Email marketing only used by 35% of SMBs in Australia

According to the 2016 Sensis eBusiness Report, only 35% of small & medium businesses in Australia “…promote the business using email marketing”.

The report measures technology use within 1000 small and medium business in Australia, showing historic, existing, and projected numbers for the year ahead.

Contrasting with what I think is an extremely low number, the use of social media to promote businesses is a much higher 48%.

I believe this presents a few opportunities for marketers and businesses alike:

  • It is clear from simple experience, that there are far less than 35% of businesses who are doing email particularly well. As such, I believe standing out in the mind of the customer can be achieved without having to implement very complex email techniques, rather – getting the fundamentals right can provide you with excellent results.
  • Where maybe businesses find more competition on social media, email is a less saturated channel. There is still room to enter the market and take advantage of the gains that email has consistently provided when done properly.
  • There is room for marketers and marketing advisors to grow their own businesses by helping businesses get started with email. I believe this has been the case for many years, even while the social web has continued to garner most of the attention. On a side note, I don’t think small/medium businesses do ‘The Internet’ well – even in Australia’s largest companies the technological literacy of the CMO is fairly average.