Email Marketing as a Career Option [Job Roles, Skills, Certifications]

Sending effective emails and aiming for high open-rates and click-through rates are quite challenging tasks, and that’s why a lot of companies hire a dedicated email marketing manager who can deliver the desired marketing returns.
If you too are planning to choose email marketing as a career, we have prepared a consolidated guide that answers below mentioned frequently asked questions:

• What is email marketing?
• Why do companies use email marketing?
• What are the different types of Emails?
• What will be your job role when you choose email marketing as a career?
• Which email marketing skills you need to grow in this career?
• Which are popular email marketing certifications essential to grow in the email marketing career domain?

Let’s begin!

What is Email marketing?

Email Marketing is a method of direct marketing in which a commercial or promotional message related to a product or service is sent to a group of people via an email. Every single email sent to prospective leads is a part of email marketing.

Popular types of messages sent through email marketing are:

• Advertisements
• Business requests
• Sales promotional messages
• Charity related information
• General business-related news and information

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Why Brands Use Email Marketing?

Email marketing strategy helps in establishing loyalty, brand awareness, and faith. With a consolidated database, companies can target a large set of audience depending upon different segmentations, age, gender, etc.
Email marketing is done with an objective to improve the organization’s relationship with its existing or prospective clients along with motivating customer loyalty for doing business again and acquiring new clients to go for products/services of an organization. Some of the other benefits of using email marketing are:

• Enhances sales numbers
• Makes customers aware of promotions & maintenance offers
• Increases reach
• Foster’s relationship with clients
• Cost-effectiveness

Types of Emails That Marketers Use

1. Transactional emails

These are emails that confirm an action taken by the client. For instance, a purchase made online by a customer is always followed by a transactional email confirming the order and other specific details. These emails also consist of details like login in information, date of the webinar, and other information.

The most significant aspect of these emails is that they have a high Click-Through Rate. Most of the clients click on the emails though multiple emails can discourage the client to go for the transaction altogether.

2. Newsletters

These kinds of emails contain many advantages over other emails. Primarily it promotes the brand and makes clients aware of an organization’s existence. It can also promote the existing content of an organization as they can link up their popular content with these newsletters to get them read by the clients in order to enhance credibility.

A third and equally important aspect is that these newsletters can be sent as a combination of distinct content. For instance, a single newsletter can contain a new offer, information about a new event, and even a survey link.

3. Dedicated Mails

These mails focus on offers or promotions. An event specifically about a product or service can be promoted by dedicated mails. Dedicated mails have their own advantages. These kinds of email messages include a call to action button, which supports driving outcomes specifically for that one offer or event.

Furthermore, these mails are one of the easiest to design as they just have content about a single topic/product/service/event. Another significant feature of this mail is that by concentrating on one offer, it is easier to track the progress for that offer i.e. conversion rate, click-through rate, and leads generated.

4. Lead nurturing

This type of email is basically a linked series of emails, each containing valuable content, and all these mails being incoherent. Lead nurturing sends automated emails after fixed intervals so as to generate fresh leads from time to time. Moreover, lead nurturing emails are targeted & focused hence, generates much more outcome than mass emails.

5. Digests

These kinds of emails contain links & lists. For instance, a blog post accumulates notifications about articles published in a specific time frame and sends an email containing links for the same.

6. Sponsorship

These emails are utilized for the new audience and generating fresh leads. Sponsorship emails, an organization has to pay for enclosure of their copy with some other vendor’s email.

