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Become an Email Marketing Specialist

As an Email Marketing Specialist, you’ll be responsible for managing:

  • Design and implementation of a company’s email strategy
  • Tracking and optimizing email conversions

As an Email Marketer, you need both analytical and creative skills. Your creativity will be expressed in the writing and design of your emails. You will need to use your analytical skills to analyze what works the best in your newsletter.

Email marketing

Introduction to Email Marketing

Course Overview

In this track, you are the sole person responsible for your own learning. In this course, you’ll:

1) Learn by doing. Do first, and then look at the theory. It’s how you’ll learn the best and the fastest

2) Learn by yourself (create independence) and be self-reliant. You’re learning because you want to, not because someone tells you to.

3) Gain confidence! You’ll receive no diploma, but you’ll have a nice portfolio of skills to show. The market doesn’t need diplomas; it needs skills!

Note: This course is not a checklist; it’s a guide. It’s made for beginners but is flexible and adaptable to your needs.

Salary

According to simplyhired, the salary of an Email Marketing Manager is roughly $63,000/year . Email Marketing is the one of the marketing tools that can have the highest impact for businesses.

To be on the edge in email marketing, you need to master certain set of skills. Here are some of the skills you would want to acquire:

  • Story telling and copywriting
  • Basic marketing
  • Analytical capabilities
  • HTML and CSS
  • Google Analytics
  • Design / Photoshop
  • A/B testing
  • CRM Knowledge

Email Marketing communities

Meetups — Check out email marketing communities on Meetup.com.

Facebook — Check your network too see if anyone has created groups you could join.

LinkedIn — Join LinkedIn groups and network and share insight with other email marketer enthusiasts

Productivity tools

Chrome extensions

  • Rapportive : Get Linkedin profiles and their email addresses right to your inbox
  • Grammarly: Grammar and spelling check
  • Eye dropper : Make sure colors match the brand identity
  • Momentum : Stay on top of your goals in Chrome tabs
  • Social bro : Monitor your Twitter activity after sending an email

Information and news

Stay on top of latest trends with this list of Email Marketing blogs. You’re welcome to sign up to Elearnhero newsletter for inspiration :).

  • Mailigen : Tips and news about email marketing best practices
  • Getresponse : An email marketing tips blog
  • Copyblogger : How to push, send and grow your business
  • Aweber : Tips for email marketing

A/B testing

  • Mailchimp : Email marketing service with friendly A/B testing tools
  • Optimizely : Implement A/B testing on your website easily
  • Whichtestwon : Learn about A/B testing techniques that worked for other sites
  • Conversion rate expert : Tips and tricks about A/B testing
  • Smashing magazine : A great guide full of A/B testing resources

Here are some of the resources I use on a weekly basis:

  • Growth Hackers : Crowdsourcing tips on growth
  • Lynda : Online courses on any topic
  • Edx.org : Free online courses from top universities
  • Coursera : Free online courses

How to become an Email Marketing Manager

The Email Marketing Manager position is for those with a genuine passion for communication, psychology of design and for those that love improving conversions through analytically supported decisions.

“Emails may be cost efficient, but it’s no excuse to avoid producing quality content to give to a targeted audience. (Benjamin Murray)”

#1 Start your own list

If you are serious about becoming an Email Marketing Manager, the best thing to do is to start right away.

Find something you are passionate about and start gathering a list of people with the same passion. It’s important to be consistent. If you’re thinking about writing an email every week, stick to that plan. If you’re not going to do that, set goals that you can achieve such as once or twice a month.

“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.” Ramsay Leimenstoll

A friend of mine recently started a newsletter about her life. While it might have seem strange at the beginning, I enjoy receiving her email every month and it keeps me up to date with her latest discoveries.

There are plenty of email marketing services out there. For Elearnhero, we started using Mailchimp and it works well. You’ll have up to 2000 subscribers for free, so you have time to get accustomed to it without paying.

Objectives:

#1 Find something you are passionate about and that you want to share with others

#2 Create your account on Mailchimp (or any other email service)

#3 Find 20 to 100 people that want to be added to your list

#4 Start sending your first email newsletter

#5 Set yourself some realistic objectives of growing your list every week. It could be 5 emails per week, or it could be 50 depending on your motivations and availability.

mailchimp > Create my account on mailchimp

#2 Learn the art of Storytelling

Story telling class

Through Lynda

Story telling class

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial
> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial

Successful email marketers are people that can grab their readers and be remembered by the stories they share with them. If you manage to trigger curiosity in people’s minds, they will try to look for more information, look for answers and ultimately be interested in what you have to say or sell.

