How to Hire the Best SMS Marketer to Scale Your SMS ROI

So, you’re ready to take your SMS strategy to the next level by hiring an SMS marketer to own this channel. Smart move! SMS has the potential to be the top revenue channel for your ecommerce brand, especially when you have the right talent steering the helm and the best tools to implement your strategy.  

But considering that SMS is still a fairly new marketing channel, how exactly do you find a rock star? Well, here at Postscript, SMS is all we do—so we’ve learned a thing or two about hiring great SMS marketers. Check out our advice below!

Similar to what you’ve learned when hiring for any other position, there’s a combination of specific experiences (i.e., hard skills) and personality traits (i.e., soft skills) you can look for to help you find someone who will make a successful SMS marketer.

Even if they don’t specifically have experience in SMS marketing, they could be an excellent fit for the role if they have most of these skills.

When it comes to hard skills, you need someone who has proven they can plan, execute, analyze, and optimize marketing campaigns—ideally for an ecommerce brand.

Content Creation Capabilities

SMS marketers produce a lot of content. The person you hire should be capable of crafting conversion-focused copy for landing pages as well as compelling text messages and CTAs that will hook subscribers in and drive action. 

When it comes to content creation chops, look for someone who can:

• Create engaging copy for various mediums.

• Consistently apply your brand voice.

• Accurately proofread and edit their own content. 

• Plan content calendars in advance.

• Write clever and conversational replies on the fly.

• Test various messages to determine which are most engaging. 

Bonus points if they have design skills, especially if you don’t have a full-time graphic designer on your team.

Ecommerce Success

It’s always a good idea to look for someone with a proven track record in ecommerce marketing, even if it’s with another channel. This could include email marketing, social media, search engine marketing, display advertising, affiliate marketing, and more.

It all boils down to finding someone who has experience effectively:

• Running single- or cross-channel marketing campaigns to drive product sales.

• Growing subscriber lists and/or engagement.

• Managing brand reputation across digital channels.

• Understanding channel-specific compliance requirements.

• Using technology to execute marketing campaigns.

Bonus points if they have experience building SMS marketing campaigns.

Double bonus points if they’re SMS marketing certified! 

Analytical Experience

Pretty much all marketers today need some baseline understanding of metrics and measurement. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. 

A successful SMS marketer must be able to:

• Set KPIs and stay accountable to them.

• Track and analyze campaign performance.

• Iterate on campaigns to improve performance.

• Plan and execute smart A/B tests.

• Understand and segment audience data. 

Confidence with Digital Marketing Tools

Your SMS marketer should also have some familiarity with using digital marketing tools to execute campaigns. They’ll need to use an SMS platform (like Postscript) to do most aspects of their job. 

Make sure the person you hire has used technology in previous roles to do at least some of the following:

• Grow subscriber lists and manage audience databases.

• Create specific audience segments to deliver targeted messages.

• Develop and send campaign messages.

• Build various automations to nurture engagement.

• Ensure compliance with opt-out regulations.  

Soft skills are harder to identify. They’re less about a candidate’s resume and job experience, and more about their natural personality and values. Asking the right interview questions and really listening to the candidate’s answers can help you suss out whether they are the right fit.

Easy to Talk to

SMS is by nature a highly conversational marketing channel. Think about it: we often use text messages to communicate with those closest to us—like friends, family, and colleagues. 

In a marketing context, subscribers often reply to the text messages they receive from brands—and when they do, they expect a fast and friendly response. 

When interviewing someone for an SMS marketing role, pay attention to how well they can:

• Keep the conversation going.

• Express genuine interest in others.

• Be personable and easily connect with people.

• Demonstrate quick wit and the ability to think on their feet.

Avid Learner

SMS is still an emerging channel. Brands are learning new tactics every day. It’s important that you hire someone who’s comfortable with change and committed to continual learning. 

Look for someone who seems to:

• Have a knack for research.

• Be open to trying new things.

• Believe in perpetually developing knowledge. 