List of Popular Email Marketing Tools

• Mailchimp
• AWeber
• VerticalResponse
• GetResponse
• ReachMail

Job Role and Responsibilities of Email Marketing Manager

Using email as a marketing tool is not as easy as clicking on the ‘Send’ button. This role demands a lot more than this. As an email marketing manager, you need to handle and perform (some or all) roles and responsibilities:

• Nurture leads, maximize sales and meet targets through sending emails
• Increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, and engagement rates via sending effective emails
• Develop and manage email marketing campaigns as per the company’s goals
• Add, clean, and purge database regularly
• Design email templates that are easy-to-read, mobile-friendly, and effective
• Test email template to understand the preferences of the target audience and send them the right message at the right time
• Check and analyze email performance and returns by using metrics (CTRs, Open-rates)
• Use a data-driven approach to reach out to the right audience

Most Essential Email Marketing Skills

Below listed are the most popular skills which you must learn today to become a successful email marketing manager:

1. Strategic Thinking

As a marketer, it is very essential to think strategically and back email marketing with data. Most of the email marketing experts agree to the fact that not every strategy will work the same for your business as it did for your competitor’s business.

Email marketing is more about:

Test > Check > Learn > Apply > Test, and so on…

Thus, in such a tricky situation, you must be able to think strategically about every decision related to your campaign right from deciding time and message to sending an email.

Recommended Courses

• Harnessing the Power Of Email Marketing
• Marketing Plan and Strategy – ZERO to HERO Overnight
• Think like an editor (content strategy and UX writing)

2. Data Management

Yes, email marketing experts spend a lot of time on using, adding, cleaning, removing data. Good data is the soul of any email campaign, and thus, if you fail to manage data, your campaigns will not work well. One wrong data sorting can result in wrong targeting. Thus, you must equip yourself with data management skills. Also, you will be expected to take up the lead for managing, growing, and handling email subscriber lists, which again will demand powerful data management skills.

Recommended Courses

• Database Management Essentials
• Big Data Fundamentals
• Microsoft Excel – Data Analysis with Excel Pivot Tables

3. Designing

Marketers are always puzzled with CTRs and conversion rates. Thus, to get a boost in these numbers, emails must have a touching message and enticing design. For this, you must have some basic designing skills to create attractive, user-friendly, and brand-focused email campaigns. Also, learning this skill will help you to maintain and follow a consistent style.

Recommended Courses

• Graphic Design Masterclass – Learn GREAT Design
• Graphic Design Elements for Non-Designers Specialization
• Adobe Illustrator CC – Essentials Training Course

4. Drafting Effective & Clickable Content 

Content in emails has gone beyond words and nowadays, apart from plain words, email marketer uses GIFs, videos & form links, reviews, and a lot more to attract the audience. Also, having a strong uphold on content writing and drafting skills can help you make the most of the opportunity to engage your audience. Also, you should learn the art of using clear, concise, and precise messages to maximize returns.

Recommended Courses

• Copywriting Basics for Successful Sales: Time-Tested Tactics that Prompt Action
• High-Impact Business Writing
• Advanced Writing

5. Automation

Email marketing is among the most widely used techniques today and that’s why companies look for automating emails. Automated emails are personalized, time-oriented, data-driven, and can largely affect engagement rates. Your job as an email marketing executive is to automate day-to-day operational tasks which can increase the ROIs.

For executing successful automation processes, you must clearly understand your consumer’s buying cycle. Also, automation can largely depend on the nature of business, marketing goals, and objectives. Learning this skill can take you to the next level of this career as this is one of the most sought-after skills that employers look for.

Recommended Courses

• Marketing Automation: Strategy & Implementation
• Marketing Automation with Zapier & Mailchimp Email Marketing
• Email Marketing Campaign Management

To become an email marketing specialist, online courses and certification programs help a lot. Popular platforms like Mailchimp, Hubspot, SEMrush, Google, Coursera, Udemy, SkillSoft, Simplilearn offer courses that directly or indirectly help you grow in this career. To give you handy access, here’s the list of most trending certifications and courses for email marketing experts:

• Email Marketing by HubSpot
  Duration – 3.15 hours
• Google Analytics Individual Qualification
  Duration – 1.30 hours
• SEO Fundamentals Certification Course
  Duration – 4 hours
• Digital Marketing Masterclass – 23 Courses in 1
  Duration – Self-study
•  

The Parting Note

We hope this consolidated guide on email marketing will help you fast-track your career and upskill yourself.

All The Best!

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