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Amol Ghemud Published: October 10, 2022
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Email advertising is very much alive and as opposed to popular belief, it is thriving. Email marketing is becoming more and more popular as privacy concerns on social media platforms are multiplying.
Email marketing is a fantastic tool for businesses to advertise goods and services, cultivate customer relationships, and connect with prospective new clients.
Every year, the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool is questioned. However, the statistics indicate that it is more powerful than ever.
306.4 billion emails were sent and received daily on average in 2020.
Email is the main route for lead generation for 89% of marketers.
Compared to the industry average of 10.69%, 22% of marketers report email click-through rates over 20%.
One study found that 59% of marketers believe email to be their most profitable channel, and studies have shown that email is more effective than social media at attracting new customers.
But to achieve the best results, an effective email marketing strategy needs a team of experts in many fields. In order for businesses to create an efficient email marketing team, there is a requirement for a variety of email marketing specialists to fill these jobs.
These following roles, when working collaboratively, create a successful email strategy –
Email Marketing Strategist
Project Manager
Email Designer
Copywriter
Email Marketing Developer
Data Engineer
Email Marketing Strategist
Specialists in email marketing create programs that support brand campaigns and increase visitors. With this, they can firmly establish their position in the cutthroat industry and guarantee that their brand experiences success, in the present and future.
The strategist is the one who develops the overarching email marketing strategy. They are in charge of managing campaigns and ensuring that specific objectives are well-defined and considered.
A strategist must know how to conduct target audience research and identify potential revenue-generating opportunities.
In order to achieve a business’s marketing objectives, they basically need to decide how to apply email marketing the best.
An effective email marketing campaign requires a solid strategy.
Email Marketing Project Manager
The project manager’s primary responsibility is to coordinate the efforts of the email marketing team members in their other duties.
The professional implements email campaigns based on the specified marketing objectives—loyalty, acquisition, sales, CRM, or customer life cycle. The Email Marketing Project Manager divides the client database into groups for each strategy based on the target audience she hopes to reach.
They are in charge of assigning resources and compiling the materials needed for email marketing.
Project managers establish deadlines for various tasks and monitor their timely completion. Other responsibilities include informing several departments of a project’s status and any potential issues.
Additionally, they are in charge of overseeing applications like Slack and Sharepoint for communication and email automation platforms.
Email Marketing Designer
The email’s appearance and feel are the designer’s concern. They are the ones who work with visual content like pictures, videos, GIFs, and graphics and are aware of how conversions are impacted by these elements as well as others like white space, color, and contrast.
The designer creates, arranges, and coordinates digital elements for an email campaign or digital marketing advertisement. The professional is responsible for creating visually appealing HTML emails from scratch or using preexisting HTML email templates. You can format the email’s content using cascading style sheets (CSS).
Email marketing designers must be aware of the limitations imposed by various email clients as well as how emails are seen on various devices.
To ensure a design that will be responsive across desktop, mobile, and several email inboxes, it is necessary to collaborate closely with the strategist and developer.
They must recognize and comprehend a campaign’s primary goals and ensure that the company’s image and messaging are consistent.
Email Marketing Copywriter
The email marketing copywriter is responsible for creating high-quality content and converts.
Without high-quality, engaging content, even the best email marketing techniques and designs are virtually meaningless.
The copywriter’s initial objective is to persuade recipients to open a promotional email. And after it’s opened, to spur them on to action.
A skilled copywriter knows that people read emails differently than they read web pages. Without addressing email design, we cannot discuss email copy. Because of this, copywriters and designers must collaborate to ensure their skills are complementary.
Email Marketing Developer
The developer technically codes the email that the designer creates.
They are in charge of creating the email’s inline CSS and HTML.
Different email clients display emails differently. Because email clients do not all use the same rendering standards, developing for email is more challenging than developing for the web.
The members of the email marketing team tasked with handling the technical aspects of email automation, deliverability, and ensuring that emails are not blocked by spam filters are known as developers. They also collaborate with designers to ensure that emails look as they should on all devices and email clients.
They are in charge of A/B testing and the related tools to determine which version of an email performs best with your audience, and they should be knowledgeable about various email marketing platforms.
Email Marketing Data Engineer
A data engineer makes sure the appropriate data is contained in the email.
Email campaigns for businesses frequently involve segmentation. Additionally, having a data engineer on your team will aid in avoiding unsuccessful segmentations.
In order to optimize upcoming campaigns, the data engineer will additionally review and analyze performance information. In this manner, the email marketing team may ascertain the best times and days of the week to send emails, the subject line kinds that perform the best, and other elements that can enhance the success of an email marketing campaign.
Businesses can hire employees internally, hire independent contractors, or contract out the full email marketing campaign.
The Email Marketing Strategist provides the essential vision and direction that transforms an email program from a simple communication channel into a significant revenue driver. They connect high-level business objectives to specific campaign tactics, ensuring every email serves a purpose beyond just being opened. Since 59% of marketers believe email is their most profitable channel, the strategist’s ability to identify and act on revenue-generating opportunities is paramount for achieving a strong return on investment.
