Every large brand with some kind of a digital presence knows the importance of a solid, and growing email list. However, maintaining a large email list takes more time than you might guess, especially for the IT guys.

A recent study conducted by SolarWinds looks into how information technology professionals find what works and what they can do to improve email management. The survey took responses from 162 IT professionals in the United States and Canada and public and private organizations from midsize to large corporations.

Email Management Has Become Increasingly Technical Over the Past 5 Years

The survey suggests, the biggest concerns with email management are mobile device management, user mailbox management, and server application maintenance. These have been among the top concerns for the last 5 years. In recent years, the issues that are of the least concern include client compatibility, instant messaging using email and also using command line vs GUI. Other issues such as multiple consoles for managing email applications and disaster recovery were middle of the pack in terms of level of concern according to the survey.

According to the survey, email management has become more complicated for businesses to manage. The main reason why is the fact that smart devices and mobile devices have become increasingly common. As a result, companies have more difficulty tracking and monitoring the email activity that takes place in their organization. They have become more difficult to manage due to the increased volume. As a result, companies have more emails to manage and this eventually becomes overwhelming at times.

Email Management is Costing More Than It Used To

Another subject that the survey revealed is that the cost of managing email is high particularly in large corporations. In fact, the survey revealed that 49% of companies that have 5,000 or mailboxes will have 6 or more employees managing the emails of the organization. With 61% of companies that have more than 50,000 mailboxes have 10 or more employees managing email. As a result, the larger the company, the more people are needed to manage the email due to the volume as well as the complexity. This also results in companies needing to hire more people to manage email which leads to increased costs for the company payroll budget.

Email Monitoring is Raising the Cost of Maintaining Large Email Lists

With digital marketing creeping into an almost automated state, email marketing has become just one of the automated feature of digital marketing. Marketing tasks like website monitoring, drip campaigns, social media, PPC advertising and more are relying less and less on humans to actually perform these tasks. While there will always be the need for humans in the marketing force, we are witnessing the rise of more computer automation, this is especially true when speaking of email management.

During the process of managing email in companies, the two main activities that take place are administering and monitoring. According to the survey, companies that have 10,000 and 49,000 mailboxes spend most to their time monitoring the emails which is 61% compared to the average of 53%. Therefore any large company will need to monitor emails as the main part of the management process. The larger the organization, the more a company will have to monitor the email.

In companies and organizations, there are certain applications that are used to help manage the email. The most common email applications used in business organizations are Exchange, Office 365, Lotus Notes and Google. When it comes to how many applications are used, 74% of companies use only 1 while only 3% of organizations use 3 or more email applications. Therefore, most companies need only one email application to meet their needs according to the survey.

Despite Rapid Need for Change, Email Management Software Has Not Drastically Improved Over the Years

The other issues pertaining to email management in organizations include lack of innovation as only 15% of companies use one tool while 53% use three or more to manage their email. According to the survey, 37% of respondents say that the company they work at will have their email applications hosted in cloud over the next 3 years. This will double the usage of a hosted service providers as a result.

After conducting the survey, many companies have said that email management is getting more complex and otherwise more difficult. There are a number of reasons for this including a larger volume of email to manage, the need to monitor emails more than administer them, using more service providers and also the increased use of smart devices.

With all of these things in mind, companies need to consider keeping a larger staff for email marketing, just to maintain the lists. This will increase costs and therefore make it harder for companies to be more profitable. This survey has revealed a lot of interesting facts that tell others that managing email in large companies is becoming more of a hassle. However, companies may adjust to this eventually and find ways to make it easier to manage the email activity within their organization.