So you’re finally ready to get serious about email marketing.
Maybe you’ve tried running your own flows, built out a few campaigns, even tested a template from YouTube or ChatGPT. You’ve watched the opens spike, then drop. The sales come in, then stall. Now you’re thinking, “We need someone who really knows what they’re doing.”
Smart thinking.
Because when you do email marketing right, it goes beyond being one of your money makers to being your main source of compounding revenue. And when you hire the right expert? That move alone can 10x your ROI. We’re talking real results. Predictable, profitable, pressure-off-your-shoulders kind of results.
Now on the flipside, hiring the wrong person won’t just cost you a few terrible campaigns. It’ll quietly kill your momentum, piss off your audience, and burn money in slow motion. The sales you could’ve made. The loyalty you could’ve earned. The growth that never happened.
So if you’re a startup founder reading this, you’re probably wearing ten hats already and what you need is someone who doesn’t just “send emails” but can plug into your system, find revenue gaps, and fill them. Someone who brings strategy, not just execution.
If you run an eCommerce brand, you’re probably tired of hacking things together. You want your emails to feel like a real part of the customer journey, not random salesy blasts and so what you need is someone who can build flows that scale with your store and tell your brand story while delivering results.
If you’re a marketer or in-house team member, email might be one of twenty tabs open on your screen. You don’t need more noise so what you need is someone who can own this channel, deliver results, and make you look good in front of your boss or your clients.
Whatever you do… whether you’re sending your first campaign or rebuilding your entire lifecycle funnel, the decision to hire an email marketer is a big one. The right expert doesn’t just make your emails better, they make your business better.
Who you hire is the difference between staying stuck and scaling up and this guide was written for people who get that. People who are done guessing and ready to grow their email marketing ROI. Let’s get into it!
Who Is the Right Email Marketing Expert For You?
Before you throw a job post into the wild or hire someone off their hyped up portfolio, stop and ask yourself: What exactly do I need this email person to do?
Because “email marketing expert” sounds like a single job title, but behind that label are entire roles – each one with wildly different skill sets. Hiring the wrong kind of expert is like hiring a pastry chef to run your grill station. Technically, they’re both chefs… but good luck getting a steak out of that.
So, what does an email expert really do?
Well, at the heart of it, they build systems that move people from casual subscriber to loyal customer. But that can mean different things depending on your business stage and needs. Some email experts are copywriters first. They know how to write headlines that get clicked, stories that pull people in, CTAs that get action. If you’re struggling with “meh” engagement and emails that sound more robotic than real, that’s your person.
Others are automation and flows specialists. These guys know platforms like Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, or HubSpot like it’s the back of their hands and they know how to build sophisticated customer journeys – welcome sequences, winback flows, cart abandon follow-ups – often based on data and behavior triggers. Their genius isn’t in the words; it’s in the system.
Then there are segmenting and list hygiene specialist. These guys make sure your emails actually reach inboxes, so you’re not just landing in spam folders. They create smart segments, scrub dead weight off your list, and improve deliverability so your best emails go to your best leads.
You’ve also got the email design-first who are great at designing the layout, branding, mobile-friendliness, and visual flow of your emails so they’re not only functional but smooth and interactive.
And then you have email marketing experts who specialize in strategy – these are the experts who can step back, look at your entire business funnel, and say, “Here’s where email can help improve your ROI” or “Here’s where you’re losing money. Do this.”
Now if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone with overlap… but most of the time, you’ll find these roles in different experts. So if you want results, the key question isn’t “Who’s the best email expert?” It’s “What does my business actually need right now?”
For example, if you’re launching a new brand, you may not need the most senior strategist in the room. You may need a flow builder who can create a high-converting welcome sequence, a sharp copywriter who nails your voice, and a freelancer from Fiverr who can design the entire flow and make it pop.