A successful strategist focuses on several core areas:
Audience Segmentation: They conduct deep research to segment the customer base, enabling highly personalized and relevant messaging that boosts engagement and conversions.
Campaign Planning: They develop the overarching campaign calendar, defining objectives for lifecycle, acquisition, and loyalty programs.
Performance Analysis: They analyze key metrics to understand what works, refining the strategy to continually improve results.
At a company like InnovateTech, the strategist would be responsible for mapping the entire customer journey via email, ensuring a cohesive experience that nurtures leads and drives sales. Understanding their full scope is the first step in building a truly effective program.
While both roles are integral, the Strategist focuses on the 'why' and the Project Manager masters the 'how'. The Email Marketing Strategist develops the high-level plan, researches the target audience, and defines the goals of a campaign, such as lead generation or customer loyalty. In contrast, the Email Marketing Project Manager is the operational leader who takes that strategy and orchestrates the team's efforts, managing timelines, resources, and communication platforms like Slack to ensure a smooth workflow and on-time delivery. A business that hires a manager without a strategist may execute flawed campaigns efficiently, while one with a strategist but no manager may have brilliant ideas that never get implemented properly. A growing company should first hire a Strategist to establish a solid foundation and clear objectives. Once the strategic direction is set and the workload increases, bringing in a Project Manager becomes essential for scaling operations. Discovering how these roles collaborate is key to building a high-performing team.
A specialized Email Designer is critical for elevating engagement because they understand that an email's visual presentation directly impacts user action. While the industry average click-through rate is 10.69%, 22% of marketers report rates over 20%, a result often driven by superior, user-centric design. The designer moves beyond basic templates to create visually compelling experiences that guide the reader toward a specific conversion goal. They are masters of the technical constraints of different email clients and devices, ensuring a consistent and appealing look everywhere.
Key elements an Email Designer focuses on include:
Visual Hierarchy: Using color, contrast, and white space to draw attention to the most important content and call-to-action buttons.
Responsive Code: Creating fluid HTML and CSS that adapts perfectly to various screen sizes, from a large desktop monitor to a small mobile phone.
Interactive Elements: Incorporating elements like GIFs or embedded graphics that increase engagement and time spent with the email.
Their expertise in balancing brand aesthetics with conversion principles is what turns a good message into a great one. Exploring the designer's full range of responsibilities reveals their true value to the marketing team.
The high reliance on email for lead generation underscores the need for specialization, as a collaborative team can target opportunities a generalist might miss. For instance, a Data Engineer can analyze user behavior to create a highly specific audience segment, such as customers who abandoned a cart with a high-value item. They then pass this insight to the Copywriter, who can craft personalized, persuasive language that speaks directly to that user's hesitation, perhaps addressing price or features. This synergy produces a hyper-relevant campaign that a single person juggling five roles could never achieve. At InnovateTech, this collaboration led to a 15% increase in abandoned cart recovery. A generalist might send a generic reminder, but this specialist duo creates a targeted, data-informed intervention. This model proves that specialized, coordinated efforts are far more effective at converting leads than a one-size-fits-all approach. Delving deeper into how these roles intersect uncovers even more potential for campaign success.
Building a high-performing email program requires a methodical approach to hiring that aligns with business growth. Instead of hiring all roles at once, you should build the team in stages to establish a solid foundation and ensure each new member adds distinct value. This phased approach allows you to scale your capabilities intelligently as your email marketing sophistication and needs evolve.
Here is a recommended three-phase hiring plan:
Phase 1: The Foundation (Strategist & Designer/Developer). Start with an Email Marketing Strategist to define goals and an Email Designer who can also handle basic development. This duo establishes the 'why' and the 'what,' creating a clear plan and the visual assets to execute it.
Phase 2: The Engine (Copywriter & Project Manager). Once strategy is set, hire a Copywriter to refine messaging and a Project Manager to streamline workflow as campaign volume increases. This frees the strategist to focus on high-level planning.
Phase 3: The Optimization (Data Engineer). Finally, bring in a Data Engineer to analyze performance, manage complex segmentation, and unlock deeper insights for personalization at scale.
This sequence ensures you have a clear strategy before you start building, and efficient processes before you scale. Understanding the rationale behind each step is vital for long-term success.
Investing in a specialized email team builds a durable marketing asset that is less vulnerable to external platform shifts and privacy changes. Unlike social media, where you are subject to changing algorithms and data access policies, your email list is a first-party data asset that you own and control. This direct line of communication with customers becomes increasingly valuable as other channels become more restricted and expensive. A dedicated team ensures this asset is managed effectively, fostering deeper customer relationships.
Building this team prepares your business for the future in several ways:
Deeper Customer Relationships: Specialists in strategy, copy, and design can create highly personalized experiences that build trust and loyalty.
Data Ownership and Control: A Data Engineer helps you ethically collect and manage customer data, reducing reliance on platforms with uncertain privacy futures.
Higher ROI: With 59% of marketers citing email as their most profitable channel, optimizing this owned channel offers more predictable and sustainable returns.
The shift towards privacy makes direct, consent-based communication essential, and a skilled email team is the best way to capitalize on this trend.
