Knak Survey: 85% of Teams Missed Campaign Launch Dates Due to Production Bottlenecks

Knak Survey Finds Production Delays Drive Missed Launches

A Knak survey of more than 300 enterprise marketing leaders found that 85% of teams missed at least one campaign launch date in the past 12 months. The delays stemmed from production bottlenecks rather than strategy or creative work, according to Demand Gen Report.

One in 10 teams missed launches more than five times per year. The top operational causes were approvals and sign-off at 47%, design and creative production at 38%, and coordinating across teams at 36%.

Email Production Remains Resource Heavy

Producing a single email required four or more people at 60% of teams. 69% of teams needed two to three rounds of revisions, totaling roughly $300 in internal labor costs per send. 54% of teams used three to five separate tools for one email, while 51% relied on email, Slack or Teams threads for approvals.

88% of teams produce campaign assets for email, nearly 50% above the next channel at 60% for paid social. 52% of teams plan to add or significantly increase email spend in the next 12 months.

AI Stops Short of Launch

70% of teams have deployed AI in production, yet 88% report that the output still requires moderate to substantial human editing. AI adoption concentrated on first-draft copy generation at 64% and image generation at 56%, while only 25% used it to build or code emails and landing pages.

The report states that AI has reached the first-draft stage for most teams but has not addressed the production layer between idea and launch, according to Demand Gen Report.

Workflow Constraints Persist

The survey found that for half of teams, approvals continue through email and Slack threads. Production bottlenecks, including handoffs, revisions and rebuilds, accounted for the majority of missed deadlines rather than issues with initial ideas or creative direction.