But if you’re scaling past six or seven figures and email’s bringing in 15-30% of your revenue (or could be), you probably need someone who can oversee the entire lifecycle – mapping flows, managing campaigns, running tests, reporting on KPIs, and plugging leaks across the funnel. That’s when you look for someone who can own strategy and execution – or a team like Abervin Digital that works together to cover those bases.
Now, here’s the part nobody likes to say out loud: sometimes, you’re not ready to hire.
If you’re not already making revenue from email, don’t have a product-market fit, or aren’t clear on your offer, an email expert can’t fix that for you. They can’t build a system around chaos.
Now to help you determine if you’re ready, take a look at our hiring checklist:
- Do you already have a functioning email list (even if small)?
- Do you have a product or service that sells?
- Do you have a brand voice – or want someone to help define it?
- Do you have data (site traffic, purchase events, subscriber behavior) to build flows around?
- Are you making enough revenue from email to justify the investment?
If the answer to most of those is yes, you’re likely ready. If not, you might want to get a copywriter or strategist to help you set up your first solid campaigns, gather data, and revisit the hire when you’ve got traction.
Because when you hire too early, you’re not setting your email expert up to win. You’re asking them to guess instead of optimize. And that’s how you waste money on someone talented who couldn’t show you results – because your business simply wasn’t ready yet.
Way too many brands rush into hiring, then wonder why they’re stuck with messy campaigns, half-baked automation, and a so-so freelancer who “didn’t get it.” We’re not letting that happen to you.
In the next part of this guide, we will help you make sure you know what you’re hiring for, how to write a killer job post, and what to have in place before your new hire even logs in. Let’s get into it.
How To Hire The Right Way
before you hit “publish” on that job listing or slide into someone’s DMs, let’s get clear on what you actually need. It sounds simple: “We need someone to do our email.” But vague asks attract vague results which is why we recommend being as specific as possible.
Are you trying to grow your list, increase conversions, or build a full funnel? Do you need someone to set up automations like welcome flows, abandoned carts, and post-purchase sequences – or is this more about about segmentation, A/B testing, or improving your metrics across campaigns?
The clearer you are, the better your hire will perform.
Once you’ve outlined what they’ll do, the next step is knowing how you’ll measure success. Not every expert is going to deliver fireworks in the first week, but you need to keep track of their performance based on the metrics matter most to your business, It could be Open rates, Click-through rates or Revenue per email or even list growth.
The point is do not write a job description without KPIs – that’s how you end up three months in, wondering why your emails “look great” but don’t perform. Now you don’t need to have everything figured out before you hire – that’s the point of hiring – but you do need to know where the gaps are. That means doing a quick (but honest) audit of your current assets and performance.
You have to know things like if your list is warm or stale. Do you have segments? Do you already use Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or something else -and is everything connected properly? Are your flows running? Are they converting? Or did someone set them up once in 2022 and forget they existed?
One thing we experience with some prospect here at Abervin Digital is we show up, ready to help and suddenly, no one has access to the ESP. The product photos are still “coming soon.” The copy instruction doc is half-done. And it’s just chaos because most people hiring don’t know what experts need to get started.
So here’s what most experts will expect from you:
- Login access to your ESP (like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign)
- Any brand guidelines or copy assets
- Product photos, offer pages, or landing pages
- Info on your top products or services
The smoother your onboarding, the faster your email marketing expert will be able to deliver results.
Another thing is most business owners really drop the ball at writing and posting job posts. “We want someone who can do Klaviyo flows and write emails. Must have experience. Pays $X per project.” will not attract top-tier talent – it’ll attract people who just want a gig, not to win with you. To hire the right person, you have to make it clear in your job post that you understand email, that you care about results, and that you’re building something worth joining.
Say things like: “We’re a growing eCommerce brand looking to turn our email list into a real growth engine. We’ve got basic flows set up, but we’re ready to take it to the next level. We’re looking for someone who thinks in systems, understands how to drive sales with stories, and knows Klaviyo inside and out.”
