How Email Marketing Is Handled By Companies
For the past 9 years, Companies like Adestra and Econsultancy have been running a really awesome study called the “Email Census.” This year, there were 1000 respondents to the study, and it took place in both January and February. The participants were made up of “companies or in-house marketers (64%) and supply-side respondents, including agencies, consultants and vendors (36%).”
For us at DirectIQ, one of the more fascinating chapters of the study (and the one we’re focusing this article on) is about who is responsible for email marketing efforts at both organizations and at client companies. While many larger companies have whole teams dedicated to the performance and enhancement of email marketing campaigns, the percentage of individuals that handle email marketing “as part of wider marketing responsibilities” has gone down slightly. Last year, that number was as high as 40% (of 541 respondents), the number has shrunk to 37% (of 451 respondents). Furthermore, 34% submitted that they had a “team, as part of wider marketing responsibilities” handling email efforts this year, compared to 38% last year. This is somewhat surprising for two reasons: One, digital marketing budgets are on the rise in 2015, and Two, Americans prefer email to every other digital channel.
That said, many more companies this year decided to committ to the idea of hiring just one individual dedicated specifically to tasks surrounding email marketing. In 2014, that number was at 10%, and this year it grew to 13%. The same can be said about companies with just a small team devoted to just email marketing: 12% of companies in 2015 began implementing a team approach to email, as opposed to just 8% the year before.
The numbers were similar, but only slightly different when the same question was posed to agencies that took part in the Adestra/Econsultancy study. For the most part, agencies reported a higher percentage of individuals handling the wide range of responsibilities involved in email marketing. The numbers did not change that much from 2014 to 2015 (See the graphic below for more details).
A recurring theme throughout the study was the ability for large companies to spend much more money on more human resources that could focus primarily on email marketing: “Organisations with fewer than ten employees are more than two and a half times as likely to have an individual responsible for email marketing as part of their wider marketing responsibilities than those with more than 5,000 employees (56% versus 20%)… At the other end of the spectrum, organisations with more than 5,000 employees are nearly three times as likely to dedicate an entire team to email marketing compared to respondents with less than ten employees (22% versus 8%).”
One more interesting not: The handling of email marketing responsibilities varies by industry. It’s no surprise that retailers lead the way, with 22% of them admitting to having an entire team dedicated to the practice. You can check out the rest of the industry related findings in the infographic below 🙂
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Baris is the founder of DirectIQ with over 20 years of experience in email marketing campaigns. Baris is an expert in all aspects of email marketing, and he created DirectIQ as an alternative to mass marketing tools like Mailchimp because he knows how to deliver individualized experience en masse to niches like hotel and real estate marketing, where a personal touch means everything.
