What is an email marketing consultant?

An experienced email marketing consultant will help you manage your email subscribers, as well as provide them with information and promotional emails that nudge them to convert. This conversion could include downloading something, subscribing to a newsletter, or buying a product or service.

Hiring an email marketing consultant is beneficial in many situations, such as:

• If you’re new to email marketing and don’t have the time or expertise to figure out the best strategies.
• If you need someone to manage a high-volume email campaign, such as when launching a new product/ service.
• If your current email strategy isn’t providing the desired results and you need an outside perspective to evaluate it.
• If you want to create automated email campaigns, such as welcome emails or abandoned cart reminders.
• If you need help crafting personalized emails that appeal to different customer segments.

What does an email marketing consultant do?

An email marketing consultant will help you create and execute a plan that leads to more conversions, improved customer experience, increased ROI from your campaigns, and much more. They’ll also be able to guide you on best practices for legal compliance with anti-spam laws and data privacy regulations (such as GDPR, CCPA, and CAN-SPAM).

Hiring an email marketing consultant can be a great way to get results from your email. It could also save you time and money in the long run. Here are a few of the tasks they could be in charge of: 

• Create drip email campaigns targeting audiences at various stages of the sales process
• Help you reach your commercial goals with each marketing channel faster
• Hit key metrics, lower bounce rates, and spam complaints
• Setting up an email campaign strategy
• Optimize your email platform setup
• Grow your list of email subscribers
• Solve email deliverability issues
• Email segmentation

How much do email marketing consultants charge?

Email marketing consultant fees can range between $1,850/ month and $5,450/ month, depending on a variety of factors like:

• The number of emails you're sending
• The complexity of your email marketing campaigns
• How experienced your freelance consultant is

Keep in mind that an email marketing consultant will do more than just write and send your marketing emails. They will:

• Create and maintain your email lists
• Help you create the best subject lines
• Advise you on content structure
• Set up automated sequences
• Analyze and report on performance metrics
• Build email marketing strategies tailored to your business goals
• Run A/B tests to determine which types of emails work best

Hire to hire the perfect email marketing consultant

If you want to hire the right email marketing consultant, you're in luck. You have many options to choose from. For example, you can hire a freelance email marketer on websites like Upwork, Freelancer.com, or Fiverr.

Likewise, you can post a job advert on different sites and go through a recruitment process (selecting applicants, testing them, running them through interviews, etc). But both these methods take a lot of time and business owners get quickly burned out after one or two bad experiences.

If you want to hire someone with a proven track record of success (and do it quickly), you should work with Mayple. All of our email marketers are vetted and have hands-on experience in running efficient email marketing, so you can rest assured their work will yield the expected results.

11 skills every email marketing consultant should have

An email marketing consultant is a key player in your marketing strategy, so you'll want to ensure you hire a good one. Here are some of the skills your consultant should have:

Email marketing strategy

Email marketing strategy will be your consultant's main job, so they must have a proven track record of success in this area. They should be able to create data-driven campaigns that target the right customers and get them to take action. They should also have a solid understanding of how different marketing channels connect to email - and how to incorporate them into your campaigns.

Email marketing tools

Naturally, your email marketing consultant should be very good with different types of email software and email marketing services. While they may not be able to know how to work with every email platform in the world, they should know how to work with some of the most important ones (like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Drip, for example).

Most importantly, they should know how to use your email marketing software. They must also have a good understanding of tags, segmentation, automation rules, and how to migrate to a new platforms if required.

Want to improve your Mailchimp setup? Work with one of our top Mailchimp experts.

Campaign design

Email design is another key skill to have. Your experienced email marketer should have an eye for detail and good design skills, as well as a deep understanding of the user experience. They should also know how to work with different email templates and customize them to your needs. They should also be able to create campaigns that look good on both desktop and mobile devices.

List building & segmentation

Your email consultant must understand how to build an email list, segment it into different customer groups and send targeted messages. They also need to be familiar with best practices for list segmentation, such as using demographic data, purchase history, website behavior, external customer data, or other engagement metrics.

Data hygiene & data analytics

Data is what powers this channel so your expert should be familiar with data hygiene best practices (e.g., how to keep email lists clean), and how to use reporting metrics and analytics to measure the success of their campaigns.

Automation

Email automation is at the core of successful email marketing, so an email marketer should understand how to create automated email campaigns, set up triggers and rules, and optimize messages for automation.

A/B Testing

The best email marketers use A/B testing to determine which messages are the most effective for their target audience. Your consultant should know how to set up A/B tests and be familiar with the best testing methods.

Email deliverability

Your prospective consultant should be familiar with deliverability and anti-spam rules, to ensure your emails reach the inbox and comply with regulations. If you need extra help with this you might want to consider hiring an email deliverability consultant.

Customer relationship management

Finally, your digital marketing consultant should be familiar with customer relationship management (CRM) and how to integrate it with email marketing software for better segmentation and personalization.

Customer support

Although an email marketer's job isn't to provide customer support, they should understand how to connect customers with the right support channels. They should also be familiar with customer engagement and retention best practices.

Email copywriting

Good email marketers can also write efficient email content. Although copywriting isn't their specific job, they can provide additional value by creating meaningful emails with a natural flow.

These are the primary skills you should look for when hiring an email marketer. Make sure they have a solid understanding of each skill and that they can demonstrate their knowledge.

Collaboration & communication

Finally, your email marketing consultant should be able to work seamlessly with other departments and teams to ensure a successful campaign. They should also have excellent communication skills to keep all stakeholders informed and motivated.

20 Questions to ask your email marketing consultant before you hire them

When interviewing your email marketing expert, remember to ask them these questions:

1. What experience do you have with email marketing, and what campaigns have you worked on in the past?
2. What email marketing software are you familiar with, and which do you recommend?
3. How do you measure the success of your campaigns, and what metrics do you track?
4. Can you provide examples of effective email campaigns you have created and what made them successful?
5. How do you segment subscriber lists and ensure each group receives targeted and relevant content?
6. What techniques do you use to optimize email open, click-through, and conversion rates?
7. What do you do if the unsubscribe rates are going up? 
8. How do you incorporate your email strategy with the customer journey and other digital marketing efforts?
9. How do you ensure email deliverability, and what strategies do you use to prevent emails from going to spam?
10. What is your approach to nurturing potential customers using different email programs? 
11. What is your process for creating effective subject lines, email copy, and calls-to-action?
12. What testing methods do you use to improve email campaign performance, and how often do you test?
13. How do you approach personalization and dynamic content in email marketing?
14. How do you stay up-to-date with the latest email marketing trends and best practices?
15. Can you provide recommendations for email marketing automation workflows and trigger-based campaigns?
16. How do you measure and optimize the ROI of email marketing campaigns to ensure they meet business goals?
17. What kind of reporting and analysis do you provide clients, and how frequently do you communicate with them?
18. How do you work with other marketing channels, such as social media and content marketing, to ensure a cohesive and effective email strategy?
19. How do you avoid having your emails land in the spam folder?
20. How do you measure email marketing revenue?
21. Can you give us an example of how your email marketing campaigns have helped business growth? 

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