Email marketing is arguably one of the best and most reliable lead generation tools that companies and businesses rely on today. Email marketing involves using email to promote the services and products of a company to a target audience. Although this definition sounds straightforward, starting the campaign goes beyond just sending email messages to target recipients. If you are looking to maximize your email campaigns’ value, but lack the budget, resources, or expertise to create effective campaigns that achieve the results you desire, it is time to outsource the campaign.
How to outsource your email marketing
Step 1: Identify the tasks that need outsourcing
It is essential to determine straight away what your freelancer will be doing. Email marketing comes with a horde of functions such as collecting emails, building an email list, and segmentation of the list. Decide if the freelancer will be doing all these tasks, or you will ask someone else to do some of them. While at it, you should also decide on the type of email campaign to use, the campaign’s customization, the frequency of sending emails, the number of auto-responder emails to send, and the number of nurture emails to send in a specific period. When you are clear early enough about some of these things, you avoid any confusion once you bring in a freelancer.
Step 2: Create a style guide
It is advisable to create a list of requirements that the ideal candidate you are hiring should meet. It is also best to make a list of qualifications to guide you in hiring the email marketer. Some of these requirements include:
- The specific email programs and tools the freelancer is familiar with
- Their experience level in email marketing
- An excellent track record which is verifiable using past work they did for clients
- Their flexibility to work in the same time zone as yours regardless of their current location
Step 3: Initiate the hiring process
Once you are armed with the candidates’ requirements, you can now start the hiring process. If you are encountering any trouble locating your ideal freelancer, consider using useful market places such as:
Zirtual– Zirtual is a top-notch recruiting platform that matches up busy professionals with virtual email marketers. The software presents employers with a convenient and effective option to hire exceptional talent for a range of email marketing projects.
Upwork– Upwork is another alternative marketplace to hire email marketers. A simple search on the platform returns a long list of qualified candidates to choose from.
Free Up– this is yet another ideal marketplace to hire email marketing specialists. The platform typically pre-vets its freelancers before listing them up.
Step 4: Communicate your expectations.
Once you have onboarded a freelancer, begin work by setting clear expectations. You can document all the rules of engagements and provide a copy to the freelancer. This will help foster a spirit of teamwork besides aligning the goals that each of you should meet. It is important to schedule meetings with the freelancer to discuss the following job expectations:
- The number of email campaigns that you expect the freelancer to send each month
- The segment of the email list to receive the emails and at what time
- Whether or not the freelancer will need your approval on the newsletter design
- When and how the designs will arrive at your desk for approval if any is needed
- The target new leads, click rate, and open rate per month
- The time to review reports on merits and what the reports should show
Step 5: Set up approval of workflow and monthly reporting standards.
There is a high chance you will hire someone located overseas, and there is a need to set up clear communication and management standards. The management standards should cover the areas of approval of workflow to help make things easier. A common challenge when working with freelancers is the difference in time zones. It is, therefore, essential to establish early on how and when you need to communicate. If the time zone is a challenge, you may consider using Slack or Skype apps that allow you to get into convenient and quick voice or video calls.
Why should you outsource your email marketing?
Running a successful email marketing campaign needs adequate amounts of research, a sound strategy, and technical know-how. Besides, there is a need to be familiar with how marketing tools such as Mailchimp or AWeber works. As a busy executive of your company, you may not have the time or the technical expertise to run an elaborate email campaign, and the most logical thing is to outsource the marketing to an email specialist.
5 Qualities of a good email marketer
The following are a few traits of an excellent email marketer:
Attention to detail– the specialist must have solid and detail-oriented copywriting and editing skills. Corporate emails should be free of any grammatical errors that give the company a wrong impression
Flexibility– the professionals you hire should be flexible enough to transition from both short term and long term goals and strategies to be used. They should transition seamlessly from writing and producing campaign content to analyzing the performance of the campaign.
Creativity– email platforms keep changing and evolving, and the right freelancer should be innovative and creative to reach the target audience.
Math and analytical skills– there is allot that happens after the email has been sent. Email professionals should be adept at analyzing data to understand the useful emails, the ones delivered, the ones opened, and those deleted. Such data will help you alter future emails so that you achieve a higher success rate.
Flexible learner– email industry keeps evolving. The ideal candidate to hire should have an interest and desire to keep up with the latest email best practices, tools, and software. New email methods and software are being developed each day.
Should you choose an assistant, freelancer, or agency?
There are three options when it comes to outsourcing email marketing. You can use your in-house assistant, hire a freelancer, or outsource the job to an agency. Hiring a freelancer can be a massive help if you are handling an enormous email marketing workload. Although it is a good idea to develop you are in house talent, some scenarios may force you to hire an outsider. Typically an agency or individual freelancers comes with a set of high tech skills that you won’t have with your in house team. However, making the right choice between the three will depend on your specific needs and the three categories’ unique characteristics.
Key Takeaway
Outsourcing your email marketing comes with several benefits. When you enlist a qualified freelancer’s help, you will free yourself up for other essential tasks. A marketing specialist will also help generate more new leads for your business. Outsourcing your email marketing needs not to be a challenge. With the appropriate recruitment process and leveraging new technologies like those offered by Zirtual, you are guaranteed to getting the ideal email marketing freelancer that brings more leads and a high ROI to your business.