The Modern B2B Buyer Has Changed. Has Your Email Strategy?

Back in the “don’t-call-me-during-business-hours” days, B2B buyers got their intel from sales decks, trade shows, and whatever brochures could be stuffed into a manila folder.

Now?

Digital buying and self-directed research have become the emblem of the modern B2B buyer journey.

Business buyers, today, are self-educating, digitally savvy, and quick to frown upon being pitched before they’re ready.

By the time they talk to you, they’ve binge-read reviews, stalked your competitors, tried free products, and already completed their 70% buying journey, doing their own research.

That’s the trend we’re seeing with the B2B brands we partner with at Mavlers.

Over the past few years, the demand for volume-obsessed email blasts has faded. They want email strategies attuned to changing B2B buyer behavior. Where 70% have digital-first expectations and nearly 9 in 10 lean on AI for guidance.

So, yes, everyone loves to say the B2B buyer journey has “changed.” What they don’t say is that inboxes are chock-full of generic whitepapers, and the well-read buyers are tuning out before they get instant answers.

To meet and exceed their expectations, brands must adapt email marketing for B2B buyers.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to recalibrate your email strategy so that it appears with timely relevance and buyer-stage value amidst changing B2B buyer behavior. 

So, who is the modern B2B buyer?

The B2B buying journey is how businesses buy products or services from other businesses.

If you’re new to this space, we’ve already broken down its strategies, best practices, platforms, and pitfalls in our blog [How To Win At B2B Email Marketing]. Worth reading for the groundwork.

Here, we’ll fast-forward to what matters now: the shift in buyer behavior.

The modern B2B buyer is younger, digital-native, and operates in a more complex committee than the buyer a few years ago. It follows, therefore, that the buying decision paths are anything but linear.

1. They love a dynamic, non-linear buyer journey

In our 13+ years of experience working with various B2B SaaS brands, we’ve realized that the buyers in the current B2B space put stock into research long before a sales interaction.  

Seldom do they move in a rigid, straight line—-identify problem → evaluate solutions → select vendor.

Revisiting earlier stages, gathering more information, second-guessing needs, and soliciting additional input before making a decision is the new mandate.

2. They don’t buy alone

The average B2B buying process involves 11–13 stakeholders, says Gartner. Each one carries distinct perspectives, priorities, and professional anxieties.

Also not unusual is that decision-makers now hail from entirely different departments.

With more people at the table, B2B buying cycles stretch longer and need more tailored email communications.

3. They are younger and make-a-difference-driven

Forrester research shows that 71% of B2B buyers are millennials or Gen Z.

The older generations were more focused on vendor relationships. But the younger B2B buyers? They prize transparency, collaboration, and shared ownership in the process.

The changing B2B buyer behavior also looks beyond cost savings. Sustainability, customer experience, and symbolic value all weigh into their buying decisions.

4. They prefer digital over sales reps

The modern B2B buyers are practically living digital.

Gartner reports that 83% of B2B buyers now prefer digital self-serve over speaking with sales reps — and nearly 9 in 10 are already using AI tools to evaluate options. 

Generative AI is reshaping discovery: buyers rely on it to summarize products, compare features, and estimate ROI long before vendors even know they’re in the running.

5. They are impatient with friction

Perhaps the most defining trait: zero tolerance for friction.

Outdated, fragmented user experiences, hidden pricing, opaque sales processes? Unforgivable sins as they rob millennials and Gen Z buyers of time and control.

And understandably so. These are the generations raised on consumer apps with interfaces that are fast, intuitive, and seamless.

So when a B2B tool or vendor makes buyers jump through hoops, they lose interest.

6. They want collaboration

After looking at all these traits of the modern B2B buyer, do you honestly think that a one-sided sales process is going to cut it?

Obviously not.

B2B buyers are diligent in their research.

After combing through LinkedIn threads, Glassdoor reviews, G2 and Capterra ratings, and every industry forum they can find, today’s buyers are in no mood to sit back and passively consume a polished vendor monologue.  

Recognize that they’ve already progressed far down the path of understanding product categories, market pricing, and potential solutions. And now they want to co-create.

By that, we mean that modern B2B buyers want to shape the design, deployment, integrations, and new features to fit their specific use cases.

Not surprisingly, changing B2B buyer behaviour expects brands to offer both educational resources for self-learning and flexibility for collaborative solution-building.

How to Adapt Your B2B Email Strategy for the Modern Buyer

Now, some people reading the list might be thinking: “Okay, cool profile of today’s B2B buyer…but what does that actually mean for my B2B email marketing campaigns?”

Fair question.

There is no doubt that email is the perfect channel for buyer-centric B2B marketing. They span the entire customer lifecycle as the decision to purchase the product or service passes through several managers.

Yet, the challenge remains. To figure out how your emails fit into the new B2B playbook that goes beyond simply running campaigns or generating bulky lead lists.

If, like most teams, you’re still treating email as a tactical tool rather than a strategic channel, there ought to be limited adoption of advanced personalization, automation, AI-generated insights, and integrated multi-channel workflows. The very things essential to be in harmony with the modern B2B buyer journey.

So, let’s get into it: how to adapt your email strategy for changing B2B buyer behaviour.

1. Think in buying groups, not individuals

Email marketing for B2B buyers is about enabling a group for decision-making, rather than convincing a lone decision-maker.  

The strategy you use for nurturing B2B leads with email should be built on this.

