B2B email marketing represents the face of your brand. Email marketers play a key role in conveying your message to your audience through what remains one of today’s top digital marketing channels. Hiring a dedicated email marketer is a critical move for your go-to-market team. But finding the right candidate is no easy feat.
Whether you’re engaging active job seekers or passive candidates, you want to hire email marketers who know how to write compelling messages, understand the fundamentals of modern digital marketing, and have a desire to continue growing their talents.
Here are a few key steps you can take to build the right email marketing team for your company.
1. Look at email marketing from other companies
Reviewing email marketing campaigns from other companies in your industry can offer a great deal of insight into what competitors are doing, and what you would want a candidate to be able to do for your company.
2. Determine your must-have email marketing skills
First, figure out what your company needs specifically for email marketing. Maybe you need to hire someone who's strategic to handle campaign logistics, or someone who has extensive HTML experience. Whatever your needs, figuring them out before you begin the hiring process will save you from a recruitment nightmare.
The ultimate email marketing specialist or manager should have the following essential skills:
- Be able to set up and monitor email marketing metrics
- Analyze emails that were sent out to learn what did and didn’t work
- Test new email templates
- Test a variety of audience segments
- Craft email copy and messaging
- Build viable email lists
- Build out email automation motions
- Optimize emails for the mobile experience
- Have a strong understanding of data and privacy regulations
One way to test their knowledge is by giving them a pre-employment email marketing skills assessment to get a better read on how they would perform in the role.
3. Ask candidates to write a sample email message
Once you’ve started the interview process, ask select candidates to write a sample email based on either a past campaign or one you make up. This will allow you to see if they can adapt their tone and style to that of your company and if they are able to turn something mundane into content that makes readers open and click.
4. Hire email marketers that want to learn
You can list out all the qualities of the perfect email marketing manager, but ultimately, great professionals have one thing in common: a willingness to learn. This might be indicated on their resume by their background, education, and breadth of experience — both specific to email marketing and other disciplines, certifications, and industry networks.
5. Recruit email marketers using the best data possible
Ultimately, good recruiting comes down to a good database. That’s where data providers come in. It’s easy to source the ideal person for your open positions using a candidate recruitment database fueled with high-quality intelligence, like contact information and company news alerts.
It’s important to make well-thought-out decisions when hiring for critical marketing roles. Hiring an email marketer who is aware of emerging trends, has the hard and soft skills to execute effective email campaigns, and possesses a willingness to keep learning in the role can make or break your overall marketing efforts.