Digital Marketing

What Does an Email Marketing Specialist Do?

Since the world’s first email was sent back in the 1970s, email marketing has grown into a four-billion-user industry valued at around $9.6 billion. Both the number of email users and email-driven revenues continue to grow, making email marketing one of the most profitable avenues of business.

Conferences like MailCon Las Vegas 2023 unite thousands of email marketers from across the world, unlocking tons of tailored content and networking opportunities. The industry’s top minds work together to share marketing wisdom, strategies, and best practices, all aimed at taking email marketing to the next level.

To maximize the benefit from events like MailCon, though, you have to know the basics of email marketing:

  • What email marketers do
  • What you need to become one
  • How much you can make as an email marketer

Let this article serve as your guide.

Who Are Email Marketers, and What Do They Do?

The value of email marketing for online business is undeniable:

  • Around 65% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
  • For 80% of marketers, email marketing is more important than social media marketing.
  • The potential ROI stemming from email marketing reaches up to 4,200%.

Email marketers are responsible for managing email marketing campaigns – promoting a product or service – so that prospects and leads convert into customers and brand advocates. The scope of work is vast, with the two main directions being creating and optimizing email marketing campaigns for different products and audiences.

Creating Your Email Marketing Campaign

It takes both art and science to craft a compelling email. On one hand, you must collect data from your previous campaigns and research the market to understand whether a particular campaign has a chance to succeed. On the other hand, you must hit the bull’s eye with a message – textual, visual, or mixed – explaining why your prospects and leads should buy from you, not the other brands flooding their inbox.

To design a potentially successful email marketing campaign:

  • Set your goals and understand your target audience. From generating revenue to enhancing brand awareness to nurturing your leads, each goal requires a specific approach and fits a specific audience. You wouldn’t bombard cart abandoners with a welcome message, would you?

Dissecting your audience is paramount. Demographics, psychographics, budget, history of purchases, on-site behavior – all these factors will help you compose relevant emails that are superior to the competition.

  • Choose the best methods to serve your goals. Understanding your goals and target audience will likely reveal that you need a series of customized emails rather than batch and blast ones. Regardless of the type of email – promotional, welcome, cart abandonment, re-engagement, post-purchase, or any other type – it must fit your goals and audience.

As you’ve composed your email and chosen the best timing you are ready to launch your campaign. This requires research, as the generally accepted best send time (10 a.m., 4 p.m., etc.) may not work for you

Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing optimization is a never-ending analytics-driven process. But there’s good news: you can objectively measure the success of each of your email campaigns with proven metrics – open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaint rate, conversion rate, etc. – and improve accordingly.

Remember, though, that your metrics should resonate with your marketing goals. For example, open rates for cart abandonment emails will likely be much lower than for transactional emails (emails following a commercial transaction or a specified action).

The Role of Software in Email Marketing

Much of what email marketers do can be – and should be – automated. From coding to sending emails to tracking the customer journey, today’s software can do time-consuming tasks for you, saving your resources for strategic planning.

  • Half of businesses use email marketing automation
  • Automated emails drive up to 320% more revenue
  • 66% of email marketers believe AI is a way to optimize email sales

The more subscribers you have, the more important it is to automate and streamline your email marketing endeavors.

With up-to-date email marketing software – NotifyVistiors, MailChimp, HubSpot, Sendinblue, etc:

  • Drag and drop emails without writing a single line of code
  • Create AMP emails allowing in-email purchases
  • Conduct performance tests for subject lines, send time, CTAs, and more
  • Conduct analytics and predictive modeling

The role of software in email marketing is growing, so you will likely have to learn to use it at the beginning of your career.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing isn’t an outdated approach – it is alive and well and highly profitable. An average U.S.-based email marketer makes around $60,000, according to Glassdoor, and salaries will inevitably grow as the demand for email marketers increases.

However, email marketing is never an easy ride. You have to be a wordsmith, an analyst, and a psychologist. But that’s not to say you can’t do it. Of course, you can.

List of References

https://www.statista.com/topics/1446/e-mail-marketing/#dossierKeyfigures

https://www.statista.com/statistics/812060/email-marketing-revenue-worldwide/

https://www.litmus.com/resources/2020-state-of-email-report-fall-edition/

https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/marketers-email-tracker-2019.pdf

https://www.statista.com/statistics/710338/email-marketing-artificial-intelligence-impact/https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/email-marketing-specialist-salary-SRCH_KO0,26.htm#:~:text=%2463%2C152,-%2F%20yr&text=The%20estimated%20total%20pay%20for,salary%20of%20%2459%2C168%20per%20year.

Christopher Stern

Christopher Stern is a Washington-based reporter. Chris spent many years covering tech policy as a business reporter for renowned publications. He has extensive experience covering Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commissions. He is a graduate of Middlebury College. Email:[email protected]

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