In our example calculation, a specialist on an annual salary of €55,000 costs your company around €77,700 in the first year, or almost €6,500 a month. Whether an agency is cheaper depends on how many channels you need to cover and how evenly the work is spread. The following calculation sets out every assumption so that you can repeat it with your own figures.
Key points
- In 2026, employer social security contributions in Germany are around 21 to 22 percent of gross salary.
- After holidays and sickness, a good 80 percent of working days remain in the example calculation.
- One specialist rarely covers email, Meta and Google in equal depth, and there is no cover during absences.
- In-house pays off with consistently high volume in one channel; an agency with several channels and specialist topics.
What specialists earn
According to gehalt.de, the gross annual salary of performance marketing managers ranges from €48,807 (lower quartile) to €61,230 (upper quartile), with a median of €4,409 a month. For email marketing managers, gehalt.de gives €46,588 to €58,447 a year, with a median of €4,208 a month. Data retrieved: October 2026. The figures apply to a 40-hour week, regardless of professional experience.
For the example calculation, we assume €55,000 gross a year. That lies between the quartiles for both roles. Experienced specialists in large cities are often above this, entry-level hires below.
Employer social security contributions 2026
Employer contributions come on top of gross salary. The rates for 2026 according to Techniker Krankenkasse (a major German statutory health insurer):
- Health insurance: 7.3 percent plus half of the additional contribution. The average additional contribution in 2026 is 2.9 percent, so on average the employer pays 8.75 percent.
- Long-term care insurance: 1.8 percent (a different split applies in Saxony)
- Pension insurance: 9.3 percent
- Unemployment insurance: 1.3 percent
- U2 levy (maternity): 0.44 percent at TK; insolvency benefit levy: 0.15 percent
Together, that is around 21.7 percent. Small businesses with up to 30 employees also pay the U1 levy (sick pay reimbursement), at a standard rate of 2.1 percent at TK. The contribution to the statutory accident insurance institution (Berufsgenossenschaft) depends on industry and risk class and is not included in our calculation.
Contributions are only levied up to the contribution assessment ceiling. According to the German Federal Government, in 2026 it is €69,750 a year for health and long-term care insurance and €101,400 for pension insurance. A salary of €55,000 is below both ceilings.
Holidays, sickness and onboarding
You pay for the whole year, but the work does not happen all year. Under § 3 BUrlG (the German Federal Holidays Act), the statutory minimum holiday is 24 working days, which is 20 working days on a five-day week. Many employers grant more. We calculate with 30 days of holiday. According to the Federal Statistical Office, employees in 2025 were on sick leave for an average of 14.6 working days.
Assuming 250 working days a year, that leaves around 205 days on which the specialist is present. That is about 82 percent. During the weeks without cover, campaigns keep running but nobody optimises them, and planned mailings are postponed.
Then there is onboarding. Even an experienced hire first has to get to know your range, margins, target groups and tools. We assume that in the first three months they deliver about half of their later output. In the first year, that costs the equivalent of one and a half months' output.
Example calculation: what the role really costs
All values without a source are our assumptions. Replace them with your own.
| Item | Basis | Year 1 | From year 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross salary | Assumption, between the gehalt.de quartiles | €55,000 | €55,000 |
| Employer social security contributions and levies | 21.74% (excluding U1 and Berufsgenossenschaft) | €11,957 | €11,957 |
| Workplace, hardware, office software | Assumption €200 per month | €2,400 | €2,400 |
| Additional specialist tools (design, reporting) | Assumption €150 per month | €1,800 | €1,800 |
| Training | Assumption | €1,500 | €1,500 |
| Recruiting (job ads, internal time) | Assumption, one-off | €5,000 | €0 |
| Total costs | €77,657 | €72,657 | |
| Per month | ÷ 12 | €6,471 | €6,055 |
| Per day present | ÷ 205 days | €379 | €354 |
Not included are licence costs for platforms such as Klaviyo and the ad budget. You pay both in any model. If you fill the role through a recruitment consultancy, the recruiting item becomes much larger: according to the BDU (Federal Association of German Management Consultants), the average fee in 2022 was 27 percent of the target annual income, so €14,850 at €55,000.
What the table leaves out
Management time: someone has to set targets, review results and give feedback. If there is no experienced head of marketing, this often falls to the managing director. We allow two to four hours a week for this. An agency also needs time for approvals and coordination, but usually less guidance on the subject matter.
Risk of departure: if the specialist leaves, recruiting and onboarding start again from scratch, and knowledge about accounts and campaigns leaves with them. Documentation and access via company accounts rather than personal accounts limit the damage. The same applies to an agency: ad accounts, email platform and data should always belong to your company, so that you can switch without rebuilding.
Ramp-up time: an agency does not have full impact from day one either. Access, data analysis and setup take a few weeks. The difference is that there is no recruiting, and onboarding is spread across a team.
The question of breadth of expertise
Costs are only half the calculation. Email marketing in Klaviyo requires segmentation, flow logic, copy, design and deliverability. Performance Marketing requires campaign structure, bidding strategies, creatives, tracking and analysis, separately for each platform. Meta and Google work differently.
A single specialist is usually strong in one of these fields. If you expect them to cover all channels, you get basic work in the other areas. That is not a criticism of the person but a question of available hours. An agency spreads the work across several specialists, sees many accounts and has cover. On the other hand, it knows your company less well at first and is not on site every day.
When in-house, when agency, when both
In-house makes sense if
- one channel consistently generates enough work to fill a full-time role,
- marketing has to be closely coordinated with product development, purchasing or sales,
- you want to build knowledge within the company over the long term and can organise cover.
An agency makes sense if
- you need several channels, none of which fills a role on its own,
- specialist topics such as tracking or complex flows are coming up,
- you want to start quickly, without recruiting and onboarding,
- you want to be able to adjust the scope flexibly.
The hybrid model
In many mid-sized companies, a mix works well. An internal marketing lead knows the products, promotions and priorities, steers the agency and approves content. The agency handles setup, ongoing optimisation and specialist knowledge. This keeps knowledge about your own business in-house, while the specialist depth comes from outside.
What matters is a clear division of responsibilities: who decides on budget and promotions, who implements, who reports and how often? Without this agreement, you get duplicated work and gaps, however good both sides are professionally.
Comparing with agency prices
Two points belong in every comparison. Agency prices are usually quoted net plus VAT; for companies entitled to deduct input tax, the VAT is not a cost factor. And commitment: a service that can be cancelled monthly can be reduced or ended when needed, while an employment contract is bound by statutory or contractual notice periods. In return, the working time of a permanent employee belongs entirely to your company.
For reference, Minotaurus's prices: email marketing from €3,000 net per month, Performance Marketing from €1,500 net per month per platform, each with a one-month term. Email marketing with Meta and Google together would therefore come to at least €6,000 a month, which is in the same range as a specialist from the second year. A single channel is considerably below that. Do the maths with your own figures; the table above is designed for that.
Sources
- gehalt.de: Performance marketing manager salary (German)
- gehalt.de: Email marketing manager salary (German)
- Techniker Krankenkasse: Current social security contribution rates 2026 (German)
- German Federal Government: Social security calculation values 2026 (German)
- § 3 BUrlG (dejure.org, German)
- Destatis: Sickness absence (German)
- BDU: Press release on the recruitment consultancy study 2023 (German)