This course I am recommending is great to help you tell stories.

Additionally, I suggest you take a look at this resource from QuickSprout ; it aims to be the ultimate guide to copywriting.

Objectives:

#1 Take the course on Lynda

#2 Read the resource from Quicksprout

#3 Apply it to the newsletter you created and measure its effectiveness

#3 Online marketing class

This class helps you learn about the different online marketing channels. Brad speaks about the basics of online marketing and covers different key concepts. As an Email Marketing Manager, it is also good to know that there are other channels you could be using to reach out to your target audience and entice them to subscribe.
He also goes through Mailchimp in more detail, although you should have figured out most of it by now if you have already started your newsletter campaign.

Objectives:

#1 Go through this class and pay special attention to: KPI, A/B testing and email marketing 🙂

Online marketing class

Through Lynda

Online Marketing class

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial
> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial

#3 Learn about design // photoshop

I have been using Mailchimp for quite a while, and I think they have great email templates that will help set you apart from other newsletters. Design is such an important part of conversions and has an immense impact on user conversion. In your email marketing career you’ll have to create and make your own designs, including make photo montages. For this you’ll eventually need to know how to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign (or similar programs).

All this knowledge will also be required if you are looking to progress in the job and if you want to take on more marketing opportunities in your career.

Objectives:

#1 Go through Photoshop course

#2 Go through Indesign course

#3 Implement the photoshopped pictures in your newsletter and try getting feedback

#4 Try to redesign your email template using your Indesign graphic design skills

More:

If you want to master the art of graphic design I suggest you to go into more details with the following courses all from Lynda.

  • Foundation of Colors
  • Foundation of Typograpy
  • Foundations of Layout and Composition
Graphic design course

Graphic design

Through Lynda

Graphic design course

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial
> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial
Photoshop course

Photoshop course

Through Udemy

Photoshop course

Click here get access to Udemy course
> Access Photoshop course on Udemy

#5 HTML and CSS Basics

Learn to create your website

Through Teamtreehouse

Learn to create your website

Get 14 day free trial with Team treehouse
> Get 14 day trial on team tree house

Knowing HTML basics will allow you to write emails you can track. Mailchimp allows you to do that with no coding knowledge, but if you would like to make design that matches brand identity you will need to dig more.

Taking this course on how to create a website will be a great opportunity to  help you create your first website, showcase your work and start building your knowledge portfolio. Not only it will set you apart from any other applicants but you might develop your own business opportunities.

Finally and the best of all, it will be a learning opportunity for you. You will be able to start figuring out what are the best KPIs for your website and start doing some tests with your newsletter.

Objectives:

#1 Take HTML Course online.

I recommend Team treehouse, they have great tracks and a superb community. Codecademy is less structured but it’s entirely free so worth considering as well.

#2 Make a simple website on the same topic of your newsletter using your HTML knowledge

#3 Implement Google analytics on your website

#6 Google Analytics

A solid understanding of analytics will help you be more efficient in your work. Being able to track and monitor what has been working with your audience and how they interacted from your newsletter to your website is great added value for you and the company you will work for.

“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess” Ronald Coase

Objectives:

#1 Take the course about Google analytics on Lynda

#2 Track how people are interacting from your newsletter to your website

#3 Go through the “Tools” section on the top of this page and learn more about A/B testing through the different resources, especially the article from Conversion rate expert .

#4 Run A/B test on both your website and newsletter

Google Analytics class

Through Lynda

Google Analytics class

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial
> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial

#7 Apply for a job

You’ve done a great job going through that track. Now that you have acquired all that knowledge,  it’s time to apply to a job.

A great idea to apply for an email marketing job would be to send an email as if it were a newsletter. It will show how well you can execute the job. For example, why not  link to your website to where you list your knowledge and experience. It can be a unique method to grab an employer’s attention.

Objective:

#1 Be creative about sending your application through email to potential employers

#2 Share your success story with us!

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