10 Email Marketing Skills to Learn

A lot has changed since the global pandemic, jobs, careers, and work priorities have shifted quite a lot and the move towards remote working has accelerated. Marketing, specifically email marketing, seems to be an option people are increasingly looking at because the field promises to provide a much-needed change for those interested in taking charge of their careers and exploring creative jobs. Throughout this article, we are going to analyze the most important skills an email marketer needs to perform tasks and achieve success.

In this sense, remote work seems to be a beneficial side effect of the pandemic. Additionally, cultural competency has taken a new form. The need for intercultural skills is now required on a global scale. Employees will continue to drive change and embrace new opportunities - entrepreneurs will start businesses that capitalize on these landscape shifts, and companies will respond by adjusting their internal policies. It’s been shown that remote workers are more productive, more focused, and less stressed than their office-working counterparts. We’re sure we’ll also see a lot of pro-remote worker legislation passed in the coming years because of the tremendous benefits remote work provides to individuals and businesses alike.

Let’s clarify one thing before moving forward. Email marketing is not an activity on its own but rather a set of tools and processes. Email marketing can take different shapes and forms, including segmentation, list building, content creation, sending, and tracking. But the field is also closely related to lead generation and lead nurturing. We cannot talk about email marketing as a single approach or as a unique marketing channel. For the purposes of this article, we are going to explore the skills needed to succeed as an entry-level email marketer.

Essential email marketing skills

1. Writing skills

The ability to write engaging and relevant content or copy is key to any marketing role. That doesn’t mean that different marketing tactics do not require different approaches. The style of writing used when creating content for emails is different from other forms of writing. It’s much shorter (typically less than 300 words), must be written in a conversational tone, and should be tailored to each person (or list segment) on your list and their interests. Every email you send should also reflect your company’s tone of voice and personality. This will help you build trust with your readers, keep them engaged, and make it easier to convert them into customers over time.

The best starting point for growing or perfecting your writing skills is by starting your own blog. Having a dedicated space where you can define your writing style, play around with various topics, or just analyze what kind of content generates the most engagement will prove extremely valuable. Additionally, multiple online courses can help you explore content writing and understand best practices. Platforms such as Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera offer courses aimed at beginners. Employers tend to appreciate any kind of proactive learning activities that entry-level email marketers have been involved with.

2. Researching skills

Sure, research can be perceived as a vague term. But when it comes to email marketing, researching your audience will help you understand what kinds of content they like to engage with the most. This skill goes hand in hand with your writing skills because in-depth research will reveal the type of content you will have to produce more in the future. You can research your audience by reading blogs they have an interest in, following them on social media and subscribing to newsletters from your competitors. You can also get more insight into their preferences and opinions by reading their reviews on your or your competitors’ websites. Once you know what kind of content they like best, you can create more of it for them so you can continue to build trust with them over time.

Researching skills are not limited to your audience. As an email marketer, you will be expected to run competitive research, analyze tools and platforms, be able to work with data, and extract relevant and actionable conclusions. Content is just one piece of an otherwise complex puzzle when it comes to email If you want to exercise your research skills, the following steps prove efficient:

• Learn about SMART objectives
• Learn the basics of a SWOT analysis
• Conduct research on a specific company
• Conduct research on the industry sector
• Do some market research
• Do a background study on the business plan
• Watch video interviews

3. Critical thinking skills

This skill goes hand-in-hand with research skills because critical thinking is what helps you interpret data after researching a subject or person or group of people. Critical thinking allows you to process information efficiently so that you can make sound decisions about what future action steps should be taken based on what you found out through research. When looking at data from campaigns in the past, critical thinking helps you identify trends so that you can better predict future outcomes for future campaigns (i.e., I had a 100% open rate with this type of subject line so I will use it again). Being able to identify trends will help your email marketing grow faster in future campaigns!

4. Customer Service Skills

You have these skills already if you’ve worked in retail or customer service before because the two are very similar. When creating content for emails, you must pay special attention to how you speak to your readers in the copy and make sure that they feel comfortable engaging with your brand. It’s crucial to be as friendly and helpful as possible while still being professional and polished at all times. This will help create a better relationship with your readers over time so that they feel comfortable reaching out to you when they need customer support on anything related to your products or services. Good customer service skills are essential for keeping an online business running smoothly.

5. Work Effectively Under Pressure

You’ll receive deadlines for your email campaigns and that means you have to do everything you can to meet them. There are many different things to think about when creating content for emails, so it can be easy to get overwhelmed. The more deadlines you have, the fewer resources you have to meet them. This is where effective time management skills come into play. If you’re able to plan out your time efficiently, you can create engaging and relevant content for emails without sacrificing the quality of your work. Effective time management skills will help you meet all of your deadlines while still leaving room for any last-minute changes that may pop up.

6. Be a Hard Worker

As with any job, there are going to be days when you feel a bit lazy or unmotivated. But if you want to succeed in the world of email marketing, you have to work hard every day. Nothing worthwhile happens without hard work and dedication to a task at hand, so don’t be afraid of putting in long hours every day if it helps you reach your goals faster.

7. Be Resourceful

You don’t need every single detail to be perfect in order to run a successful email campaign and this is something that many new marketers make the mistake of overlooking until it’s too late. Especially in such a fast-paced environment. Email marketing involves finding solutions that make sense for your business and executing them in a way that works for everyone involved in the process. It may take some time to find what works best for your business, but if you take the time to learn what resources are available and how they can benefit your business, then you’ll save yourself a lot of time in the long run.

8. Know How to Think on Your Feet

Marketers need to be able to make quick decisions when working on an email campaign because they rarely get second chances when they make mistakes – especially if their campaign goes live without having gone through any testing first. If you want to thrive as an email marketer, then it’s important that you know how to think on your feet and not panic when something unexpected comes up halfway through a campaign. This is where having good problem-solving skills comes into play because no matter what happens during a campaign, there is always a way around it as long as you use your head and take advantage of any resources at hand at the right time.

9. Have an Eye For Good Design and User Experience

Customers might not be able to articulate what they want from your content, but they will be able to tell you when they don’t like it. If it doesn’t look good, if it doesn’t make sense, or if it hurts their eyes to read, they will probably stop engaging with your content completely. This is why it’s important to pay attention to the design of the emails you send out and make sure that you are using a consistent design and color scheme. You want to make sure that your emails are easy to read and that they look great so that your readers will keep reading them in the future.

If you can try out new UI/UX skills, as well as familiarize yourself with best practices when it comes to good email design, do it. You can create trial accounts on multiple email service providers, such as MailChimp or GetResponse, test out their templates, and see what you can do to get outstanding emails. Additionally, you can use email services to test out different designs and see if you can get better results with a different color scheme, layout, or design. Lastly, consult the ReallyGoodEmails website to learn more about what other companies are doing to enhance the look and feel of their email communication.

10. Technical skills like HTML and CSS

Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing out there, and it’s the most cost-effective way for companies to reach their target audience. According to a survey from Campaign Monitor, 91% of salespeople use email marketing to connect with customers and prospects, but only 44% of them say that they’re effective at it. The reason that this happens is that companies don’t have the skills necessary to create their own emails and so they are forced to hire an outside provider or agency. While these companies can help you get your message out there, you can also do it yourself if you know what you’re doing.

HTML is the computer coding language used to create web pages and email templates while CSS is used to style web pages. Learning how to use these two tools can be very useful when creating your own email templates from scratch because you can do anything you want with them. You may not need this in the beginning when you first start out with email marketing, but it’s definitely something to learn as soon as possible because it will help you tremendously as your career prospects grow.