When you have a good job post like that, you can post that on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, MarketerHire, Contra, The Copywriter Club, cold outreach via Twitter/LinkedIn, or an agency like Abervin Digital.
Now, if you’ve followed everything up to this point, you’re ready to attract the kind of experts who can actually deliver. Now it’s time to choose the perfect candidate. And to help you do that, we’ve written this next section on Questions to Ask an Email Expert Before You Hire.
5 Powerful Interview Questions and Red Flag Indicators
Okay so now that we’ve talked about why hiring the right expert matters, how to attract the right candidates and what to have ready on your end, let’s talk about how you can get rid of “good-on-paper” email marketers. Because here’s the thing – most bad hires don’t look bad on paper.
They have the buzzwords. They say they’ve worked in Klaviyo or Mailchimp. They drop terms like “flows” and “CTR.” They show you a Canva portfolio with pretty graphics and a few decent-looking emails. And if you’ve never hired for email before, you might think, “Looks legit. Let’s roll.”
But good email marketing isn’t just about pretty. It’s about performance and more importantly, decision-making. You want someone who not only writes emails, but understands why they work. Someone who gets strategy, systems, psychology. The kind of person who can explain not just what they did in their last campaign, but why it mattered.
So when you’re interviewing, don’t just ask the standard “tell me about your experience” question. Instead, ask the kind of questions that reveal how they think. Ask questions that uncover how they solve problems and make it impossible to fake expertise. We’ve put together 5 Powerful Interview Questions that help you know if your prospective email marketer is “fakespert”.
Ask:
“Walk me through a campaign you built from scratch – what was the goal, how did you segment the list, and what kind of results did you track?”
If they can’t talk you through a real process, from concept to segmentation to analytics then they probably weren’t leading that project. And if they start rambling about vanity metrics but can’t tie those back to revenue or behavior? That’s a red flag.
“How do you decide what to include in a welcome series versus a post-purchase flow?”
A real expert will talk about expectations, the psychology of new subscribers, lifecycle timing, friction points, and the best touchpoints for each customer’s journey. A rookie will just say “You say thanks in the Welcome series.”
“What’s your approach when an email campaign underperforms?”
This question matters more than you think. You’re hiring for judgment, not perfection. You want to hear that they A/B test, audit deliverability, check CTA placement, tweak subject lines, look at open vs. click vs. conversion, not just hit resend with fingers crossed.
“Let’s say abandoned cart conversions are dropping, and click-through rates are solid. What do you look at first?”
Do they think about incentives? Timing? Mobile optimization? Subject lines vs. preview text? Do they ask you questions back (which is good) to clarify list size, segmentation, or frequency of email sending?
“If a subscriber makes their first purchase, then doesn’t open another email for 30 days. What would you do?”
There’s no single right answer but you know you have a strong candidate when they talk about win-back flows, soft touch re-engagement, time-based triggers, and messaging tone. They might even ask what the average LTV is. That’s the kind of brain you want.
Now, if they can’t show you performance metrics or they avoid talking numbers or if their answer to everything is “we’ll just A/B test it” – yeah, that’s a good tool, but a terrible strategy. You want someone who tests smart, not someone who uses it as a crutch because they don’t know what works.
When you bring in the right email expert, email becomes a real business asset. Your list grows, your revenue follows, and best of all? You get to own that growth. No algorithm changes. No ad spend spikes. Just a channel that compounds over time – because someone on your team actually knows how to work it.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re not just looking for someone to “send emails.” You’re building a business that actually needs results an now you’ve got the roadmap:
- What to ask
- What to watch for
- What great work actually looks like
So whether you’re hiring your first email pro or replacing a freelancer who just… couldn’t scale with you – you’re now hiring with a sharper lens and asking smarter questions – that’s how you hire the right person to turn your email list into a growth machine.
Need expert help? Contact Abervin Digital at +1 307-271-5184 or visit Abervin Digital to check out our pricing and packages or learn how we can transform your email list into your most profitable channel yet.
