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A freelance email marketing specialist can
By Carsten Bjerregaard, Marketingcapacity.dk (Link to the article. Copying/publishing without agreement is not allowed)
An email marketing specialist leverages email as a channel and medium for a business or organization. For many companies, this can mean the difference between positive and negative ROI on individual campaigns, depending on the company's industry and digital marketing profile. In this article, you'll get an overview of what an email marketing specialist does and how to find a good freelance email marketing specialist for your business.
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Content:
- What is an email marketing specialist?
- What is the email marketing course?
- What else is an email marketing specialist called?
- How does an email marketing specialist create value?
- What types of email marketing specialists are there?
- What should an email marketing specialist know?
- Examples of good email marketing specialist work
- Why a freelance e-marketing specialist?
- How do you find a good freelance email marketing specialist?
What is an email marketing specialist?
An email marketing specialist builds lists of email recipients and creates value by converting these recipients into buyers, customers, members, subscribers or ambassadors. A competent e-marketing specialist uses email as their primary channel - and manages to tie this channel together with other value-creating activities in the company or organization.
What is email marketing as a profession?
The email marketing specialist works primarily in what many call the 'sales funnel'. Here, the specialist works with various interrelated areas.
Data capture
For example:
- The person signs up for a newsletter
- The person asks for a quote
- The person signs up for a trial subscription
- The person participates in a competition
- The person participates in an event
- The person meets the company at a trade show or exhibition
- The person has interacted with customer service
- The person has been in contact with the company's e-commerce platform
Anywhere the company can obtain the person's data with consent (permission) to contact the person via email. The person's data may include, for example:
- E-mail address
- Your name
- Address
- Phone number
Permission
If the person has signed up for a newsletter or explicitly asked to receive news and offers via email (what we call Opt-in), the case is clear. Then the company can conduct email marketing to that person. Therefore, it is an important part of the email marketing specialist's job to understand the GDPR rules and obtain the necessary legal permission.
Data enrichment
It's in your company's interest to get a more complete picture of your recipients. So you can segment your mailings and offers - to make them more relevant. The email marketing specialist will usually participate in this enrichment.
- Data can be obtained via email from the person themselves
- Data can be collected through the interaction - e.g. the emails and offers the person has responded to
- Data can be collected from other touchpoints in the customer journey where the person is not intentionally interacting with the company
Again, knowledge of GDPR legislation is a must for the company. Typically, legal assistance will be needed for this part of the work.
Building a database
Typically, the company will have a CRM database and the email marketing specialist will be a daily user of the system. Partly to enter and enrich data, partly to extract data for the different types of emails.
The email marketing specialist typically works with both individual data and one with segments. For example, it could look like this, depending on how the company defines the individual's engagement with the company:
- Cold topic
- Interested in
- Buyer
- Customer
- Loyal customer
- Ambassador
Sending emails
Some of the many types of emails an email marketing specialist can work with are:
- Newsletters
- Offer emails
- Information
- Invitations
- Service notifications
And the purpose of various emails is typically to:
- Create sales
- Create interest
- Create awareness of a product, solution, service or other
- Helping the customer avoid a problem - for example, by warning of cloudbursts if you're an insurance company
- Increase consumption of your product
- Increase loyalty
- Winback of lost customers
Marketing automation
Most email marketing specialists are skilled in marketing automation. That is, they work with:
- Set up email flows - e.g. welcome flows, thank-you order flows etc.
- Triggers that trigger an email or flow
Analysis and fulfillment
Once emails have been sent out, it's part of the email marketer's job to analyze the results:
- Opening rates
- Click rater
- Conversion to sales
- Other responses
Partly to learn more about what works and what doesn't - marketing is a constant trial and error learning process. Partly because you need to initiate fulfillment for those who have responded. Be it in the form of:
- Responding to feedback
- Passing leads to salespeople
- To register the response in the CRM system
- Passing an order to the order reception
Or whatever it may be. This part of the process is currently part of a massive digitization process, where the goal for many is to minimize the need for human resources.
