Marketing Career Focus: Digital Marketing – Marketing Automation
The Career Focus posts will cover a specific track or specialty track within the MS in Marketing degree program that can lead to the acquisition of many, if not all, the skills needed to successfully enter the career under discussion.
What is marketing automation?
According to HubSpot, marketing automation refers to software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier.
Email marketing is a subset of automation; if you know marketing automation, then you know email marketing. The main difference is that automation requires skills that are more specialized, and it is mainly business-to-business (B2B), whereas email marketing is mainly business-to-consumer (B2C).
DemandForce, HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot (by Salesforce)
What does a marketing automation manager do?
Marketers managing cross-channel marketing must have cross-disciplinary skills. As Marketo puts it in a blog post, these men and women must have an artist’s creativity as well as data modeling and analytical skills. They have to have a feel for customer needs, know how to collaborate effectively with other teams and be able to manage projects across multiple channels and then analyze the results.
Essential Functions:
- Own the marketing automation systems program, including the design and strategies at a global level as a subject matter expert and power ser.
- Design and deliver email campaigns with support from global content marketing managers to support continued lead and funnel growth for Cognex product lines.
- Measure and report all aspects of data quality, email performance, program effectiveness and funnel generation.
- Initiate lead nurturing and email testing practices to achieve optimum results.
- Provide email marketing campaigns and material to our Reseller Network.
- Test and optimize call-to-actions and landing pages to support optimal campaign performance.
- Research new components, add-ons, processes and automated data services and work with marketing team and IT/vendors to organize marketing automation roadmap.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Marketing automation platform experience (preferably Eloqua -replaced by Marketo or HubSpot).
Visit the MS in Marketing Digital Advertising and Marketing specialty track for more information.
Average years of experience and salary average
For a marketing automation specialist with one or two years of experience, salaries range from $55,000 to $75,000.
For a marketing automation manager with three to seven years of experience, salaries range from $70,000 to $120,000.
(Note: students requiring visa sponsorship tend to receive less money.)
What is the size of the job market?
Searching for “marketing automation” on Glassdoor.com yields more than 6,400 job postings. Limiting the search to “marketing automation manager” or “email marketing manager” yields more than 15,000 jobs.
Typical marketing automation job description
From a job posting for an “Email Marketing Manager” from Quotient Technology in Mountain View, California
Position Responsibilities:
- Drive the email marketing strategy and execution of campaigns for Coupons.com
- Partner with creative team to design email and communication templates, develop images, content, promos, and landing pages for marketing campaigns
- Develop quality, full lifecycle programs that are relevant and appealing to target audience
- Design outreach strategy that provides constant contact to customers to engage with Coupons.com
- Champion best practices with key stakeholders ensuring vested interest in the success of marketing campaigns
- Develop and analyze key marketing metrics to ensure campaigns are meeting revenue and acquisition cost goals
- Manage email and database marketing tools
- Analyze back-end data of email campaigns and make recommendations for enhancing their effectiveness
Position Qualifications:
- 6 years of industry experience, out of which 3 years of experience building and implementing successful marketing programs
- Experience analyzing key marketing metrics
- High attention to detail with the ability to execute projects from beginning to end
- Experience using data to develop actionable insights
- Expert level knowledge/experience with email marketing tools
- Strong HTML and Excel skills
- Familiarity with Email Service Providers (Responsys, Exact Target, Marketo)
- BA degree in marketing or similar discipline
Preferred Position Qualifications:
- Ability to think strategically and work independently
- Energetic and collaborative team player with the ability to motivate others
- Ability to succeed in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
- Strong organizational, analytical and communication skills
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize to meet aggressive goals and timelines
Typical marketing automation job description
From a job posting for “Marketing Automation Manager” from CyberCoders, New York City
We are looking for an experienced, detailed and process-oriented Marketing Operations Manager. Essentially, someone who can oversee and carefully develop, maintain and optimize all automated marketing campaigns. Marketing Operations is the heart of our marketing organization, helping us target the right buyers, build relationships with customers, execute campaigns, collect and organize data, and generate high-quality leads.
