18% salary premium for senior Web Analytics Managers in agencies

PRLog (Press Release) - Oct. 26, 2012 - The average salary for a Senior Web Analytics Manager within an agency / consultancy was £89,300 while the corresponding salary for the same role within a Retailer was £75,500.  However, the opposite is true at the more junior end of the profession.  The average salary for a Junior Web Analyst in an agency is £26,750 while their compatriot within a retail business was commanding a salary of £31,150.

Kate McDermott (http://www.bluepelican.com/marketing/kate-mcdermott), Principal Consultant at Blue Pelican commented “Our report has confirmed what the market has known for a while.  In order to maximise earnings, senior web analytics professionals need to move from client side to agency side, while at the start of careers, salaries within industry are higher than in agencies.”

The Blue Pelican 2012 salary report draws data from more than 500 advertised vacancies within Web Analytics, CRM, Customer Analytics, Data Planning and Client Services and shows a separate analysis for the Retail, Insurance, Banking, Telecoms, Publishing, Technology and Gaming sectors, as well the Analytical Agency client base.  

A copy of the full survey is available upon request from marketing@bluepelican.com.

McDermott expands on the Client versus Agency side debate within the Report.  “A large number of Retail businesses have recently started bringing what were previously outsourced CRM activities, in house. They’re now investing their money in building internal centres of excellence, thus becoming more “customer centric”, cost efficient and insights driven.  Having said that, not all consumer based businesses are at a stage where they can justify building an entire function to support their ecommerce offering (for example), and so choose to continue to outsource their web analytics requirements to agencies. This enables external partners to realise huge change and commercial improvement for their clients very quickly, thus driving the value of these skills through the roof.

We imagine that, eventually, the same businesses that have built genuinely impressive internal analytics functions will do the same with their outsourced web analytics capabilities, leaving the salaries to average out over time. We’ve already seen this happen in recent years within the data analytics industry – with some companies offering way beyond the average agency wage to attract the top talent from the like of dunnhumby, Accenture and AIMIA. But for now, these cutting edge skills and knowledge remain in high demand and therefore come at a premium price ... something to bear in mind for those looking to build a career in this booming arena.”