It’s been nearly nine months since my last update on this topic. In this quick post, I’ll talk a bit about the salary information I’ve seen recently.
There are increasing data points related to marketing automation salaries. This week, I did a search for “marketing automation salaries” and discovered many more dedicated pages than in December 2016. This is good news since that means a better understanding for those negotiating salaries on either side.
Salary Survey Data
At the Marketo Summit 2017, Inga Romanoff and Jason Seeba presented their latest Marketo Salary Survey. Of the 200+ respondents, 81% were using Marketo for more than 1 year. Thus, be careful when comparing data to experience with other platforms. I would tend to believe similar experience levels with Eloqua, Pardot, and HubSpot would yield similar salaries.
The data show us a long tail with 31% between $75k-99k/year as a median salary range. People with 1-3 years of Marketo experience should expect to be in this range. People with much more experience were generally above $100k.
- Entry level staff should experience $50k-99k for 1-3 years.
- Managers or more than 3 years of experience with Marketo will start to see salaries around $100k, however, the bands shown indicate to me that many Managers are making less than $100k. Those above $100k have more overall experience or specialized skills outside of marketing automation.
- Consultants always make more on average, even with less experience.
- Geography matters, but high salaries mean high cost of living.
- Companies in the 250-999 employee range tend to pay more for Marketo experience, on average. Smaller firms and larger firms likely have more inexperienced staff dragging down the averages.
- Size of Marketing Team has no real impact on salaries.
- Marketo Champions, who are typically more experienced, make more. From experience, I would say this was a good selling point to get an interview, but the experience level itself was what got me higher compensation.
Unfortunately, the cross-tabs shown aren’t enough to really judge overall work experience against Marketo experience. I have seen plenty of people with similar marketing automation experience receive similar salaries even though their overall experience is wildly different.
From my experience getting hired and hiring people, I still see a bulge at either end of the market:
- More inexperienced people are showing up and still in the lower range as shown in the salary data.
- More experienced people in marketing automation are in high demand as Consultants, Admins, and Marketing Automation Architects who are asking for $100k+ salaries (as shown in the report). This group I call “people who know what they are doing and can be trusted to do it right.”
- Few mid-range people – solid Marketo or marketing automation users looking for marketing automation or operations roles. If you’re a marketer who is comfortable in Marketo, perhaps it’s time to explore roles in mops?
How much does level and title matter?
I continue to see confusion in the market caused by how Marketers have made themselves feel better over the years. In last year’s discussion of marketing levels, I wrote about how this works. Marketing automation and operations is struggling to get past these Title, Level, Experience names as the field becomes more mature. Here is some of my recent thinking from chats with industry leaders and hiring experts.
- Specialists (Jr, Sr) – this “level” is often confused with “Associate” or “Coordinator”. I have decided to start using this as “person who is becoming an expert and is not usually a people manager. More like Marketing Automation Engineer I, II, or III. IBM, GE, and Google are good examples of putting people on “super engineer” tracks if desired.
- Associate/Coordinator – in marketing, this denotes “entry level.” I prefer “apprentice” for entry level. But most people know this is for those fresh out of college.
- Manager – I’ve learned recently that “Manager, Marketing Automation” means people manager, while “Marketing Automation Manager” means mid-range experience or even Admin at a smaller firm. This is a critical distinction because more experienced people who have or want team leadership will be attracted to the former title.
- Marketing Automation Admin – could mean different level of experience at smaller or larger firms. However, it’s typically an individual contributor role unless it comes with “Global” or says it’s a managing a team.
- Marketing Automation Consultant – typically an expert or mid-range experience who is part of an agency or solo agency.
- Marketing Automation Architect – until recently, I’ve seen this title exclusively at consultancies. Sometimes it is written as Solutions Architect, which is more in line with process and tech consultancies. I am a big fan of this role because it denotes expertise, a level of maturity, and experience. This a “customer facing role” where I would feel comfortable delegating critical relationships and design work and confident of someone’s work output. In terms of career path, I would see this as one step above Sr. Specialist, Admin, or a variation of the Manager roles. As a consultant, I would expect a promotion to Engagement Leader from this role.
- Director, Marketing Automation or Operations – always implies team leadership, however, startups and smaller firms could mean this role in the marketing automation admin. Startups always say this is a “hands on” role and you should not expect to delegate for some time. The expertise of people in this role varies from Admin level with low overall experience to very experienced people managers with tech/process experience.
[Update: December 13, 2017]: Bizible’s 2017 end of year salary survey.
I’m curious what your experiences are with salary ranges or that mid-range experience level. Let us know below.
Interested in getting a role in marketing automation? Send me a note! If you’ve got potential, I know people.