A recent statistic indicates that 82% of companies use an email marketing automation platform of some kind (ie Constant Contact, etc). That statistics does not indicate the specific size of the businesses it includes, but it is easy to imagine that 82% includes many small and medium business. What are the barriers that prohibit more businesses from utilizing email marketing? From my experience, the following are ranked in order of the most often heard reasons:

1. Do know how to start
2. Don’t have the time
3. Don’t have the money
4. What’s Email Marketing ?

In terms of formal statistics regarding barriers to email marketing, According to DMA, 25% of marketers have trouble getting content for their email marketing campaigns . As you may know, the process of an email marketing campaign, from obtaining and organizing contacts through creative/content tasks, testing, sending and analyzing the results can be daunting. Especially so for an owner operated business for which the campaign competes with the dozen other tasks that require daily attention. Perhaps if non-email engaged businesses were aware that according to Monetate “Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social.” they would be more likely to invest the time and resources necessary to be successful with email marketing. The Essence of “Why Not” If we were to distill the essence of the most often heard reasons for not using email marketing we might arrive at the conclusion that some businesses do not recognize that email marketing may be a great tool to help them span their satisfaction gap (the space between where they are and where they desire to be). That lack of recognition falls under two categories:

1. No awareness of email marketing
2. Aware of email marketing, but do not understand it

The solution to the “why not” is the availability of easily accessible and effective exposure and education in the potential of the email marketing channel. Fortunately, for those small businesses whose email marketing we manage, they are generally satisfied with both having the process off their responsibility list and with the results that their campaigns produce.