Ready to hire email marketing experts who actually deliver results?
If you’ve tried building flows or running campaigns yourself, only to watch performance flatline, you’re not alone. You’re probably thinking, “We need to hire email marketing experts”
Smart thinking – but before you do that, you want to read this blog because it will help you make a stronger decision..
As a business owner, when you do email marketing right, it goes beyond being one of your money makers to being your main source of compounding revenue. But to get there, you need more than templates and guesswork. You need to hire email marketing experts who can turn email into a strategic growth engine.
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.
Why the Right Hire Changes Everything
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!
How to Hire Email Marketing Experts That Fit Your Needs
Before you post a job ad or hire someone with a flashy portfolio, pause and ask: what do I actually need?
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 marketing 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 are copywriters first. They know how to write headlines that get clicked, stories that pull people in, CTAs that get action. If your emails feel dull or robotic, a conversion-focused copywriter might be the fix your list actually needs..
Others are automation and flows specialists. These build behavior-based journeys in Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, or HubSpot. They know how to create welcome sequences, winback flows, and abandoned cart emails that work while you sleep.
Then there are segmenting and list hygiene specialist who clean your list, create smart segments, and improve deliverability.
Some focus on email designs and 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.”
Know What Kind of Help You Actually Need
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.
Are You Ready to Hire Experts?
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.
What to Know Before You Hire Experts
Before you hit “publish” on that job listing, let’s get clear on what you actually need. “We need someone to do our email.” is vague and that attracts vague results. 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 subject lines and best times to send emails or improving your metrics across campaigns?
When you hire email marketing experts, clarity makes a huge difference in how well they can execute.
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 key metrics matter most to your business, It could be Open rates, Click-through rates or Revenue per email or even list growth. And you can see this data in the analytics section of some of the best email marketing software available today.
The point is do not write a job description without KPIs. That’s how businesses end up three months in with “nice-looking emails” and no real results. Start with a quick but honest audit of your current setup. This helps you figure out if your list is warm or stale, whether you’ve got proper segments in place, and if your automations are even running.
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?
What Email Experts Expect Before They Get to Work
One challenge we see often at Abervin Digital is clients who aren’t ready when we start.
There’s no login access to their ESP. The product photos are “coming soon.” The copy instruction doc is half-finished.
When that happens, it delays results – not because of the expert, but because of disorganization.
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 issue is most job posts for email marketing are vague and unappealing.
“Looking for someone to do flows and emails in Klaviyo. Must have experience. Pays $X per project.”
That kind of post won’t attract real talent. It’ll attract freelancers looking for a paycheck, not long-term wins.
To hire email marketing experts who truly deliver, you must show you know what success looks like.
Say things like: “We’re a growing eCommerce brand looking to turn email into a serious growth channel.
We’ve got the basics down but want to scale with strategy, automation, and great copy.”
That alone will filter in the pros and filter out the rest.
Once your job post is solid, share it on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, MarketerHire, Contra, or even Twitter.
Or just work with a trusted agency like Abervin Digital where we’ve already vetted the talent for you.
Now, if you’ve followed everything up to this point, you’re ready to hire email marketing 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 Before Hiring Email Marketing Experts.
5 Must-Ask Questions Before Hiring Email Marketing Experts
So far, we’ve covered why hiring the right expert matters and how to attract the best candidates. You’ve also learned what to have ready on your end before bringing someone on board.
Now let’s talk about something just as important. How to avoid hiring someone who’s only good on paper. Because here’s the truth: most bad hires don’t look bad at first glance.
They have the buzzwords, say they’ve worked in Klaviyo or Mailchimp, 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 designs. 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.
What You Should Really Be Asking in Interviews
When interviewing, skip the generic “Tell me about your experience” line.
Instead, ask questions that reveal how they think, solve problems, and drive real results. Here are 5 must-ask questions to help you hire email marketing experts who actually know what they’re doing:
1. “Walk me through a campaign you built from scratch”
If they can’t explain the strategy, segmentation, and results clearly or only mention vanity metrics – red flag.
