How To Become an Email Marketing Specialist: Tips From Experts

How To Become an Email Marketing Specialist: Tips From Experts
06 September, 2024 • ... • 2883 views
Alexey Baguzin
by Alexey Baguzin

Email remains one of the most popular and effective marketing channels. That’s why we’ve talked to two distinguished email marketing specialists about how you can become one as well.

Anna Gelfand, Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Miro, with almost 12 years of experience in the field under her belt.

Scott Hardigree, an email deliverability expert, founder and CEO of Email Industries.

Below you can find their advice on what it takes to become a top-notch email marketing specialist. Anna and Scott have covered everything from getting started to key skills and qualifications. But first a bit on why email marketing is a great career path to take.

Why you should consider a career in email marketing

Email marketing is going strong. In 2023 the global market was valued at just over $8 billion — and that number is expected to more than double by the end of 2028. The return on investment in email marketing is insane: $36 for each dollar spent.

The email marketing market will go from 8B to 17B in just 4 years.
Projected growth for the email marketing market. Source: Statista

Email specialists earn a lot as well: the median annual salary is around $74,000. That’s more than content writers ($66,000), SEO specialists ($69,000) and SM managers ($70,000) get (all data courtesy of Glassdoor).

And now let’s find out what email marketing specialists do — and what you need to become one.

What do email marketing specialists actually do

Which day-to-day duties do you have?

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

In general, we are responsible for user activations, engagement rate, retention growth, and product conversion. Also, email marketing specialists monitor how customers remain on new plans, the churn rate, and the adoption of new features.

In the meantime, all teams want to send emails endlessly. Here we help them develop standards and set up a process. Plus, email marketers are responsible for the technical structure (deliverability, all data streams, email campaign analytics, performance, and how emails work as leverage for business growth). In other words, we are the gatekeepers so that something bad does not go anywhere.

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

Primarily it’s everything around data analysis. Email deliverability experts analyze data from emails and landings or emails as landings. We precisely review mailboxes and spam folders (here we look at all technical information in an email). For example, we make sure that the header is set up properly and works as it should.

Which about junior email marketing specialists? What is their routine?

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

As email marketing is teamwork, it involves analysts, designers, copywriters, and a strategist who is an ideologist. So, newbies do everything connected with the life cycle of an email: how to build and design it, who to work with inside the team, and who to send it to (segmentation basics).

If you were a newbie, I would ask you to prepare a monthly newsletter. First, we would brainstorm ideas about how we do it: what goals and hypotheses we have, how we want to satisfy both the business and our users, by what means we achieve this, what we want to say and why, and how everything would be measured. Second, the design stage comes: how we pack our idea into the final letter and how we send it.

Available career paths

How is it possible to transform from a junior to a senior level? 

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

I think that growth is always about how we make things more complicated. It’s when we take responsibility for a larger piece and when the amount of unknown increases.

The process usually looks like this. First, you do what your teammates tell you to do. Then you look for a solution to the little problem you were given. And finally, you become a person who sets himself a task within the framework of the strategy and company’s goals.

How it looks in life: in the beginning, we create an onboarding email chain. Then we do more research, use more data, and the design and logic become more florid. As a result, the message becomes more personalized. As you grow, you see more interconnections: how activation drives monetization, how communications are related, etc.

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

Typically email deliverability specialists start their careers in technical or customer support. If they can analyze data and make recommendations based on data they have all chances to easily rise in the field.

What’s the difference between a beginner and a passionate professional?

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

It’s empathy and business acumen. An experienced deliverability expert is able to see the problem from the sender’s perspective as well as the mailbox providers’ or filters’ perspective. This approach helps to solve the sender’s business challenges.

The most successful people in our field really do care about customers. They always question: “Is this decision really solving a problem?”. They are always in touch with the client’s needs (on the phone, in Zoom, anywhere) and see how any actions positively or negatively impact the business. So, it’s more than just vision from a technical perspective. It’s always about keeping in mind the client’s business objectives.

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

The ability to do what you don’t know how to do and to learn how to do it well. Being a professional means being able to start from scratch without fear that you are zero at something. This is what helps to take life’s changes and market fluctuations. An important skill for a professional is to take ignorance as an advantage. Because if you don’t know something, you have the opportunity to learn it.

‘What makes you a professional is how your professional experience and skills today differ from those of yesterday’.

Is networking important for career growth?

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

Absolutely. In the beginning, you often seek internal expertise. When there is not enough information, you start reading literature, and asking people from the industry who have already done what you want. Even in a senior position, you often have tasks that you have never faced in your life.

Let’s look at a real example when a company needs to send emails in 5 languages. ​​Or there’s a need to transfer to another mailing platform for the next 5 years. Surely someone from the industry already has this experience. You can find out how. This will save you from many mistakes in the next steps. We grow a lot by learning from others.

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

For an entry role, like analyst, it might be $50,000-60,000 per year. Strategists or consultants earn nearly $75,000-95,000 per year. For service managers who control the whole team, salaries vary from $100,000-140,000 per year.

Of course, the range may differ whether it’s a freelancer or an in-house employee. When you are a freelancer, your revenue is unlimited and depends on how much you can do. In the meantime, the highest ranges are for employees. Because they are very specialized and there are not many of them. That is why companies need them and are ready to pay good money.

How to become an email marketer: the must-have qualities and qualifications

Essential soft skills

Which are the most important?

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

Empathy is number one. It means that you put yourself into the client’s shoes and ask the question “If that was me, how would I feel?”.

There is a sense of urgency when it comes to email marketing. Customers rely on this tool to drive revenue. So, if you’re not hitting the inbox or your emails are missing, it’s an emergency. That is why it’s so important to be always in tune with the customer.