You will be responsible for the overall administration of Marketo, designing and implementing the email and nurture programs, evaluating the programs’ effectiveness, and ensuring integration across departments. This position is mission critical to our success as the role promotes and supports sales enablement, understands marketing performance metrics, develops strategic plans, and delivers streamlined reporting.
What You Will Be Doing
- Build, implement, monitor and improve Dynamic Yields email marketing strategy.
- Own and perform all aspects of email campaigns from design to writing to segmentation to strategy to technical development.
- Work with our marketing team to create emails, forms, reports and other related infrastructure to support campaigns.
- Define and optimize key performance metrics and prepare relevant dashboards to share results across the team and report up to senior management.
- Develop and manage a testing strategy to continuously optimize emails, forms and complete campaigns.
- Maintain marketing database health and compliance with regulations including GDPR.
- Document and evangelize best practices and governance policies.
What You Need for this Position
- At least 4 years of marketing automation experience using Marketo.
- At least 3 years of expertise in Salesforce.com usage and marketing administration, especially in building Salesforce dashboards and setting up campaign attribution programs.
- Understanding of the relationship between a marketing automation platform and Salesforce, and how campaigns/data is synced, and the field mapping processes.
- In-depth understanding of email deliverability requirements and processes, as well as data privacy regulations across North America, EMEA and APAC.
- Strong analytical skills, data analysis, A/B testing, and reporting.
- Strong writing, proofing, and editing skills with a drive for accuracy and details.
- Strong project management skills, attention to detail, and ability to work under tight deadlines.
- Basic HTML and CSS skills required.
- Must have hands-on marketing automation experience in the B2B space.
- Experience with Marketo’s API Integration would be a plus.
Top skills listed and courses we offer that address some of the often mentioned skills. (Note: There is not a course for every skill.)
Top skillsMentioned by at least 10 major companies with this job title posting |
CoursesOf special relevance – see course syllabi for exact lineup of skills, as not all may be covered in each course |
| Marketing automation software knowledge: landing pages, split testing, dynamic and personalization emails | MKT 6374 eCommerce and Marketing Automation MIS 6378 Customer Relationship Management with Salesforce |
| Campaign management – personas, processes, return on promotion | MKT 6374 eCommerce and Marketing Automation |
| Database marketing | MKT 6353 Customer Analytics & Insights |
| CRM knowledge | MKT 6378 Customer Relationship Management with Salesforce MKT 6334 Digital Sales Strategy |
| Web analytics | MKT 6352 Marketing Web Analytics and Insights |
| User engagement/UX | MKT 6321 Interactive & Digital Marketing |
*Account -based marketing is often mentioned and is basically segmentation
Professional Associations:
There are no specific national professional organizations focused on marketing automation. However, some local meetups worth exploring are:- Dallas Area Marketing Automation Meetups
- Dallas Marketo Practitioners
- Email Excellence Center Committee
Professional Certifications:
Newsletters and Websites: (Also, see blogs hosted by HubSpot)- iMedia
- MediaPost
- MarketingSherpa
- Clickz
- eMarketer
- Pew Research Center-Internet & Technology
- Think With Google
Recommended Books:
There are not too many current choices. recommend that you download white papers from major vendors such as HubSpot and Marketo.
- Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight Into Your Customer’s Expectations, Align Your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business, by Adele Revella (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2015)
- Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, by Ruth P. Stevens (New York: Que Publishing, 2011)
Marketing Automation Job Search – Indeed
Marketing Automation Salaries – Glassdoor
Indeed.com is a good job search site because at a glance it shows average salaries, years of experience for many mid-level positions, the number of available jobs and their locations. I looked at 10 to 15 job descriptions from major companies and the skills most frequently mentioned at such employers as AT&T, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive, YUM! Brands, and others. However, there is NO substitute for your doing your own searches and analyses.