• Exhibit a commitment to growing their skills.

Attentive to Detail

Details matter. And there are a lot of details involved in SMS marketing. It’s important for the person who owns SMS to pay careful attention to the little things.

You want an SMS marketer who cares about things like:

• Creating error-free copy.

• Adhering to your brand’s style guide.

• Setting the correct parameters for audience segments.

• Building smooth and seamless automations.

• Determining the best time(s) of day to text certain audiences.

• Identifying minor spikes and dips in performance.

Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to draft your SMS marketer job description. 

Chances are, you already have some standard sections that you include in every job posting (like company background and benefits). You just need to explain this specific role and the qualifications. 

We’ve rolled all the above-mentioned hard and soft skills into a job description that will help you attract the perfect SMS marketer. Feel free to copy and edit it to meet your needs. 

Job Description

SMS is quickly becoming a critical marketing channel for our ecommerce brand. We’ve had some notable success with our early SMS marketing campaigns and are ready to make this channel part of our core marketing strategy. We’re seeking an experienced ecommerce marketer who’s excited to develop and lead our SMS strategy and use text marketing to engage, retain, and convert our customer base.

What You’ll Do

• Create an end-to-end SMS strategy to drive consistent revenue for our brand.

• Write best-in-class text messages, calls-to-action, and other campaign copy that will make our brand stand out.

• Build and run creative and engaging SMS marketing campaigns.

• Grow and manage our SMS subscriber list.

• Track, analyze, and iterate on campaign performance.

• Continually develop and apply your knowledge of SMS best practices and innovations.

• Maintain opt-out compliance for all messages and subscribers.

• Ensure all incoming SMS messages receive prompt responses and follow-up. 

Experience You’ll Have

• A minimum of 2 years in ecommerce marketing. 

• A positive track record leading the strategy for a digital marketing channel like SMS, social, paid advertising, or email.

• Knowledge of SMS or social media copywriting and best practices.

• Proven success growing audiences and subscriber lists.

• Strong analytical skills with a data-driven, metrics-oriented mindset.

• Strong verbal and written communication skills. 

• Some design experience is preferred, but not required.

• Experience using Postscript is a huge plus.

With a few candidates lined up, you’ll need a set of interview questions to help you flush out the hard and soft skills we covered above. 

Here are a few questions we love to ask when interviewing potential SMS marketers who are interested in joining our team:

• Tell us about a time you successfully marketed a product. What was your strategy and what were your results?

• What do you think the most important metrics are when it comes to SMS marketing?

• What’s the most innovative text or email campaign you’ve received recently?

• Tell us about your experience growing audiences.

• What are the most important skills you’ve developed that would help you achieve success in this role?

• Tell us about a time you learned something new about marketing and applied it to your next campaign. What were the results?

• Share with us a story about a time you directly addressed an unhappy customer. What was the interaction about? How did you solve the problem? How did the customer feel after your interaction?

Before your new SMS marketer (or any marketer for that matter) starts, it’s important to set some criteria for success. There’s obviously a lot that goes into monitoring an employee’s performance, and we won’t pretend it all boils down to metrics. But numbers are an important piece to consider. 

We believe the most important metric to measure SMS success is Subscriber LTV (that’s Subscriber Lifetime Value). It’s the average dollar amount each subscriber spends over the life of their subscription.

There are other important benchmarks for SMS marketing success, of course—like ROI, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate.  But Subscriber LTV measures the long-term health of your SMS campaigns and subscriber base. It’s the best indicator for determining whether:

• your SMS marketer is sending the right messages at the right cadence,

• those messages are well received, and

• your texts are actually motivating subscribers to buy. 

We’re so convinced of the importance of Subscriber LTV that we built it right into the Postscript dashboard. That way, every SMS marketer using our platform can easily monitor this critical metric in real time.

There you have it—everything you need to hire the best SMS marketer for your brand. We wish you the best of luck. Wondering how your current SMS program is faring? Find out with our quick two-minute quiz.