11 email marketing skills to look for when hiring a pro

Email marketing management is a complex role that involves a wide range of tasks and responsibilities.

It requires your employee to wear many hats and have several email marketing skills, which you can evaluate with our Email Marketing skills test.

If you’re searching for a top email marketer to join your team and aren’t certain which skills are the most important, read this article to find out which email marketing skills your next hire needs to achieve your targets effortlessly.

What are email marketing skills, and why are they vital for businesses?

Email marketing skills are the abilities your next email marketer will require to handle their responsibilities. They are vital for improving the visibility of your company’s products and ensuring that prospects connect with your organization’s brand.

The more proficient your next email marketer is, the more efficiently they can complete their duties. Whether they are a campaign marketing manager, lifecycle marketing manager, or retention marketing manager, having the right skills can make their role easier. Make sure you break down required and desired skills clearly in your email marketer job description.

When hiring an email marketing manager, you should evaluate the following 11 critical email marketing skills:

1. Critical and analytical thinking

With an analytical mind and in-depth critical-thinking skills, email marketers in a managerial role can effortlessly manage and monitor campaign metrics and track the return on investment of a team’s email marketing efforts.

If it’s your goal to evaluate your applicants’ critical and analytical thinking, check out our Critical Thinking skills test.

2. Technical expertise

An understanding of how to use email marketing and automation applications is fundamental for email marketing managers. Applicants must have the right technical expertise to join your business, including knowledge of drip and trigger-based campaigns.

3. HTML and CSS skills

With the help of HTML and CSS, email marketing managers can easily build and customize email templates without the need for drag-and-drop editors. If your next email marketing manager doesn’t need to start from scratch when it comes to coding email templates, they can do more to make your company’s templates unique. 

Need a way to evaluate your next email marketing manager’s HTML and CSS skills? Take a look at our HTML and CSS skills tests, and integrate skills testing into your hiring process.

4. Copywriting skills

Since email marketing requires good copy, excellent copywriting skills are indispensable for your next hire. When it comes to an email marketer’s skill set, nothing can replace exceptional copywriting skills and the ability to understand the target audience.

Use our SEO Copywriting test to determine whether your candidates have the right copywriting skills.

5. List segmentation skills

Can your candidates split email contact lists into different segments and demographics, such as “men over 30”? Can they use these segmented lists efficiently to target particular audiences using tailored campaigns?

Applicants should know how to use data from Google Analytics and sign-up forms in the targeting phase to segment lists more precisely. Use our Google Analytics test and Email Marketing test to assess these skills.

6. The ability to create lifecycle campaigns

The ability to create lifecycle campaigns is one of the email marketing skills you should look for in candidates if you’re aiming to shift customers from the brand awareness phase to the consideration phase. This skill is essential for retaining customers and generating leads.

7. List hygiene skills

List hygiene is critical for maintaining an exceptional email open rate. The next email marketing manager you hire should understand the importance of cleaning email lists and removing recipients who do not open your organization’s emails.

8. Attention to detail

Attention to detail may be a soft skill, but it is also one of the email marketing skills that has a major impact on your company’s success. Attention to detail is crucial for every email marketing task, whether it’s copywriting, list segmentation, or list hygiene.

Test your email marketers’ attention to detail with our Attention to Detail test to receive automatically calculated results and precise data on your applicants.

9. Leadership and management skills

As you get the hiring process underway, don’t forget that leadership and management skills are fundamental for email marketing managers.

When you implement skills testing in your hiring process, remember to include our Leadership & People Management test as part of your assessment.

10. CRM knowledge

Your next hire should recognize the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) tools in creating personalized customer experiences for prospective clients.

You should also look for applicants with CRM knowledge if automation plays a large role in your email marketing efforts. Test your candidates’ CRM knowledge using our Hubspot CRM test or Salesforce CRM test.

11. Time-management skills

You should also consider candidates’ time-management skills when hiring email marketing managers. How efficiently can your applicants manage their time when working on campaigns?

Use our Time Management skills test at the start of the hiring process (after candidate sourcing) to find out.

What are the 5 Ts email marketing managers should know?

When hiring an email marketing manager, it’s also crucial to review their knowledge of customer engagement, which depends on their understanding of the “five Ts.”

Are your candidates familiar with these email marketing concepts? Here are the five key Ts you should be reviewing:

1. Tease (with an intriguing subject line)

In email marketing, customer engagement begins with the email’s subject line. Can your email marketing managers create exceptional subject lines that tease customers into opening the email and simultaneously deliver what has been promised in the subject line?

Don’t panic if you’re unsure how to evaluate this set of email marketing skills – you can simply use our Email Marketing test.

2. Target (with personalized content)

Creating personalized content can improve the effectiveness of your organization’s email marketing campaigns. Your applicants need to be capable of targeting your audience with personalized content.

3. Teach (with informative email content)

Email marketing is an opportunity to provide your customers with valuable information, which can increase customer engagement. It’s one of the email marketing skills your applicants should prove they have before you hire them.

Can your candidates create emails that show their expertise on a topic and teach your audience something new?

4. Test (and compare various layouts)

Testing email layouts can help you learn which ones convert or lead to a desirable action and which do not. Knowing which layouts perform the best can help you increase clicks and customer engagement.

Find out whether your applicants have experience in testing email layouts and can enhance the visual appeal of your content. If not, you can ask them if they intend to learn this skill.

5. Track (the engagement of your email content)

Tracking engagement is the best way to refine your email content and monitor campaigns. Your next hire should recognize which email content yields the most clicks so that you can further improve your email marketing strategy.

Determine whether your applicants understand how to track engagement with an organization’s email content before making a hiring decision.

Review the 11 essential email marketing skills when hiring email marketers

Hiring a successful email marketer is easier when you know which skills to look for. Before you make a hiring decision, write down the skills needed for the role, and consider how you want to review them.

With TestGorilla’s expert-created pre-employment tests, you’re sure to choose the right candidate. Hire successful email marketers with the right skills, and launch your campaign effortlessly. Try TestGorilla for free.