Combining these distinct roles into a single 'email generalist' position often leads to critical performance gaps and burnout. This approach creates a constant tension between strategic planning, creative execution, and technical implementation, causing each area to suffer. The result is often generic, visually inconsistent, and strategically weak campaigns that fail to engage audiences or drive conversions.
Common problems that arise from this approach include:
Weak Strategy: The person is too busy with daily execution to perform deep audience research or long-term planning, leading to reactive, ineffective campaigns.
Poor Design: Without a dedicated designer's expertise, emails may not be responsive, visually appealing, or on-brand, leading to low click-through rates.
Generic Copy: A lack of time for crafting compelling, segment-specific copy results in one-size-fits-all messaging that fails to resonate.
By contrast, a specialized team structure allows each professional to excel in their area. The Strategist focuses on the big picture, the Designer ensures a flawless user experience, and the Copywriter hones the message. This division of labor directly solves the generalist's dilemma and elevates campaign quality across the board.
A marketing leader can build a powerful business case by framing a specialized email team as a direct investment in the company's most effective customer acquisition channel. The argument should begin by highlighting that studies show email is more potent than social media for attracting new customers. This immediately positions email not as a maintenance tool, but as a primary growth engine. The core of the case is that to fully capitalize on this powerful channel, specialist expertise is required to move beyond basic performance.
For example, at InnovateTech, a proposal might show that while their generalist achieves the industry average 10.69% CTR, a specialized team could push them toward the top-tier 20%+ CTRs that 22% of marketers achieve. The business case should translate this performance lift into tangible outcomes like more qualified leads and higher conversion rates. By connecting specialization directly to superior acquisition results and ROI, you shift the conversation from a cost center to a strategic investment in sustainable growth. Further details on calculating this potential ROI can strengthen your proposal even more.
While both roles shape the final look of an email, the Designer focuses on the visual concept while the Developer ensures it functions flawlessly across all platforms. The Email Designer creates the user experience, working with visual elements, layout, and brand aesthetics to craft a compelling and intuitive design. The Email Marketing Developer then takes this design and translates it into robust HTML and CSS code. Their primary challenge is navigating the complex and inconsistent rendering engines of various email clients (like Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail) to ensure the email appears exactly as the designer intended, on every device. Having both skill sets is vital because modern email marketing requires both aesthetic appeal and technical perfection. A beautiful design that breaks on mobile is ineffective, just as a technically perfect email with a poor design will fail to convert. This duo ensures campaigns are not only engaging but also reliable. Learn more about their unique tools and techniques by exploring the full article.
The sheer volume of daily emails means that generic, batch-and-blast campaigns are no longer effective; personalization at scale is the key to standing out. This is where the Data Engineer becomes the most critical player for future success. Their role is to build and manage the data infrastructure that allows a company to move beyond simple segmentation (like name or location) to hyper-personalization based on real-time behaviors, predictive analytics, and integrated customer data from multiple sources. As data becomes more complex, the engineer ensures it is clean, accessible, and actionable for the rest of the marketing team. They empower the strategist to identify micro-segments and automate triggered campaigns that feel like one-to-one conversations. For example, they can build a system that automatically sends a follow-up email with product recommendations based on a user's recent browsing history. Without this technical foundation, true personalization remains an aspiration rather than a reality. Understanding their growing importance is key to future-proofing your strategy.
An Email Marketing Project Manager's oversight of automation platforms is essential for operational excellence and strategic agility. They act as the central hub for the technology, ensuring it is configured correctly and used efficiently by the entire team. Their management of these systems directly translates a marketing strategy into automated, scalable actions, from welcome series for new subscribers to complex, multi-touch lifecycle campaigns.
Key responsibilities in platform management include:
Workflow Configuration: Building and maintaining the automated journeys and triggered campaigns defined by the strategist.
Database Segmentation: Implementing the audience segments and lists needed for targeted sends, ensuring data hygiene and accuracy.
Resource Management: Assigning tasks within the platform and managing assets like templates and images.
Reporting and Integration: Ensuring the platform is correctly tracking metrics and integrating with other systems like a CRM or e-commerce platform.
By expertly managing these tools, the project manager prevents technical bottlenecks and ensures campaigns are deployed accurately and on time, which is fundamental to achieving consistent results.
The Email Marketing Copywriter is the voice of the campaign, responsible for crafting messaging that captures attention, builds connection, and drives action. Their work extends far beyond writing body text; they are strategic wordsmiths who understand the psychology of the inbox and how to use language to achieve specific marketing objectives. A great copywriter can dramatically influence performance, as they are directly responsible for the two most important initial interactions: the subject line that earns the open and the call-to-action that secures the click.
Their influence on key metrics is clear:
Open Rates: They craft compelling, urgent, and personalized subject lines and preview text that stand out in a crowded inbox.
Click-Through Rates: They write clear, persuasive body copy and powerful calls-to-action that guide the reader toward the desired next step.
Brand Voice: They maintain a consistent and engaging brand personality across all email communications, building trust and familiarity over time.
At a company like InnovateTech, the copywriter works with the strategist to ensure the tone and message align with the campaign's goal and audience segment. Their expertise is crucial for turning a reader's passive interest into active engagement.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
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