Email marketing isn’t dead - It’s evolving beyond the metrics we all obsess over
For more than 15 years, headlines have confidently predicted the “death” of email marketing. Social media, PPC, GDPR were all supposed to kill it as a viable conversion medium. And yet, here we are; email remains one of the most effective, highest-ROI channels available to B2B marketers - any marketers in fact - just see how much stock shifts on Black Friday, because of email. It’s the channel professionals return to every day, the channel where business actually gets done, and the channel that continues to outperform virtually every emerging platform in terms of cost, reach, and reliability.
In fact, I would go as far as to say it’s my favourite channel, not just as a marketer, but also as a consumer. As long as the emails are solicited then they should be targeted to me as a buyer, and personal too, as it’s arrived in my ‘personal’ inbox. This is why your email subscriber list is one of the most important assets in any business.
But there’s a tension in email marketing today. On one hand, email is stronger than ever. On the other, many of the metrics marketers have relied on for years - open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes - are becoming harder than ever to interpret or influence. Privacy changes (Apple Mail Privacy Protection in particular), shifting inbox algorithms, and increasingly crowded email environments have made traditional performance indicators far less dependable.
Yet this doesn’t mean email is losing value. In fact, quite the opposite. It means we need to rethink what success in B2B email marketing looks like in an environment where visibility is obscured, attribution is messy, and attention is fragmented.
And here’s the key insight more B2B businesses need to embrace:
Even an email that is never opened can still successfully market your brand.
As a consumer I rely on the brands that I know and like (or are interested in buying from in the future), landing in my inbox. 99% of the time i’ll delete them, 50% of the time i’ll delete them without even looking at the subject line, but the very fact that their brand appeared, on time and with consistency, has kept them in my mind, and and demonstrated that they want my custom, even if it wasn’t at that moment in time.
Let’s unpack that, because it represents a mindset shift that many B2B leaders haven’t yet made.
The invisible impact of email: Hidden brand impressions
Email marketers have traditionally been conditioned to obsess over the metrics they can measure. Did they open it? Did they click? Did they convert? Did they unsubscribe?
But the moment someone receives your email - even if they swipe to delete without opening - you’ve already delivered two essential brand assets:
Your brand name
Your subject line
Those two elements alone can reinforce awareness, credibility, positioning, or value. They can nudge the recipient’s perception of your brand. They can make your offering feel more present in their world. They can keep you “top of inbox” and, therefore, top of mind.
Think about how many B2B buying decisions are influenced by repeated exposure rather than single actions. Deals worth six or seven figures rarely originate from a single click in a single email. They’re the product of:
Consistent messaging
Repeated impressions
Familiarity over time
Trust built gradually
Trust, after all, comes from reliability and positive experiences.
Your email - even unopened - becomes part of that pattern of exposure.
We often acknowledge this logic in advertising. A billboard is still effective even if someone doesn’t read every word. A display ad still works even when it isn’t clicked. Yet email, for some reason, is held to a stricter and less realistic standard.
The problem with traditional email metrics in 2025
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the metrics are no longer telling you what you think.
Open rates are inflated because of privacy proxies and auto-opens.
Click-through rates exclude key stages of the buying journey - like reading, forwarding, saving, discussing internally.
Unsubscribe rates have become a poor indicator of relevance, because many platforms automatically filter mail without the user ever manually opting out.
So we cling to indicators that don’t reflect reality.
Marketers end up “optimising” for metrics that no longer reliably correlate to real-world outcomes. They panic when open rates drop, even though engagement may actually be climbing. They chase clicks when they should be nurturing relationships. They cut back emailing frequency because they fear unsubscribes, even though consistency is key in long B2B sales cycles.
This isn’t a measurement problem. It’s a mindset problem.
Shift your focus from campaign metrics to audience momentum
B2B marketing success should not be measured email by email. It should be measured in terms of:
How consistently you maintain visibility
How clearly your brand communicates its value
How reliably you stay present during the long buying journey
How effectively you reinforce trust over time
Instead of obsessing over open rates, ask more strategic questions:
Are we showing up in inboxes consistently and with relevance?
Does our subject line strategy reinforce our brand and positioning?
Are we educating, guiding, and supporting buyers - even passively?
Does our email cadence align with the pace of our sales cycle?
Are we building mindshare, not just driving clicks?
These questions get at the real job of B2B email: creating momentum. Moving the buyer one step closer to readiness. Being present at the right moments - whether or not you can measure it.
The subject line as a micro-branding moment
If an unopened email can still deliver value, the subject line becomes one of your most important brand assets. It’s your headline in the inbox. It’s your “billboard moment.”
A strong subject line does at least one of the following:
Educates
Curates
Reassures
Provokes thought
Signals authority
Demonstrates consistency
Even if someone never opens the message, they still absorb the signal. Over time, these micro-brand impressions compound.
Email is a brand channel, not just a performance channel
In B2B, the most effective email strategies treat the inbox as both:
A measurable performance channel, and
A brand-building channel, even when metrics are hidden
Executives who understand this build deeper relationships, stay top of mind in long buying cycles, and create more inbound opportunities than those who rely solely on opens and clicks.
Email isn’t dying. It’s simply shifting from a world of perfect tracking to a world of partial visibility. And in that world, the marketers who win will be those who understand the invisible value of consistent inbox presence.
Final Thought: Measure what matters, not what’s easy
The future of B2B email marketing belongs to the businesses that stop treating email like a scorecard and start treating it like a strategic brand touchpoint.
Because the truth is simple:
Your email still works - even when no one opens it.
And when you embrace that fact, you unlock the real power of email in modern B2B marketing.
