• by Ray Schultz , August 3, 2018

Email marketers who work for big B2C companies are unhappy with their jobs.

Data issues at their ESPs are causing them to spend less time on creative tasks and more on operations just to get the email out the door, according to a study by MessageGears. 

This is having a marked impact on job satisfaction. Only 51% of those whose job is half strategic would go into email again. And that’s a large group--43% spend at least half their time on operational chores.

In addition, 68% of those who feel neutral or worse toward their jobs are at least half operational. 

“There’s a lot of people in the industry who are spending a lot of time doing unnecessary operational tasks instead of being creative, which is what a lot of people got into marketing to do,” says Will Devlin, senior director of marketing for MessageGears. "They're a little bored with what they're doing."

MessageGears interviewed 100 email marketers in the B2C enterprise space. Their companies send at least 10 million emails per month.

The reason for the reported dissatisfaction is that legacy marketing cloud ESPs have failed to address many of the data issues faced by enterprise organizations, the company says.

Devlin notes that many people are stuck in operational tasks “due to poor tech decisions and outdated tech practices, and that seems to be affecting satisfaction.”

Specifically, many such firms use marketing clouds to deploy email and push and multi-channel stuff. Those are not necessarily the best use of technology for those businesses.”

He adds, “the bigger the company, the less efficient those tools are.”

Happiness apparently consists of being devoted to high-end tasks. Of those whose jobs are all strategic, 81% would go into email again. What’s more, 95% of those completely strategic workers are happy with their jobs 76% very much so.

Finally, 83% of those who love their ESP also love their job. 

Devlin notes, though, that satisfaction apparently comes with experience 

“The longer they have been in the industry, the more satisfied they are,” he says. “People with five years or more are far more likely to say they’re more satisfied with their job, vs. people with one to four years.”