How to Start the Email Marketing Process

Introduction

If you sell into other businesses, email is still where a huge chunk of your pipeline should come from. It is cheap, measurable, and, most importantly, it is how most B2B buyers actually want to hear from you. Studies consistently show email delivering an average ROI around 36:1 across industries, which means every dollar you put into a solid email program can return roughly thirty-six. At the same time, roughly three-quarters of B2B buyers say email is their preferred contact channel for vendors.​

The catch: almost everyone is doing email badly.

Spray-and-pray blasts, bought lists, generic templates, and zero deliverability strategy are still the norm. That is why inboxes are flooded and reply rates are low, but it is also why you can win if you approach email like a serious revenue process instead of a side project.

In this guide, we will walk through how to start the email marketing process the right way for B2B sales teams:

• Clarifying goals, ICP, and offers
• Building and cleaning your lists
• Setting up the technical foundation and deliverability
• Crafting sequences that generate replies and meetings
• Measuring, optimizing, and scaling (including when to call in a partner like SalesHive)

Whether you have zero email program today or you are trying to professionalize a chaotic one, this is the blueprint.

Why Email Still Matters in B2B Sales

Before we go tactical, it is worth grounding in the “why.” Email is not just another channel, it sits at the center of most B2B buyer journeys.

Buyers still prefer email

Multiple studies show that email remains the top communication preference for B2B buyers. Forbes reports that 77 percent of B2B buyers prefer email as their primary contact method for vendors. DBS Interactive cites similar findings: 77 percent of B2B buyers favor email and 63 percent of B2B marketers say email is their most effective lead nurturing tactic.

In other words, if your outbound motion leans too heavily on social or cold calls while your email game is weak, you are swimming upstream.

The ROI math is absurdly good

Litmus and other sources put average email ROI at roughly 36:1 across industries. While that number will vary for your specific business, it explains why so many B2B teams continue to double down on email even as channels like paid social and events get pricier.

Even when you narrow to B2B, performance stays strong. Global benchmarks put average B2B open rates in the low- to mid-30s, with one 2025 analysis pegging B2B opens around 36.7 percent and click rates around 3.2 percent.

And for cold outbound specifically, a 2025 deliverability report shows average cold email metrics around:

• 27.7 percent open rate
• 5.1 percent overall reply rate
• About 1 percent of total prospects converting into booked meetings

for well-run B2B programs. Those are the numbers you should expect to work with as you build your process.

Email is built for long, complex buying journeys

B2B sales cycles are long, involve multiple stakeholders, and move in fits and starts. Email is uniquely good at:

• Educating and nurturing accounts that are not ready yet
• Keeping deals warm between meetings
• Socializing your story inside the buyer’s org
• Giving prospects a low-pressure way to respond when the timing is finally right

That is why top-performing outbound programs do not just send one cold email. They run ongoing sequences, newsletters, and trigger-based nurtures that keep your brand in the mix all year.

Step 1: Get Your Strategy and Goals Straight

Most email programs fail before they even hit send because there is no real strategy, just a tool and a couple of templates. You want the opposite: a clear process that connects from revenue to individual emails.

Define business goals first

Start with numbers, not copywriting. For the next 6-12 months, answer:

• How much new revenue should email influence?
• How many net-new opportunities and meetings does that imply?
• What is your historical or target conversion rate from meeting to opportunity, and opportunity to closed-won?

Work these backward into email KPIs. For example, suppose you want 40 new opportunities this quarter, your meeting-to-opportunity conversion is 50 percent, and your cold email meeting rate is 1 percent of total prospects contacted (consistent with 2025 cold benchmarks).

You need:

• 80 meetings from email
• At about 1 percent meeting rate, roughly 8,000 high-quality prospects to run through sequences over the quarter

From there, if your expected open rate is ~25-30 percent and reply rate ~5 percent, you can sanity-check list size, SDR capacity, and sending volume.

Lock in your ICP and segmentation

Next, you need clarity on who should receive these emails, and who should not.

Define your ideal customer profile using:

• Firmographics: industry, company size, geography, funding stage
• Technographics: key tools in their stack that relate to your product
• Roles and personas: who signs, who influences, who uses
• Trigger events: hiring, tech changes, regulatory shifts, strategic initiatives

Then turn that into 2-4 target segments. For a B2B SaaS company, that might look like:

• Segment A: VP Sales and Sales Ops in 50-500 employee US-based SaaS
• Segment B: RevOps and Marketing leaders in 200-2000 employee tech-enabled services firms
• Segment C: Finance leadership for expansion into enterprise

Each of these will eventually get distinct angles, case studies, and (possibly) different offers and sequences.