2. “What’s the difference between a welcome series and a post-purchase flow?”
A real expert will explain customer psychology, lifecycle timing, and how each series serves a specific goal.. A rookie will just say “You say thanks in the Welcome series.”
3. “What’s your approach when a campaign underperforms?”
Listen for signs of critical thinking: A/B testing, deliverability checks, CTA reviews, subject line tweaks, and data analysis..
4. “Cart abandonment rates are down, but click-throughs are solid. What do you check first?”
Strong candidates will think about timing, incentives, or device optimization. Bonus points if they ask smart follow-up questions.
5. “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 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.
Should You Hire Email Marketers Full-Time or Bring In a Dedicated Agency?
If you’re scaling your email marketing strategy, the big question becomes: Do you hire email marketing experts as full-time team members, or do you bring in an agency to handle it?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Each path has real trade-offs, speed, control, cost, and expertise. Let’s break it down.
The Pros and Cons of Hiring Full-Time Email Marketers
Choosing to hire email marketers in-house can give you the consistency and embedded brand knowledge you need.
They sit in your meetings, align with your long-term goals, and build deep context around your audience.
Pro: They live and breathe your brand.
When you hire email marketing experts full-time, they aren’t just writing emails, they’re building a relationship with your list. They understand your tone, product launches, seasonal cycles, and business priorities without needing to be re-briefed every month.
Pro: Faster internal collaboration.
Your full-time email pro can jump into Slack threads, brainstorm with your design team, and work alongside paid media or sales without roadblocks. Cross-functional alignment becomes smoother, whether that’s coordinating email + ads or refining lifecycle journeys.
Pro: They grow with your company.
When you hire email marketers in-house, they can evolve with your stack, maybe starting in Mailchimp but growing into Klaviyo, HubSpot, or Iterable. That continuity can be hard to replace.
Con: Hiring takes time.
Onboarding a full-time team member can take 8–12 weeks (or more), and that’s if you find the right fit. And let’s be honest, hiring the wrong person sets you back even further.
Con: You’re committing long-term.
Full-time employees require salaries, benefits, and training. That’s a smart investment for some, but it also limits agility. If your priorities shift quickly, a full-time hire might not be as flexible as you need.
The Pros and Cons of Hiring an Email Marketing Agency
If you’re growing fast or want to tap into high-level strategy and execution immediately, it might be time to hire email marketing experts through an agency.
Pro: Access to advanced strategy.
Agencies bring battle-tested frameworks, industry benchmarks, and campaign ideas that have worked across hundreds of client accounts. When you hire email marketers through an agency like Abervin Digital, you’re also hiring the brains behind their past results.
Pro: Expand your team without the HR headache.
Agencies instantly scale your team’s capabilities – A/B testing, segmentation, automations, and analytics, without needing to manage five new hires.
Pro: You stay lean and focused.
Instead of pulling your internal team into campaign builds or troubleshooting deliverability, your agency handles it. You stay focused on growth, product, and customer experience.
Con: You’re not their only client.
Let’s keep it real, agencies balance multiple accounts. If you need daily fire drills or 2-hour turnaround times, a full-time hire may be more responsive.
Con: They may lack niche knowledge.
Some industries (like cannabis, supplements, or regulated health fields) require deep compliance knowledge. If you hire email marketers from an agency unfamiliar with your space, you may spend time educating them.
In the end, if you’re looking for deep brand alignment and have the time to recruit, hiring email marketers full-time is a long-term play.
If you need expert execution, data-backed strategy, and a team that hits the ground running, it may be smarter to hire email marketing experts through a growth-focused agency like Abervin Digital. You don’t have to guess what’s right when we can help you assess your needs, your team, and your goals.
Whether you’re hiring us or outsourcing to someone else, our priority is helping you get better results from your email channel – faster.
Turn Your Email List into a Scalable Revenue Channel
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 3(720) 583-5547 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.
