EN
ETFI
Smaily logo
Log inGet started free
Back
Analytics & Statistics

Small and Medium Enterprises: Marketing Statistics

Erkki Markus
Share

According to the European Commission, small and medium-sized enterprises are “the backbone of Europe’s economy”. No surprise there – SMEs represent about 99% of all businesses in the European Union. Do you know that in the past five years SMEs have created about 85% of new jobs in the EU? That is why today we want to take a look at small and medium enterprises – we have found some really useful SME email marketing statistics from across the world.

Let’s Dive Into Stats

  • Small and medium-sized business leaders and owners are usually responsible for many business areas. 59% of small and 45% of medium-sized business respondents reveal that they look after four or more business areas personally, that includes marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, product development, IT, operations and finance (Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017).
Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017
  • 90% of small and medium business (SMB) owners and leaders believe that seamless, consistent experience in every customer interaction – in person, online, email, social media and others – is essential to their customers. 87% think that their clients value personalization too (Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017).
  • 47% of small and medium-sized businesses in the United States utilize marketing software to manage social media reactions (Statista, 2017).
  • About 90% of Australian small and medium-sized companies that have a social media presence use Facebook (Statista, 2018).
  • 60% of small businesses use any type of big data tools, and 79% actively use small data (local, easily accessible information, such as email campaign reports) (ConstantContact, 2015).
  • 83% of small B2B businesses and 79% of B2C ones use the data they collect. For example, they utilize data insights to help create products or services, select marketing channels, or create marketing campaigns (ConstantContact, 2015).
Customers using data: ConstantContact, 2015
Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017
  • 50% of SMEs use marketing automation software for email drip campaigns (Statista, 2017).
  • Only 9% of Italian small businesses report that they are concerned about the viewability of their online ad campaigns (Statista, 2018).
  • 81% of small and medium-sized businesses in the US believe that email marketing is great for customer acquisition, and 80% think that it’s very useful for customer retention, too (eMarketer, 2023).
  • Only 7% of SMBs use email marketing to build brand awareness (DMA, 2015).
  • According to Omnisend Research, smaller brands send fewer emails. For example, e-commerce stores with more than five thousand subscribers send 2-7 marketing emails a month, while online stores with more than fifty thousand subscribers deploy their marketing emails twice a week or even send them every day (Omnisend, 2016).
  • From a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionalities, 34% of SMBs currently use automated email send time for their marketing efforts, and 51% are at least planning to use it. 30% of the respondents report that they use automated campaign insights, with 49% of SMBs planning to use them in the future (Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017).
Small & Medium Business Trends Report, Salesforce, 2017

Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: So Much Room For Growth

SMEs can shape economies, create new jobs, and even modernize entire industries. However, there is still so much room for growth – starting from the utilisation of more AI functionalities and insights, multi-channel marketing, data integration and connectivity. For small and medium-sized business leaders and owners, it is much harder to create a strong brand, establish a robust email and web presence as they wear many hats to run their business. However, new technology can help shape and grow these businesses.

That is why we here at Smaily are proud to help SMEs – we want them to be confident in their email marketing: create beautiful, professional email campaigns without having to know all the technicalities and utilize our data insights through Smaily AI email tracking.

Next: 7 Effective Ways to Upgrade Your Email Marketing Content

Email marketing has great ROI as long as you’ve got an effective strategy. If your audience is no longer clicking through to your marketing newsletters or otherwise engaging, you’ve got a problem. In the next blog post, we will share 7 great content ideas for you to focus on.

Make sure you check our blog regularly, and don’t forget to subscribe to our emails. Or you may want to follow up on the last blog post on Email Marketing Lessons from Realtors if you’ve missed it.