Finding the right specialist requires asking the right questions—and that starts with the email marketing interview questions you ask from the get-go.
Email marketing campaigns are always dependent on the humans who create and execute them. Yes, artificial intelligence can streamline your efforts and provide excellent ideas. But having the right people in place is essential for your team to get top results.
Building the best team requires hiring people, so it’s imperative to know how to find talent and conduct impactful conversations with email marketing specialist interview questions. This guide will cover the details of the role and help you make the most of each interview.
Email marketers are specialized in planning and developing marketing campaigns. They should also be able to handle the back end, managing those campaigns to ensure they achieve the desired results. Here are some of the specific duties of an email marketer:
Work with teams to develop email strategies
Write or review subject lines, headlines, body copy, and calls to action
Ensure copy and design align with brand guidelines
Manage email templates
Grow email subscriber lists
Oversee email lists and keep them healthy
Determine ideal email send times and cadences
Carry out email campaigns
Optimize various email elements with A/B testing
Track email results and identify best practices
Ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations
It’s clear that an email marketing specialist does much more than just press “send” on your campaigns. They must understand all aspects of the process and have proven marketing chops, yet far too many companies hire individuals who don’t have the skills to carry out the job effectively. Not only does this limit the company’s success, but it’s also unfair to the new hire because they won’t be set up for success.
Given the importance of hiring the right person, it’s crucial that you understand the important email marketing manager interview questions.
Whether you’re looking for a freelancer to help during a seasonal rush or want a long-term hire, you’ll find yourself asking numerous email marketing specialist interview questions.
Before we discuss the exact questions to ask, let’s look at some of the details you’re trying to uncover. As with any role, there are universal requirements as well as more unique aspects related to your business. For example, you might have a high-energy and collaborative company culture that is best matched with a candidate who embodies those same attributes. Conversely, your culture might be one of fierce independence, meaning the best candidate would be someone who prefers autonomy.
As for the overall characteristics you’re looking for, your optimal candidate will typically have at least a few years of email marketing experience and be familiar with multiple platforms for running campaigns. They should also show proficiency in tracking critical metrics.
Given the communication-focused nature of email marketing, it’s no surprise that strong communication skills are mandatory. Your candidate should be able to convey key messages via copy and design, even if you already have dedicated employees handling most of those tasks. You’ll want your email marketer to be able to collaborate with others on the team to ensure quality and elevate results.
Now let’s look at 15 important email marketing interview questions and VP marketing interview questions.
This question often kick-starts a conversation about the candidate’s journey into email marketing and also highlights their level of passion for the industry. It’s also an opportunity for you to see if a candidate’s strengths match your areas of focus.
It’s important to find an individual who follows industry trends and can keep your brand fresh. Use this question to gauge the candidate’s passion for email and their ability to articulate learnings. It’ll also help you identify whether or not the candidate’s approach to email aligns with your goals.
The name of the game is versatility when it comes to email marketing. Why? Because the technology is constantly evolving, requiring specialists to be adaptable. While it might seem counter-intuitive, you should probably choose a candidate who has used several platforms over the years (but not the one you currently use) over a candidate who has exclusively used your platform and has a deep understanding of it.
Confidence goes a long way in marketing, so only hire someone who can clearly explain how they delivered exceptional results in the past. Of course, it’s more than just bragging. Pay attention to how well they incorporate crucial elements such as campaign goals, target audience, and key performance indicators.
Even the most proficient email marketers will oversee some failures. There’s no shame in an unsuccessful attempt, so long as the individual understands why it occurred and gained lessons to get better results in the future.
Email marketing involves numerous balls being juggled simultaneously. Use this question to get a feel for the candidate’s ability to stay dialed in. Just as you want a specialist who is fluent in multiple email platforms, it’s beneficial if they’ve used various project management systems. This level of versatility will help them thrive within your own internal platform and also collaborate with external teams or freelancers.
Here’s a chance to dive into the candidate’s holistic understanding of email campaigns. They should be able to offer advice to those who will be creating your landing pages or even handle that task themselves. Likewise, they should be able to explain how a high-performing landing page fits within a campaign.
Speaking of holistic understanding, this question helps you see how well the candidate understands their contribution within the team. They should be able to discuss KPIs and other elements used to gauge email performance. Ultimately, they should know how their role fits within the efforts of the overall team.
Regardless of your industry, drip campaigns are likely an important part of your marketing strategies. So you need to see how effectively the candidate has been using them and how fluently they can explain these campaigns’ role within the customer journey.
The answer to this question helps reveal how in-tune the candidate would be with the priorities and preferences of your customers. If they view unsubscribes as a metric that helps reveal issues that should be resolved to ensure a better customer experience, you have a strong candidate for hire. If they casually look at high unsubscribes as an inevitable part of marketing, you’ll probably want to pass.
Your email lists begin to degrade from the moment you begin assembling them, with information incorrectly inputted, duplicates and spam contacts sneaking in, and inactives lingering for much longer than they should. Your candidate must be dedicated to keeping lists clean so that you get better results and save time and money.
The best email marketers have lots of hunches, but they mean little without confirmation. Look for someone who has the humility to admit they might be wrong and embraces a passion for testing. Most importantly, find a specialist who knows how to effectively test throughout a campaign to achieve maximum results.
A good email marketer is not only familiar with terms like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA, but they know how to stay well within the lines to avoid infractions. Within the interview, get a feel for how seriously the candidate takes compliance, because it can have a huge impact on your business.
This is a bit of a trick question. Yes, there are general trends when it comes to the best days and times to send a marketing email. But no business is exactly the same. So the perfect answer here would be one that acknowledges best practices, while also highlighting how important it will be for the specialist to get to know the unique preferences of your various email segments.
You want a candidate who has researched your company in advance and is confident sharing insights. This question helps identify those who check both those boxes.
Now that we’ve shared some essential email marketing interview questions, let’s talk about essential email marketing support. Because your experts can have all the best intentions in the world, but they’ll struggle to get much done without a proven platform to help run campaigns.
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