What constitutes a “good” performance?
This is the first question the B2B SaaS companies often ask when it comes to refining and scaling their demand generation strategies.
Ironically, this question can be answered, by instituting another question within your workflow.
Questions such as, “How do we know if our outbound, inbound and conversion efforts are on track?”
“What are the industry standards for key metrics?”
“Are we improving our email response rates, cost per lead, and MQL-to-SQL conversion ratios?”
This article will explore these questions and how SaaS companies develop a topnotch work process for their demand gen efforts.
Along the way, we’ll examine how tools like AnyBiz.io, an AI-powered SDR platform, are reshaping these benchmarks, making it possible for SaaS companies to scale their demand gen efforts while maintaining personalization—without adding to headcount.
For SaaS founders and marketing leaders looking for tangible data to guide their 2025 strategy, this blog will provide clarity and insights into optimizing your demand generation process.
Defining the “Good” in B2B Demand Generation for SaaS?
Understanding the context of B2B demand generation in the SaaS industry is important before we define the “good“ in its demand generation.
But what is demand generation?
Compared to lead generation, demand generation is a preliminary marketing strategy to attract a specific type of audience to spark their interest and implant the idea in their mind that you are a viable option to resolve their issues.
Meanwhile, lead generation cultivates what demand generation gathers.
In a nutshell, demand generation generates interest, while lead generation captures this information and amplifies their interest. Demand generation is a critical strategy to put in place, especially if you are running a business that is in the realms of a highly competitive landscape, such as a SaaS corporation.
Placing the right combination of outreach strategies, lead capturing, and nurturing can drive it to extreme effectiveness. This is the ideal philosophy of what a good B2B demand generation strategy is, but it is not enough. You need a benchmark to solidify your progress and confirm if you need to adjust your strategies.
That is why placing metrics along with your sales and marketing efforts are vital.
Key B2B Demand Generation Metrics for SaaS Companies
Metrics will help you determine which strategy is working, and which one is not. It will also allow you to secure or improve certain areas of your demand generation strategies, or develop a new opportunity. Here are key B2B demand generation metrics for your company.
Email Response Rates
Email outreach has been one of the longest and still the most effective marketing strategies in existence. B2B SaaS still uses this since many professionals are using email for their daily activities.
The incorporation of this strategy, however, means that you need to monitor your response rates, and ensure that you are generating the right demand and leads.
Industry Benchmark:
- Average email response and conversion rates in the B2B SaaS space typically range from 1% to 3% depending on the quality of the list, the messaging, and the level of personalization.
Many corporations, including those in the SaaS industry acquire sales automation tools to further improve their outreach and further advance their marketing efforts.
AI powered email tools such as AnyBiz are capable of delivering personalized messaging, understand the best time to send emails, and automate follow-up.
Incorporating AI tools makes it more convenient and efficient for SaaS companies to segment their leads depending on their behavior and send an email that contains the correct information and details that will increase your chances of converting prospects into actual paying customers.
How to Improve:
- Use AI tools to optimize personalization, automate follow-ups, and test subject lines for better open rates.
- Segment your email list more precisely using firmographics, behavioral data, and past interactions.
- Leverage multi-step sequences with tailored messaging based on the lead’s stage in the buyer’s journey.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
To understand the efficiency of your demand generation efforts, you need to establish and track your CPL. This will help you ensure that you are working on a consistent lead flow and monitor long sales cycles — which is typical in B2B SaaS.
Industry Benchmark:
- The CPL for SaaS companies typically falls between $50 and $200, depending on the targeting and complexity of the product. More niche SaaS products, such as those in industries like cybersecurity or fintech, might observe higher CPL due to the specialized nature of their audience.
Reducing CPL will require meticulous and careful deliberation, but you can eliminate other costs that may be detrimental to your marketing and sales efforts using AI tools such as AnyBiz.
Many B2B corporations are using the best AI SDR tools with their lead generation, which can be as equally as effective in demand generation.
With AnyBiz, however, you are not just improving your sales and marketing strategies, you are also transforming the entire sales development process.
You can use its AI sales agent to automate your outreach and reduce the time it will cost your human Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) to schedule appointments, send follow-ups or segment leads.
AnyBiz’s objective is to transform your overall sales process, and replace the limitations of traditional SDRs.
How to Improve:
- Use AI-powered SDR platforms to automate outreach, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving team efficiency.
- Optimize ad spend and targeting based on AI-driven insights about lead intent and behavior.
MQL-to-SQL Conversion Ratios
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) shows the leads that have shown interest in your contents or products. Actions such as downloading a white paper or case studies, and attending webinars are good indicators and are counted on MQL.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) on the other hand is a lead that is classified as prepared for sales engagement.
Industry Benchmark:
- The MQL-to-SQL conversion rate for SaaS companies generally ranges from 13% to 20%. But there are high performing companies that witness conversion rates that are higher than 20%, it is observed that these industries are using AI to automate their lead qualification.
How to Improve:
- AnyBiz has an AI intent signal capability that you can use to confirm if a prospect is interested in your product or your service. Many of our clients use this to improve their lead scoring and ensure that MQLs are accurately evaluated and give priority over clients that have the highest chance of converting.
- Employ lead nurturing strategies and integrate automated email campaigns to deliver relevant email content for each buyer’s journey.
- You can also use AnyBiz multichannel attribution capabilities to engage with prospects depending on their funnel.
- Use CRM-integrated AI tools to ensure smooth handoffs from marketing to sales, ensuring that qualified leads are followed up promptly.
Outbound SDR Performance Benchmarks
SDRs hold a great responsibility by handling cold outreach and lead qualification. However, compared to traditional SDRs, AI SDRs are more effective in handling and managing some of the tasks that human SDRs may take some time in handling. This enables a more efficient and effective at scaling outreach.
Industry Benchmark:
- AnyBiz has a prospect database of 400 million personas, its AI sales agents utilize multichannel outreach — email, LinkedIn and AI cold calls — to engage with these prospects. You can use this to engage with prospects without concerning yourself with the ideal customer profile. The AI sales agent can outreach to up to 8,000 leads monthly without compromising on personalization, quality and engagement.
You do not have to worry about when is the best time to contact leads since AI tools such as AnyBiz operate 24/7.
How to Improve:
- Integrate AI SDR platforms to automate outreach, qualify leads, and schedule follow-ups based on prospect behavior.
- You can use the AnyBiz dashboard to monitor the activities of the AI sales agent and confirm if it is making any progress.
From Good to Best: SaaS Companies in Measuring Their B2B Demand Generation Success
The year 2025 and the following years to come may be a challenge for many SaaS companies especially in achieving an ideal B2B demand generation effort.
The need for a smarter, more efficient, and scalable outreach strategy will arise further and those who fail to keep may be lost in this highly competitive landscape.
Focusing on key metrics, and ensuring that your action plans are aligned with your goals are necessary, and to transform how you can generate demands of your business embracing AI tools such as AnyBiz will be a new normal.
Try AnyBiz or book a demonstration meeting today! Or try it out for a very low price trial starts at 0.99 USD.
