• by Jess Nelson , January 4, 2016

Email marketing is still a business-to-business (B2B) sales driver that experienced 3% growth in 2015, according to a recent study by sales intelligence company Datanyze.

Datanyze studied more than 42 million Web sites to evaluate their use of marketing technology tags and codes. When comparing the results to the previous year, Datanyze’s research pinpoints six key areas of growth in the marketing technology industry, including email marketing.

The study showed growth in six key industry verticals ranging from a 2% growth in ecommerce to a 9% increase in tag management. Email marketing grew by 3%, marketing automation by 4%, analytics by 5% and Web personalization by 7%.

Overall, the marketing technology industry has seen tremendous growth over the past few years with over $134 billion in investment since 2010, according to a recent VentureBeat Insights study.

The study also points to slowing growth, however, and estimates that marketing technology investment only totaled $17 billion in 2015. Last year’s investment in marketing technology is a fraction of 2014’s $47 billion investment.

The industry also saw a number of high-profile exits in 2015, including email marketing giant Constant Contact’s acquisition for $1.1 billion by Endurance International Group.

This type of industry consolidation may become more common as overall marketing technology adoption rates slow, but VB Insights says that 2016 can still expect to see new products and higher levels of fragmentation in the industry.