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
People or customers with whom you have a direct, first-party relationship.
Examples: email list, blog or podcast subscribers, and app users.
You control access to this audience because you own the platform or the data (e.g., email addresses or phone numbers).
You decide when and how often to communicate with them without relying on a third party to deliver your message.
Owned and rented audiences can feed each other. For example, a sponsored social media post gets subscribers to your email newsletter.
Unified messaging across owned and rented channels can enhance brand recognition and trust.
People who see consistent content in both places become more engaged and are more likely to convert.
People who consume your content or see your message through a third-party platform.
These are audiences reached through paid advertising on search engines, social media, or other digital channels.
You are effectively “renting” access to this audience. The thirdparty platform owns the direct relationship, and you must follow its rules, algorithms, and policies to reach its users.
Your ability to communicate or stay visible can change anytime based on the platform’s decisions.
Over-deliver on every send
Many marketers chasing vanity metrics overpromise and underdeliver in email. When you use a clickbait tactic to get a prospect to click through but offer salesy, uninspired, or unrelated content on your landing page, you’ve just eroded trust and decreased the likelihood that the prospect will engage again. Similarly, using a vague or misleading subject line may boost your open rate initially, but if prospects don’t find value in the content, they won’t engage again.
When you think of email as relationship building, where every email fosters trust before selling, you’ll differentiate your brand by making it a valuable experience, not just another sales pitch.
• Good email campaigns solve problems and answer questions.
• They don’t overpromise or rely on clickbait.
• Great emails deliver consistent, helpful messaging that builds relationships.
The best-performing emails align with audience needs, not just marketing goals. Win trust by ensuring each email delivers something your audience finds genuinely useful. For example, rather than “Visit our booth,” which doesn’t offer them anything, try “Schedule a 1:1 conversation with a 20-year industry veteran” to provide value for performing the intended action.
When value replaces hype, your open rates and conversions naturally rise.
A strong email program builds brand credibility and customer loyalty, ultimately driving more conversions and sales. It all starts with how—and what—you are tracking.
MOVE BEYOND VANITY METRICS
So often, marketers rely only on opens and clicks for email reporting. But there’s a problem here. Chasing higher open and click rates can lead marketers to focus on numbers for their own sake rather than business success. It’s like a game of one-upmanship without any real reward. These “vanity metrics” offer email-to-email comparisons but don’t reveal if emails achieve their true goal. Worse, they can harm relationships with potential customers.
Despite their popularity, opens and clicks only scratch the surface of engagement. Here’s why they often mislead:
False positives
High open rates could stem from misleading subject lines.
Short-term wins, long-term losses
Clickbait subject lines or CTA’s might boost stats today, but erode trust over time.
Limited visibility
Opens and clicks don’t reveal if the customer was actually interested in your message or content.
CASE IN POINT:
Imagine celebrating a 20% click rate, only to find that 99% of those who clicked bounced off your landing page in a few seconds without converting. True success hinges on what happens after the click.
The optimal balance of measurement
Vanity metrics—too soft. Revenue? Too far out of the control of marketing. The sweet spot of measurement lies in achieving specific targets with your email program, such as webinar sign-ups, content downloads, form-fills, meetings scheduled, etc.
To improve effectiveness, establish a clear understanding of your campaign’s goals and what you can realistically drive to achieve results. Deliver the sales-qualified lead (SQL).
How to build an email campaign with the end in mind
Here are the key steps:
1 3 4 2
Establish achievable goals for your email campaign.
Which audience segmentation will be most likely to engage with your message to drive results.
Identify the metrics that will allow you to track toward your goal. Remember to think beyond the conversion. (e.g., event registration) If you don’t get enough conversions, you’ll want to know what visitors are doing on the page when they arrive there (more on this below).
Start segmenting audiences based on engagement and intent. Run small A/B tests to measure different approaches.
ANALYZE LANDING PAGES FOR MORE INSIGHT
Now, let’s discuss the most overlooked element of email marketing: the landing page.
Many marketing teams rely on corporate websites for campaign pages—but there can be a lot of cooks in this kitchen and zero control. Often, website ownership falls to its own dedicated team that must satisfy many stakeholders across the organization.
Instead, email marketers should focus on creating dedicated landing pages for their email campaigns (and leverage marketing automation or dedicated landing page tools like Unbounce). By gaining control over content, marketers can test and optimize campaigns faster.
Get deeper with your data
Most email marketing reporting ends at the click instead of tracking what happens next—where the magic actually happens. Your landing page holds a host of information that will tell you considerably more about if and how much your prospects engage with your message and progress toward the behavior you want to encourage. With this information, you can provide a better experience for your prospects, target more precisely, and make your email marketing much more effective.
For greater insights, build a dashboard that captures landing page audience data, including total and unique page views, bounce rates, time on page, and pages per session.
LANDING PAGE LOWDOWN: 7 CRITICAL METRICS AND WHAT THE INFORMATION TELLS YOU
Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate signals a mismatch between email promise and page content.
Time on Page
Time on page is the average session duration.
B2B sales typically require deeper consideration, so more time is a positive indicator.
Scroll Depth
Scroll depth tells you if people read the bulk of your content—you want them to read and engage with all of your content.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures success in getting readers to perform any action.
Form Submission Rate
Form submission rate precisely measures leadgeneration success.
Return Visitor Rate
Return visitor rate shows if prospects find enough value to return to your page.
Pages per Session
Pages per session indicate curiosity or serious interest in your offering.
AIM: Under 30%
WATCH: Over 50%
TIP: If it’s a first-time visitor, up to 50% may be normal. Evaluate email-to-page alignment.