Clarify your core offers and CTAs

Your email program is only as strong as the offers you put in front of prospects. For outbound SDR-style email, the primary CTA is usually a meeting, but you still need a compelling reason for that meeting.

Common B2B offers include:

• A short discovery call tied to a concrete outcome
• A personalized teardown or benchmark analysis
• A quick audit (tech stack, funnel, outbound program, etc.)
• Exclusive data or insights relevant to their role

The more your offer feels like a useful service rather than a thinly veiled pitch, the better your reply rates will be.

Step 2: Build and Clean Your Prospect List

Once strategy is clear, the next step is building the fuel: a clean, well-targeted list.

Decide how you will source data

You have three main options:

1. DIY with data tools
• Use platforms like ZoomInfo, Apollo, Cognism, Clay, etc. to pull contacts
• Great if you have in-house ops talent and SDR capacity

1. Partnerships and enrichment providers
• Work with a data vendor or enrichment service to maintain ongoing list quality

1. Outsourced SDR and list building
• A partner like SalesHive will build and validate ICP-specific lists as part of a broader outbound program, pulling from premium data sources and layering in research so your reps can focus on conversations rather than spreadsheets.

In all cases, you want to avoid cheap, scraped, or obviously non-compliant lists. Apart from legal and ethical concerns, they destroy deliverability by driving high bounce and complaint rates.

Apply strict filters

Use your ICP definition to be ruthless with filters:

• Exclude very small or very large orgs if they are a bad fit
• Filter by geography you can support
• Filter by titles and seniority, better to under-include than spam interns
• Add tech and intent filters where possible (for example, companies using a competitor or showing buying signals)

This is also where many teams lean on partners. SalesHive, for example, combines standard data providers with human research to build lists that match your exact ICP and vertical nuances, then validates contact info before the first email goes out.​

Clean, validate, and enrich

Even the best databases decay. People churn jobs, domains change, org charts get restructured. You should:

• Run email verification to weed out invalid addresses
• Standardize company and contact fields for easier segmentation
• Enrich with data that powers personalization (industry, tech stack, recent funding, relevant metrics)

Remember that bounce rate is not just an annoyance, it is a strong negative signal to mailbox providers. Benchmarks put healthy bounce rates under about 2-3 percent; a 2025 B2B deliverability report cites an average bounce around 2 percent for healthy programs.

If your first test campaigns show higher bounce than that, pause and fix the data problem before you scale up.

Step 3: Set Up the Right Email Infrastructure

Here is where a lot of teams cut corners and pay for it later. Before your first big send, you need to make sure the underlying plumbing is in order.

Separate domains and authentication

You never want to send high-volume outbound from your primary corporate domain. Instead:

• Register lookalike domains (for example, getacme.com instead of acme.com)
• Set up subdomains for SDR sending if appropriate (for example, hello.getacme.com)
• Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records correctly

This helps protect your main brand and improves deliverability. Google and Yahoo have also tightened sender requirements for bulk senders, making authenticated, aligned domains non-negotiable.

Warm up before you scale

New domains with suddenly high sending volume are a red flag to mailbox providers. Best practice is to:

• Start with a small daily volume and ramp gradually over 3-4 weeks
• Maintain strong engagement early (opens, replies, low bounces)
• Mix in “safe” sends such as internal accounts and existing opt-in lists where possible

There are tools that automate domain warm-up, but nothing replaces good list quality and realistic volume caps.

Choose your sending platform and CRM integration

For B2B sales development, you are usually better off with a sales engagement tool (for example, Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, HubSpot sequences) than a classic marketing ESP. Engagement tools make it easier to:

• Build multi-step sequences combining email, calls, and LinkedIn
• Personalize at scale at the step level
• Route replies and tasks to SDRs
• Push all activity into your CRM

Whatever platform you choose, make sure:

• Every contact and email engagement flows into your CRM
• SDRs and AEs can see email history on the account and contact record
• You can report at both sequence and campaign levels

Providers like SalesHive run all of this for clients on their own AI-powered platform, with native integrations into systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, so leaders get real-time dashboards for calls, emails, meetings, and pipeline.