What else is an email marketing specialist called?
Titles are fluid, so an email marketing specialist will sometimes be called an email marketing manager, a CRM specialist, an email specialist, a marketing automation specialist, a content marketing manager or something else.
How does an email marketing specialist create value?
Since email is the most profitable marketing channel, the email marketing specialist is one of the most valuable marketers in the company.
Planning level:
- Strategic planning of marketing efforts
- Marketing planner
- Activity plans and annual calendar
- Concept development of different types of emails
- Objectives
The data area:
- Data capture at touchpoints in the customer journey
- Data enrichment
- Extract the database in relation to offers
Execution:
In the execution phase, there is an almost infinite number of parameters that the email marketing specialist can optimize:
- Dispatch times
- Broadcast frequency
- Headlines
- Images
- Email design
- Text in emails
- Call for actions (formulation and display)
- Offers
- The ability to avoid getting caught in spam filters
- Codes for offers
- Story telling
- Ability to create relevance for the recipient
- Using data in emails (merge)
All in one great mix that the email specialist can blend, learn from and optimize.
What types of email marketing specialists are there?
In principle, an email marketing specialist should be able to do it all. But few of us can do everything. So most will probably have some things that interest them more than others. So they have some personal strengths, either strategic, tactical or creative.
What should an email marketing specialist know?
The email marketing specialist should ideally have a range of skills:
- The ability to use technical tools such as email clients like Mailchimp, CRM systems, CMS systems etc.
- The ability to develop - or buy - creative solutions
- The ability to plan your activities
- Discipline to execute plans consistently
- Analytical skills to find patterns in the perpetual stimuli-response in their work
- Empathize with what recipients will respond to
- The ability to write - both internally and if the email marketing specialist needs to write newsletters, for example
- A sense of creativity, e.g. good graphics or images
- The ability to maintain a visual identity
A good email marketing specialist has a good mix of overview and vision, attention to detail and a sense of urgency. Few people in a company can create as much measurable impact as an email marketing specialist.
Examples of good email marketing specialist work
It's rare that good strategies or coordination are rewarded or even appreciated. It's usually the creative expression that is praised. Even if it's all been orchestrated, planned, commissioned and executed by the email marketing specialist. Life is so unfair. But many have written about what a good email can do. For example, here: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/write-email-that-gets-response-3542570
Why a freelance e-marketing specialist?
In the past, most people might have thought of freelancers for one-off projects. However, many companies have now realized the benefits of working with freelancers on a long-term basis:
- You can cover needs that don't justify a permanent position
- In periods when you don't need it, you don't pay for the skill
- In a long-term relationship, the freelancer gets to know the company almost as well as a permanent employee
- Compared to buying the desired skill set from an agency - such as an advertising agency - working with freelancers is usually much cheaper
- You have the flexibility to rethink the overall competency profile of the person responsible for an area
- More and more really talented people prefer to work freelance
- A freelancer can still look at your business 'from the outside' - which is a valuable thing when thinking about creative
- Freelancers can bring fresh, outside inspiration to your business
How do you find a good freelance email marketing specialist?
Finding the right freelancer can be difficult. And above all, it can take a long time. Because there are many freelancers within the same field, and even if they boast the same skills, there can be a big difference when it comes to the way they work and the work they deliver. When you ask Marketingcapacity.dk to help you find a freelancer to work with, the process is simple:
- You describe your needs to us (either in writing or verbally - we'll confirm in an email)
- We screen our 600+ profiles and, if necessary, the market through our channels
- We nominate a list of candidates and talk to them according to your needs
- You will be presented with 3 candidates that seem to meet your needs
- During the 3 meetings (at your location or digitally) you can ask questions and see examples of their work
- You choose the freelancer you would like to start working with
- We set it up in our systems with time tracking etc. so you have an overview and full control
In other words: After describing your needs, simply set aside 2 hours to meet with 3 hand-picked and screened candidates. That's your guarantee of a good result with reasonable effort.