AIM: Over 2 minutes
WATCH: Under 1 minute
TIP: Short time on page may mean the content lacks value or clarity. Test the layout and messaging.
AIM: 70%+
WATCH: Under 50%
TIP: Low scroll depth means readers may not be engaged, especially key for blog pages.
AIM: 2–5%+
WATCH: Under 2%
TIP: Revisit your offer and how it’s presented—messaging or targeting might be off.
AIM: 10–15%
WATCH: Under 5%
TIP: Trust is key. If your ask feels too early, try softening the CTA or warming up leads first.
TIP: Create a natural exploration path, linking to relevant resources and next steps.
STRUCTURE EMAIL TEMPLATES FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT
Understanding how the audience engages with emails helps create the most effective template.
Map the clicks
Track which parts of your email get the most engagement and the highest postclick conversions. You might find a CTA far down in the email generates fewer clicks but drives better leads.
Reorganize for conversion
Place proven high-conversion links near the top of your template. If certain sections get lots of clicks but no conversions, re-evaluate or consider removing them.
Continuous improvement
Let audience behavior guide your template structure. Minor tweaks (moving a CTA button, changing a heading) can have outsized effects on your results.
Learn more about building your email programs and view template improvement examples in our eBook: TRIPLE YOUR EMAIL ENGAGEMENT RATES. TRIPLE YOUR EMAIL ENGAGEMENT RATES
Example of a campaign where performance was improved by evaluating the email template:
BEFORE
Text-only header lacks human connection
No CTA before the fold may lose reader
Big block of text hard for reader to digest
Limited visual cue on CTA could deter conversions
AFTER
CTA above the fold to drive conversion
Messaging that evokes an emotional response
Second CTA points to social proof, demonstrating how others benefit from the products
MEASURE EVERY SEND TO DRIVE IMPROVEMENT
When launching a campaign, always pause to analyze the results before continuing. A short break helps validate (or refine) initial assumptions.
Key questions for every campaign
When working with a hypothesis on what will resonate with your audience, it’s essential to stop and gather data. Here’s what to look for:
Start with opens and clicks
Yes, you do still need to evaluate this data to ensure your emails are doing their job of getting people to your end goal. But the key is to use your click heatmaps to see where people clicked in the email. This will tell you what part of your message is resonating. Testing and rearranging content, before you continue with your campaign, can improve overall performance before you get too far down the line.
TAKEAWAY: If your clicks aren’t centered around your core content, consider your audience and whether this message resonates.
What happened after the click?
Did they bounce right away? Or did they only click in the navigation bar or footer? This indicates they’re not interested in the topic on the page—creating a negative relationship with your email audience.
TAKEAWAY: Those who bounced didn’t get anything of value for their time spent clicking.
Are there audience segments that lingered on the page longer or completed a form?
Segments that engage more with the core content can have a higher conversion percentage. You may need to dig into the attributes of this group of people to find a pattern or commonality if it’s not something you initially segmented on. Keep an open mind and follow the data trail.
Patterns that could emerge:
• Are they a particular demographic or job title?
• Are they new to the database?
• A certain size of company?
• A specific industry?
TAKEAWAY: If this group of people has the highest level of interest in your message, are there more prospects like them in your database whom you can add to the campaign?
Once you’ve determined which groups will most likely engage with your content, limit your send to just those. This builds a positive relationship with your email audience and offers them value.
One step further
Once you’ve re-started your campaign to target those most likely to engage with your content, the next task is to evaluate those who convert.
Engagement: What shared behaviors do people who fill out the contact form progress as qualified leads exhibit?
Profile: Are there certain characteristics of contacts most likely to convert? For example, a particular job title, new to the database, or at companies of a certain size.
Once you gather deeper insights, you can find more contacts who are likely to convert and create a follow-up campaign to target them specifically and more frequently.
When you truly dial into your audience—measuring not just clicks, but who lingers and engages—you can refine every campaign for deeper conversations and real results. That’s how email becomes a true driver of business growth.
TIE EMAILS TO TANGIBLE BUSINESS OUTCOMES
While reporting on email and conversion numbers is vital to consistently improve your email marketing effectiveness, you’ll also typically need to report on the overall business value of your email programs.
Here are two common ways to link emails to business value:
Attribution model
Using first- or last-touch attribution models, you can tie sales outcomes to specific emails, campaigns, or channels.
PROS: Familiar to most stakeholders.
CONS: Can oversimplify complex buyer journeys when many marketing touches contribute to eventual conversions.
Page value
When a company has established marketing in other channels like Google AdWords, PPC programs, or even TV ads with specific calls to action, it’s easy to quantify what it costs to get a prospect to visit a webpage.
For example, assign a dollar value to key pages (e.g., a “Contact Us” page might be worth $500) based on what it costs in other channels to deliver a prospect to this page. Then, prove email ROI by showing how many high-value page visits your campaigns generate. In this scenario, if you delivered three people to the Contact Us page via your email program, that has a value of $1500.
PROS: More precise than pure attribution.
CONS: Requires buy-in and clarity on how each page’s value is calculated.
By tying emails to tangible business outcomes you can demonstrate marketing’s role as a key growth driver.
UNDERPROMISE, OVERDELIVER, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
When done right, email marketing becomes a powerful engine that supports sales and fuels sustainable growth. Key takeaways:
Focus on value
Going beyond vanity metrics leads to deeper engagement, more conversions, and better customer relationships. 1 3 2
Align content with your audience’s genuine pain points or opportunities.
Track what counts
Instead of celebrating opens and clicks, celebrate conversions.
Show the big picture
Prove to leadership (and yourself) that email drives tangible results.