Here’s what demands your attention:

• Identify key roles. Initiators, influencers, budget holders, users.
• Use CRM and create cohorts on the basis of role and buying stage.
• Build your ideal customer profile. Anticipate role-specific pain points, desired content types, and objections.
• Create parallel nurture paths for different personas within the same account.
• Customize emails to each role’s specific concerns and goals.
• Craft forward-friendly content. Bite-sized executive briefs, one-slide ROI visuals, or explainer videos are great for traveling across internal teams.

2. Shift from promotion to education

No modern B2B buyers want to be sold to. They want to be understood, intrigued, and maybe even a little bit entertained.

Since they self-educate a lot, 64% say promotional email volume is too high and engage with <10% of sales emails.

Hence,

• Trend reports, benchmarks, webinars, and how-tos over product pushes.
• Send the right value at the right moment by mapping content to Awareness → Consideration → Decision.

3. Frame value, then affirm it

Gartner’s research hits the nail on the head by saying this–

Adapting B2B email strategies for modern buyers, brands need to do more than make claims. They need to reassure buyers that they’re making a smart choice.

That means your B2B emails should:

• Frame your solution around business impact. Something around time saved, risk reduced, or revenue accelerated.
• Affirm the decision with social proof, ROI benchmarks, or peer validation.

4. Use automation

The modern buyer expects fast but contextual follow-up. That’s where automation turns into gold.

AI-driven email workflows are great at sequencing content based on behavior and surfacing predictive insights. It’s not easy for buyers to fall through the cracks of such workflows.

Take this B2B SaaS platform we worked with: a well-timed onboarding sequence freed up our team’s time. But more importantly, it upped trial-to-paid conversions by 60%.

But email automation for B2B marketing is no liberty for laziness. You will still need:

• Handcrafted touchpoints at critical junctures. Such as post-demo follow-up with customized business cases.
• Human-in-the-loop reviews to prevent tone-deaf messaging when markets shift.

Guardrails so you don’t overload buyers with “yet another follow-up” that makes you look desperate.

5. Let AI generate, but without losing your voice

Pulling all of this off, consistently and at scale, is beyond the capabilities of humans who have clients to charm and a life to live.

Which is why, by all means, use AI for faster production and personalization.

And if you’re wondering how to put AI to work for segmentation, Andrew King, Founder of EmailStack & EmailLove, shares some practical tips in this quick video.

GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, can be like having a team of the most efficient interns for—

• Auto-drafting entire nurture sequences.
• Generating subject lines and email copies.
• Scaling personalization.
• Mining LinkedIn, podcasts, and blogs for usable prospect insights.

However, always have human eyes and brains to review the AI’s output. It retains your control over robotic, problematic, or just plain wrong content reaching your B2B buyers.

6. Replace linear drip campaigns with modular journeys

Traditional drip campaigns assume buyers move step-by-step in a straight line. Today’s non-linear journeys need something different: modular streams triggered by real behaviors.

Instead of pushing everyone through the same sequence, create content tracks for Education, Proof, Validation, and Justification. 

Rather than following time-based sends only, automate emails triggered by specific buyer actions. And let buyer actions decide which they see next.

For example:

• Pricing page view → send ROI calculator
• Security page visit → share compliance resources
• Integration interest → provide a readiness checklist
• Demo no-show → follow up with a quick summary + reschedule option

This way, every action maps to a tailored, timely email, instead of another “one-size-fits-all” drip.

Also, ask your product team to help you identify meaningful buyer actions or milestones in the product experience. 

This enables you to set up automations where each action triggers a tailored email journey.

7. Orchestrate the buyer journey

Modern B2B buyers don’t stay put in their inbox. They glide across channels. Your email won’t get noticed if it operates in isolation.

Rather, think of B2B emails as the connective tissue that holds together all your marketing and sales efforts in your broader GTM motion.

Here’s how:

• Through emails, echo and expand on key messages buyers see on social media.
• Use emails to direct buyers to more immersive content. Like detailed case studies, live events, or product videos, something they can’t consume fully inside an inbox.
• Sync with sales outreach so your emails are not duplicating efforts or contradicting each other.

If you want to go deeper, our full guide on marketing orchestration breaks it down.

8. Rethink attribution and recognize email’s hidden value

In the HubSpot marketing report, 2024 , the top ROI channels for B2B brands were websites, blogs/SEO, paid social content, and social commerce tools. B2B email didn’t top the chart, unlike B2C email, and that’s okay.

In B2B, email’s impact doesn’t always show up in direct revenue reports — and that’s okay. As Kath Pay puts it, “Not all value shows up in revenue reports. Sometimes the email that didn’t sell anything… changed everything.”

Instead of focusing solely on clicks, Kath says to consider email’s ripple effects: sparking searches, driving site visits, increasing brand visibility, and shaping buyer perceptions. These are the harder-to-measure moments where email quietly advances the deal, even if it isn’t the channel that closes it.

TL;DR — Adapting email for the modern B2B buyer

• Segment by role and buying stage; share forward-friendly content for teams.
• Swap product pushes for reports, benchmarks, and journey-based insights.
• Tie the impact to ROI and back it with peer validation.
• Let AI scale, but keep human oversight.
• Trigger journeys by behaviors, not rigid drip paths.
• Orchestrate email with other channels.
• Track influence, not just clicks

Final thoughts

Here’s the reality: modern B2B buyers aren’t drowning in more email; they’re filtering for better email.

Decoding that changing B2B buyer behavior isn’t something many brands can do solo.

Between segmentation, automation, and keeping pace with buyer behavior, email can start running your brand, rather than the other way around.

Audit your last campaign: does it reflect the modern buyer journey? If not, we can help you close that gap.

We’ve built flexible engagement models that allow you to plug us in however you need. Here’s how we work with brands like yours.

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