• by editor , David Baker , December 4, 2006

As I was getting ready to bask in the bright snow of lovely Park City, Utah at the E-mail Insider Summit, I thought, why not write about one of the most important issues e-mail marketers face today: how to recruit, retain and grow our talent pool in the resource-depleted world of advertising.

What does the future hold for our talent pool when, according to a Northern California survey, two out of three Americans can name the three Rice Krispies characters, but less than a third of young adults can locate England on a map--and almost a third can't locate the Pacific Ocean? A survey of three-year-olds conducted in 2000 revealed that the average tyke could recognize over 100 brands. These young adults are our future--they are Web-savvy and diametrically different from baby boomers in how they learn and grow as professionals.

The question is, are our marketing organizations adapting to the new employee? Are we hiring for new skills, accommodating young employees who need lots of digital stimuli? It's challenging enough to build a solid e-mail team. How do you recruit top talent into a channel that is under-funded, under-represented and, from a consumer perspective, is simply regarded as SPAM?

This is such a hot topic that we almost dedicated a panel at the Insider Summit solely to this challenge: how to build an e-mail team? In the advertising space, some agencies are coining creative methods of attracting talent. For instance, global interactive agency AKQA's use of Second Life as a recruiting hub.

The e-mail industry has to compete for talent resources against sexier channels and emerging media, like mobile marketing, social networking and all the Web 2.0 excitement. It's hard to find resources that are excited about e-mail. I recently posted a notice on an internal "insider's list" about an e-mail strategist I knew who was looking for a job. Senior-level people at nine companies responded within half a day, asking for the resume.

Now that we are ten years into this maturation of the e-mail space, what value proposition does the e-mail channel present to existing and future labor forces--for those in it today, and those who will enter it tomorrow?

The agency or marketing service world has traditionally been known for burning through talent with a departmental view of career progression. For the e-mail channel, this challenge is even more perplexing, as e-mail is seen as an IT discipline. One person can create it, code it, load it, stage it, test it, deliver it, manage it, track it and analyze it. In the past, there wasn't much hope for career progression for e-mail marketers. They were mired downstream in a forgotten, ill-respected channel. Typically they stayed in the same role for years and had little visibility in their company.

I'm seeing new talent come into the market: savvy consumers with an ingrained understanding of the context digital consumers need. But these young marketing professionals require more than a single-channel view of marketing, and will get bored if confined to e-mail alone.

So my recruiting challenges are changing. I have to offer more than just an e-mail focus to future employees. Why? For all the reasons we write about each week. Lack of budget, lack of focus by organizations to align e-mail with a total marketing view, and the general consumer misperception of the channel--it's just not exciting on the surface. (Try writing home to Mom telling her you are now an e-mail marketer, and see what response you get.) What's so ironic is, the best strategists I see in the space have a foundation in e-mail marketing--and the best e-mail marketers are well versed in interactive disciplines and direct marketing principles.

As I build an e-mail culture in my agency, my vision is to grow a team that I train, evolve and integrate with the organization--a true cross-functional team that is channel-committed but agnostic as well. A team that sees the progression of e-mail to media, search, and site experiences, understanding with the left brain yet able to operate in the creative right brain realms. We must build organizations that understand the vision, value and contribution of e-mail marketing to the business, without putting it in a silo.

You are nowhere without talent, and talent is nowhere without a vision and an organization committed to building the roadmap. If you aren't communicating this vision in your hiring practices, you should be, if you want to remain competitive.