Commentary

Help Wanted: Email Marketing Manager

by editor , David Baker , April 7, 2008

Seeking skilled professional with extensive knowledge of email marketing, including all aspects of customer segmentation, deliverability, ISP relations, authentication, email delivery systems, creative design, HTML coding and campaign management skills. No need to understand reporting or analytics, as we really don't do much with the results. Must have strong communication skills, with ability to spin useless open rates into meaningful information and correlate it to great customer experiences that mean something to the business. Must have strong work ethic and thick skin, as you will be overworked and under-appreciated. Should have ability to negotiate the lowest prices imaginable with email vendor. Must be able to work alone, as you'll be a one-person team. Should be able to work on-demand, as we'll ask for things at the last minute. We offer below-market compensation program and no bonus, since we can't prove the value of email to the company.

Is this job description really so far from the truth?

The job of an email marketing manager in a business is operational excellence. Isn't marketing and sales about minimizing excuses? The aspiration of an email marketing manager is to find out how the organization ticks and where the points of change can happen. It may be budget that is blocking forward motion, it may be vendor policy, it may be marketing processes, it may be IT, or any number of things. Yet, that doesn't mean you can't build a roadmap for change and manage it at a level that creates some sanity in your job.

Too many times, consultancies get called in to make recommendation on improving an email program and they throw all their smart people together and come back with a 30-page point of view document that collects dust. Not that it didn't have great ideas and tactics for change, but it wasn't vetted against the organizational dynamics of change.

Change happens in manageable chunks. If you have one person managing email and expect to incorporate great testing into your game plan, you may not have a realistic view of how to improve your business.

Recommendations: consultancies, if you opt for this approach, should not be like pigeons, to fly in, drop some ideas on you and leave. All conclusions, recommendations and roadmaps for change should be monetarily or organizationally prioritized and agreed upon.

Sounds easy, but it isn't. Start with a clear vision of what email means to your business today and in the "next life." Then insert the obstacles that prevent you from achieving the vision, and weight these. Then list the potential people or organizations that can help you manage and influence change and give you a strong voice in this vision. Get some consensus on this vision and how it helps the organization, given we are entering a recessionary market. Then pick the lowest hanging fruit, deliver it in a manageable way and evangelize the heck out of the results to show how you are methodically migrating down the roadmap.

The greatest challenge of your business is how to infuse change without interrupting motion. The average tenure of an email marketing manager is three years. If you hope to outlive this expectation, you'll need something driving you.

And, P.S. - Don't send resumes!

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