Another important skill is communication. Mostly we work with technical people. But business teams are different. Often, marketing and salespeople are also involved. So, the ability to speak with both sides is really huge.

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

These two skills are a must-have. 

  1. Project management. Email marketing implies working with a large number of contractors (both external and internal).
  2. Communication. It’s about the ability to work with a large number of stakeholders, set expectations, manage them, defend priorities, etc.

Additionally, it would be cool to be able to manage creative processes. There’s no need to generate brilliant ideas. But it is very important to set clear tech requirements that lead to the final result.

Technical skills to get a hand of

What about them?

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

The most essential one is data analysis. Email deliverability experts have to apply all the results they have. It means to always question yourself: “What is data telling me and what is my experience telling me?” This approach helps to predict the future.

Another hard skill we need is testing all assumptions and being process-oriented. Oh, we really do a lot of testing, including email a/b tests! Sometimes you take action and think that it’s going to fix the problem. Not a fact. So, you turn back and try another decision till it really works out.

To sum up, it’s important to have tolerance for failures and to test things that might not work. And also to stay curious and humble.

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

Analytics 100%. No, it’s not about SQL. It’s about the ability to ask the right questions to the data and to draw conclusions, see sequences, etc. Research is always the basis for hypotheses, decision-making processes, and a product that we provide to the end user.

Education and additional training

Is there a special degree or a course needed to become an email expert?

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

No. Education is always cool to have. But there are more crucial things that matter at work. Observation, critical thinking, common sense and a desire to learn from mistakes are much more important than the faculty you graduated from.

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

Also no (at least as for the US or Western Europe).

A lot of our experts have communications degrees. Some of them enter the field with a technical background (e.g., experience in support service). It’s not necessarily about having a computer science degree but a technical mind.

Certifications for email marketing specialists

Do experts need those?

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

Again no. Any education is always great if you put knowledge into practice. A specialized course is a good start in the industry. This will give you an understanding of what you will encounter in your work. But no certification can guarantee what real experience does.

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

No. In some cases, experts have digital marketing certificates but there are none around our sphere. Actually, in the future, we are planning to launch an email deliverability certification class. It will be useful for those who want to enter the field or to learn more about how it works.

Tips on how to become an email marketing expert from scratch

What would you advise people who want to become valuable specialists?

Scott Hardigree
Scott Hardigree

email deliverability expert

Get started with any entry-level role and you will rise to the highs of your abilities. Learn new and love solving problems, and this will take you to the top of the field (in salary as well).

And don’t forget to share your experience. True experts are always thought leaders: they present at conferences or webinars, have a podcast, or write content. It’s about introducing best practices to the community.

Anna Gelfand
Anna Gelfand

Lifecycle Marketing Lead at Miro

Search for companies that are not very well-developed in email marketing and work for them for free. Explain that you don’t know anything yet, but really want to try. And just dig in. In the first stage, experience is more important than money. Any investment in experience (portfolio, contacts, knowledge) pays off very much later.

Also, go for interviews and do test assignments. Don’t be afraid of the process, just try. Tasks that companies give to the candidates are usually connected with real problems. This is the practice that newbies need so much.

The ability to do what you do not know and learn to do it well is what will help you withstand any changes in the market and life in general. It is important to be able to start from scratch without fear that you do not know how to do something.

Tips from the Selzy team

Bit of a long read, wasn’t it? Here are the essentials you need to keep in mind — fresh from our own team of digital marketing experts:

  • Polish your copywriting skills: not all companies expect their email marketers to produce the copy as well, but some do. It won’t hurt your chances of getting hired. And let’s be honest: sometimes it’s easier to go the whole nine yards yourself, instead of relying on, and waiting for, a copywriter to do the most important part of your job?
  • Explore what A/B testing is: you’ll test different hypotheses a lot as an email marketer. A/B testing will usually come down to changing subject lines, but sometimes it will also require changes to email layouts, design elements, CTAs, and the copy itself.
  • Learn what digital sales funnels are made of: email will be part of those too — and at different stages of your customer journey. That means you should understand how marketing funnels work, and tailor your emails accordingly.
  • Find out how email marketing works: you’ll be asked to create emails, build a subscriber base, segment it, craft personalized content for each segment, and then measure and analyze the results after sending. Plus, explore the different email types you’ll be asked to send — such as welcome emails, informational emails, offer emails and transactional emails.

Choose your email marketing tech stack: it’s mainly about picking the email service provider (ESP) — and sometimes you’ll be asked to oversee the migration from one ESP to another — but it’s also about measuring your emails’ success.

Where to look for jobs in email marketing

Your safest bet when looking for a job are the big guns — LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor and Upwork/Fiverr (if you are freelancing). However, we’ve also rounded up some niche resources, created for email marketers, whether up-and-coming or seasoned pros.

  • Email marketing jobs — one of the largest job boards on the net for email specialists.
  • Women of email — an official association where you can find job opportunities and general advice. Women specialists only, of course.
  • Email Geeks — a Slack community where email marketers, designers and developers come together to share advice. You can find over 20,000 email marketers there — including ones from Google and MailChimp!

Wrapping up

We hope we’ve given you enough to go on — maybe even convinced you to give email marketing a shot as your profession of choice. Bookmark this post in case you need to jog your memory, and good luck in your job search!

06 September, 2024
Article by
Alexey Baguzin
Alex has an master's in Journalism, a keen interest in eCommerce & email marketing and a background of writing articles dating back to 2015. He reads about copywriting in his spare time, watches Netflix and supports Arsenal. He's into rock of all sorts - most recently Muse.
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