Build a New Career as an Email Marketer

Are you a pro communicator with an appreciation for a good set of data? Then you might have a future as an email marketer.

Emails are a crucial part of any brand’s digital marketing strategy. Email marketers work alongside other specialists—including copywriters, editors, and graphic designers—to ensure that email outreach to customers (and prospective ones) is done right. It’s a multi-faceted job with growing demand, and depending on your skill set, you might not even need a marketing degree in order to get started.

Here’s what to know about how to be an email marketer, including what skills you should bring to the job and how much you can expect to earn. 

What is an Email Marketer?

An email marketer is a marketing specialist who is responsible for the execution of a brand’s email outreach campaigns. They may be hired in-house or work on a contract basis, and they often work alongside other creative and marketing professionals.

Having a dedicated email marketer on the team is important for businesses, many of whom rely on emails as one of their top drivers of sales, audience engagement, and website traffic. A qualified email specialist should be able to guide and execute a comprehensive email marketing strategy and pull actionable insights from the resulting data in order to improve campaigns moving forward.

Email Marketer Job Description

Email marketing jobs require you to wear a few different hats at once. So, what does an email marketer do on a day-to-day basis? Here are some of the big tasks that come with the role:

Email strategy: A lot of strategizing takes place before emails show up in anyone’s inbox. An email marketer needs to outline the precise goals and target audience of a specific campaign, as well as that audience’s preferences, questions, and primary challenges. This will guide the content of each email in the campaign and should be determined in light of the unique buyer’s journey that a brand’s customers tend to follow.

Campaign implementation: Next up is creating the email campaigns themselves. This involves planning and executing the content of each message, the latter of which may be performed by the email marketer themselves or in collaboration with writers and designers. In addition to the body content of the message, email marketers also need to optimize subject lines, headers, and links, since all of these impact how a campaign performs.

Data and analytics: Email marketers must play data scientist as well. It’s fundamental to the role to be able to track key metrics like email open rates and click-throughs, A/B test campaigns to see which performed better, and make adjustments as needed to bring about targeted improvements. This helps brands optimize their existing email campaigns and put out more successful ones in the future.

Email Marketer Skills

A big part of how to be an email marketer is bringing the right skills to the table. A qualified email marketer should be able to:

• Write and edit engaging email copy
• Manage contact lists
• Define a target audience by mapping out a buyer’s journey and consumer personas
• Understand performance metrics

Other email marketer skills that are helpful (though not necessarily required) include basic HTML and CSS capabilities, as well as graphic design. Fortunately, however, email marketing software can handle many of the more technical aspects, or a company may have editors and designers dedicated to these tasks.

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How to Become an Email Marketer

If you want to take the traditional path to becoming an email marketing specialist, the first place to start is with a marketing degree or a degree in a related field, such as digital communications.

Other educational paths that could be helpful are web or business development—even better if you then pursue marketing or communications as a minor or secondary degree. You could also supplement your education with online email marketing courses and certifications.

Is a Marketing Degree Necessary?

Nope!

It is certainly possible to become an email marketer without going the formal education route. Brands are looking for talent and experience above all else, and if you can show that you’ve got both of those things (ideally with proven results to back up your claims), then you’ll have a much easier time getting your foot in the door.

Email marketing experience can come from a lot of places. Look for opportunities and courses in a range of related subjects, such as:

• Copywriting
• Data science
• Graphic design
• Digital media
• Marketing and branding strategy

The more specialization you can bring to the role, the more valuable you’ll be to a company. Try to diversify the courses and experiences you pursue so that you can apply as a more well-rounded candidate.

How Much Do Email Marketers Earn?

The average email marketing specialist salary is $54,520 a year. This goes up to around $70,000 on the high end, but may exceed that for mid- and late-level career marketers. There is also the potential to make more as a freelancing email marketing specialist, since you’re not held back by salary constraints and can take on multiple clients at once.  

Average Email Marketing Manager Salary

Email marketing managers can expect to make more than specialists. The average email marketing manager salary is $77,668 a year and goes up to around $105,500 on the high end.

Finding Email Marketing Jobs

If you’ve got the skills and the interest, then the only thing left is to find the job.

You can browse a huge range of contract email marketing positions on freelance marketplace sites, and more general job boards can be used to find salaried positions. If you’re just starting out, it may be a good idea to pursue freelance work first, which will help you build experience in the field. You may even be able to turn a contract position into a full-time job.

Ready to Get Started?

There’s a huge demand for talented email marketers. Pursue learning experiences whenever possible and make sure to nurture the relationships that you build. With time and patience, profitable opportunities should follow. 

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