Putting a price on direct marketing

Putting a price on direct marketing is the most comprehensive research to date into direct marketing industry’s financial contribution to the UK’s economy. The report puts a figure on the volume of sales direct marketing generates, assesses how much companies are spending on direct marketing, details the spread of expenditure across all direct media channels and counts the number of people that find their employment directly and indirectly through direct marketing.

The study highlights the major contribution that direct marketing made to the UK economy in 2011. The key findings can be summarised in four headline figures.

2011 expenditure on direct marketing totalled £14.2 billion; 7% growth expected in 2012
Total UK expenditure on direct marketing stood at £14.2 billion in 2011. Encouragingly, businesses using direct marketing estimate that their expenditure will increase by an additional 7% in 2012 – hugely important in an economy that is looking at modest overall growth at best. Such growth will be driven predominately by increased investment in direct digital channels.

23% of UK sales are generated by direct marketing
Companies polled for this study attributed almost a quarter (23%) of their overall turnover (sales) in 2011 to direct marketing. When these findings are extrapolated to represent all UK businesses, this would suggest that direct marketing accounted for £700 billion worth of sales out of a total of £3 trillion in 2011.

The direct marketing industry employs 530,000 people
In 2011, the number of people employed in direct marketing totalled 530,000, accounting for 1.8% of total UK employment. This comprises 375,000 workers directly employed and 155,000 indirectly employed, for example by Royal Mail and call centres. Moreover, findings presented here demonstrate that employment in direct marketing is likely to grow across all sectors in 2012.

The proposed EU Data Protection Regulation could lose the UK £47 billion in lost sales
According to the businesses polled for the study, the proposed EU legislation could cost UK each an average of £76,000. Crucially, if these results were representative of the UK economy as a whole, this would translate into a potential cost of £47 billion to UK businesses, concentrated amongst mainly SMEs.

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Click below to download the full Putting a price on direct marketing report.

putting_a_price_on_direct_marketing_2012.pdf