Monitor deliverability from day one

Set up a basic deliverability dashboard:

• Delivery and bounce rates by domain and sequence
• Spam complaint rates
• Placement tests to see how often you land in primary vs promotions vs spam

If bounces climb above ~3 percent or spam complaints start spiking, throttle sending and diagnose immediately.

Step 4: Craft Messages and Sequences That Actually Get Replies

Once your foundation is set, you can finally talk copy and content. This is where most teams get obsessed with wordsmithing and forget the basics: relevance, clarity, and a strong offer.

Principles of high-performing B2B email copy

1. Lead with relevance, not your resume
• The opening line should make it obvious why you are reaching out to this person at this company right now.
• Use 1-2 sentences that tie their role or situation to a concrete problem or outcome.

1. Keep it short and skimmable
• Aim for 60-120 words for most outbound emails.
• Use line breaks, bullets, and bold sparingly so busy execs can grasp the point in seconds.

1. Make one clear ask
• Do not stack multiple CTAs (for example, “book a call or check out this ebook or forward to a colleague”).
• Typically your main CTA is a short call, demo, or permission to send more detail.

1. Speak in buyer language, not product jargon
• Translate features into specific business impact: revenue, cost, risk, speed, accuracy, compliance.

1. Use social proof surgically
• Reference relevant customers, especially in their industry or size band.
• Call out specific results (for example, “helped X cut lead response time in half” instead of vague “improved outcomes”).

Example outbound structure

A simple outbound email might look like:

• Line 1: Personalized hook based on role, company, or trigger event
• Line 2-3: Problem framing that matches their world
• Line 4-5: How you solve it, backed by quick proof
• Line 6: Direct, low-friction CTA (for example, “Worth a 15 minute chat next week?”)

SalesHive’s eMod AI engine follows a similar pattern at scale: it takes proven templates, then automatically customizes openers and proof points using public company data, role context, and other signals so that each email feels handcrafted without tying up SDR time.

Build sequences, not one-offs

Because only a fraction of prospects will notice or respond to any single email, sequences are your real product. For cold outbound, aim for 6-10 emails over 2-4 weeks:

• Email 1: Intro + core value prop
• Email 2: Different angle on same problem
• Email 3: Case study or social proof
• Email 4: Objection handling (for example, timing, budget, bandwidth)
• Email 5: New benefit or role-specific angle
• Email 6-10: Short bump emails, new content, last call

For warm nurture (inbound leads, webinar attendees, former customers), sequences can be shorter and more educational, with CTAs that move them closer to sales (for example, content, events, soft invites to talk).

Personalization at scale

Personalization is not about writing a novel; it is about making the email obviously not a mass blast. The data shows it pays off: brands that use personalization see dramatically higher email ROI than those that do not, with one analysis pointing to nearly 260 percent higher returns for heavy personalization.

Practically, aim for:

• Segment-level personalization at the template level (industry, role, problem)
• Contact-level personalization in 1-2 sentences (recent news, tech stack, mutual connections, content they engaged with)
• Offer-level personalization by tailoring the CTA or resource (for example, a case study that mirrors their use case)

AI tools, and agencies like SalesHive that bake AI into their process, can help you do this without destroying SDR productivity.

Use AI and testing wisely

A 2025 benchmark study found that 95 percent of marketers using generative AI in email find it effective, and AI-personalized copy can drive more than 13 percent higher click-through rates. Combine that with the fact that brands that A/B test emails often can see up to 86 percent higher ROI than those that never test, and the conclusion is simple: testing and optimization are not optional.

At a minimum, test:

• Subject lines
• CTAs
• Value propositions or problem angles
• Sequence length and spacing

Do this continuously, not as a one-time experiment.

Step 5: Launch, Measure, and Optimize

With strategy, data, infrastructure, and messaging ready, you are finally in launch mode. Now the job is to monitor and improve.

Establish baseline KPIs

For B2B outbound, reasonable starting benchmarks are:

• Deliverability: 97 percent+ delivered, under 2-3 percent bounce
• Open rate: 20-30 percent on cold, 30-40 percent on warm lists​
• Reply rate (all): 4-6 percent on cold, 8-15 percent on warmer segments
• Positive reply rate: 1.5-3 percent of all contacts on cold​
• Meetings booked: around 1 percent of total prospects contacted on healthy cold programs

For nurture and marketing email, your focus shifts more to click and conversion rates, but the same logic holds: measure what actually creates opportunities and revenue.

