Email has not only been spared the ax that fell heavily on most marketing budget line items, it seems to have actually benefited from the down economy. This boon wasn't skewed by a few email-reliant sectors, it occurred in every industry participating in our benchmark survey.

How Email Marketing Budgets Changed in 2009 by Industry

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No matter what industry your organization is in, chances are your total marketing budget decreased substantially in 2009. But there is good news for email marketers. As this chart shows, a much larger percentage of organizations increased their email marketing budgets than decreased them. This positive change occurred in only two marketing tactics: email and social media.

In this age of cost consciousness and demand to justify ROI, email marketing continues to prove its value as a highly cost-effective tactic. While half of all email budgets stayed the same, 37% plan to spend more on email in 2009 over 2008, compared to 14% that plan to spend less. The reason for this trend is that email is a cost-effective tool that has proven its ability to deliver on the promise of ROI -- in good times and bad.

Even large organizations, which typically change direction as slowly as a super tanker, have shown a surprising amount of agility in respect to email budget changes from 2008 to 2009. Large organizations were much more likely to increase and decrease email budgets than small entities. The reason may be that large organizations are more likely to have conducted a thorough ROI analysis comparing their marketing tactics in which email demonstrated greater value.