Analyze at the right level

Avoid obsessing over individual email performance in isolation. Instead, look at:

• Sequence performance: from first touch to last touch
• Segment performance: which industries and personas respond best
• Offer performance: which CTAs and meeting pitches win
• List source performance: which data sources or partners deliver better response and lower bounce

This is also where a partner like SalesHive can be valuable: because they run thousands of sequences across 1,500+ clients, they bring a large sample of what works by industry and persona to your program, rather than you starting from zero.

Tighten the feedback loop with sales

Email marketing for B2B cannot live in a marketing silo. AEs and SDRs should:

• Flag bad-fit meetings so your list and qualification rules improve
• Share real objections and language from calls so copy can be updated
• Collaborate on new offers that match where deals get stuck (for example, ROI calculators, deeper demos, executive briefings)

Regular “sequence retro” meetings between marketing, SDR leadership, and AEs can dramatically accelerate improvement.

Scale what works, prune what does not

Once you see patterns:

• Double down on high-performing segments and offers with more volume and similar accounts
• Retire or heavily rework low-performing sequences;
• Consider spinning out top-performing angles into content campaigns, webinars, and account-based plays

Over time, you should expect incremental improvements, a few points more open here, a few more positive replies there. Compounded across thousands of contacts, those small lifts translate into meaningful pipeline.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

So how does all of this theory translate into what your SDRs and AEs do next week?

For SDR and BDR leaders

• Own the process, not just the dials. Treat email as a system: ICP, data, sequences, tools, and reporting. Document it, then train reps accordingly.
• Give reps proven frameworks. Do not hand them a blank editor. Provide base sequences, personalization guidelines, and examples of good and bad emails.
• Align quotas with math. Use realistic reply and meeting rates to set outreach targets that are ambitious but achievable. Reward quality, not just volume.

If you do not have the bandwidth to build all of this, plugging in a partner like SalesHive is often faster and cheaper than hiring, training, and managing your own SDR team. Their US-based and Philippines-based SDRs run 250-500 touches a day per pod across phone and email, supported by AI-driven personalization and proven playbooks.

For marketing leaders

• Integrate outbound with your broader funnel. Use email not just for net-new cold outreach, but to nurture inbound leads, event attendees, and product signups.
• Share insights across channels. Subject lines and CTAs that win in email often work well in ads and landing pages, and vice versa.
• Measure contribution to revenue. Move beyond open and click reports to dashboards that show meetings and opportunities influenced by each campaign.

For founders and revenue leaders

You do not need to write the copy yourself, but you do need to:

• Set clear direction on ICP and offers
• Approve investments in data, tools, and expertise (internal or external)
• Hold the team accountable for pipeline and revenue outcomes, not vanity metrics

If you want the outcome (predictable meetings and opportunities), but do not want to manage the machinery, this is where a done-for-you partner like SalesHive can be compelling. Founded in 2016, they have booked over 117,000 meetings and generated more than $2.1B in pipeline by running exactly the type of email and calling programs this guide describes.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Starting the email marketing process for B2B sales is not about finding a magic template. It is about building a repeatable system:

1. Clear goals and KPIs tied directly to revenue
2. A sharp ICP and tightly filtered, clean data
3. Solid technical foundations and deliverability hygiene
4. Buyer-centric messaging and sequenced outreach
5. Constant measurement, feedback, and optimization

The upside is real. Email still delivers best-in-class ROI, and it aligns perfectly with how B2B buyers want to engage with vendors. But that upside only materializes if you treat email like a core part of your go-to-market engine, not a side hustle you revisit once a quarter.

If you have the people and time, use this guide as a blueprint to build your own process and iterate aggressively. If you would rather shortcut the learning curve, talk to a partner whose entire business is turning targeted email and cold calls into meetings. SalesHive combines AI-powered personalization, rigorous list building, and experienced SDR teams to plug a proven outbound machine into your existing revenue stack, without the overhead of building it all yourself.

Either way, the best time to take email seriously was a few years ago. The second-best time is right now. Start small, start structured, and let the numbers, not opinions, tell you what to do next.