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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Marketing Automation Specialist

💰 $ - $

MarketingMarTechAutomation

🎯 Role Definition

The Marketing Automation Specialist is responsible for designing, executing, and optimizing automated marketing campaigns across email, web, CRM, and advertising channels. This role combines technical MarTech implementation (HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, Salesforce, CDPs, APIs) with data-driven campaign strategy (segmentation, lead nurturing, scoring, reporting) to drive pipeline, customer engagement, and measurable ROI. The ideal candidate owns campaign architecture, workflow automation, testing, deliverability, and cross-functional collaboration with demand gen, content, product, and sales teams.


📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Marketing Coordinator with experience in email and CRM systems
  • Demand Generation or Digital Marketing Specialist with hands-on MarTech experience
  • CRM Administrator or Marketing Operations Associate

Advancement To:

  • Senior Marketing Automation Specialist / Marketing Automation Manager
  • Marketing Operations Manager / Director of Marketing Operations
  • Head of Demand Generation / VP Marketing (with cross-functional growth)

Lateral Moves:

  • Demand Generation Manager
  • CRM Manager
  • Growth Marketing Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, build, and manage end-to-end automated marketing campaigns (email, SMS, in-app, and web retargeting) using platforms such as Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Eloqua, or Braze to generate leads and accelerate pipeline.
  • Create and maintain complex multi-step nurture programs, behavior-triggered workflows, and lifecycle journeys that align with buyer personas and buyer-stage content to improve conversion and retention metrics.
  • Implement and optimize lead scoring models in partnership with sales and RevOps to ensure accurate MQL-to-SQL routing and improve lead quality and handoff processes.
  • Manage CRM integrations and data flows between marketing automation platforms and Salesforce (or other CRMs) via native connectors and APIs to ensure clean, timely, and auditable lead and contact records.
  • Build and maintain reusable templates, dynamic content blocks, and modular email assets using HTML/CSS best practices for responsive design and accessibility.
  • Configure segmentation, dynamic audience lists, and real-time personalization rules to deliver targeted messaging across channels and increase engagement rates.
  • Run A/B and multivariate tests on subject lines, send times, creative, and CTAs; analyze statistical results and implement learnings to improve open, click, and conversion KPIs.
  • Monitor email and domain deliverability, sender reputation, and spam filtering; implement authentication best practices (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and remediate deliverability issues with ESPs and ISPs.
  • Develop campaign measurement frameworks and dashboards in BI and analytics tools (Google Analytics, Looker, Tableau, Power BI) to report on leads, pipeline, CAC, LTV, and channel ROI.
  • Maintain a cross-channel campaign calendar, ensuring coherent cadence, frequency controls, and suppression lists to reduce fatigue and unsubscribes.
  • Oversee tagging strategies (UTM, tracking pixels) and ensure accurate attribution models for multi-touch attribution and revenue reporting.
  • Implement and manage web personalization and conversion optimization experiments using tools like Optimizely, VWO, or Google Optimize to maximize landing page conversion rates.
  • Troubleshoot and QA campaign logic, front-end renders, link tracking, and data integrity before and after sends to maintain high-quality campaign execution.
  • Partner with content, creative, and product teams to translate go-to-market plans into scalable automation plays and reusable campaign assets for launches and promotions.
  • Maintain thorough documentation of workflows, naming conventions, segmentation logic, and system architecture for governance and knowledge transfer.
  • Enforce privacy and compliance standards (GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM) across all automated touches and maintain opt-in/opt-out flows and data processing records.
  • Conduct regular audits of the MarTech stack to identify technical debt, orphaned workflows, redundant segments, and opportunities for consolidation or automation improvement.
  • Manage relationships with vendors and ESPs, including negotiating scopes for deliverability consulting, email design services, and advanced segmentation tools.
  • Train and enable internal stakeholders (marketing, sales, customer success) on using marketing automation tools, best practices for tagging, and campaign request processes.
  • Drive continuous improvement by synthesizing campaign performance, user behavior data, and qualitative feedback into prioritized roadmap items for the marketing automation program.
  • Create and maintain backup and rollback procedures for critical workflows and campaigns to minimize business impact during failures or outages.
  • Lead complex integrations between the marketing automation platform and other systems (billing, product analytics, support platforms) using APIs, middleware (Zapier, Workato, MuleSoft), or custom scripts.
  • Set and manage SLAs for campaign builds, deployment timelines, and incident responses to ensure predictable, on-time execution for high-priority launches.
  • Coordinate cross-functional “go/no-go” readiness checks and post-mortem analyses for key campaign launches and promotional pushes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc analytics requests and build reusable reports to answer business questions on funnel performance, channel attribution, and cohort retention.
  • Contribute to MarTech roadmap planning and influence tool selection based on scalability, data governance, and business objectives.
  • Collaborate with RevOps and IT to translate campaign requirements into robust technical designs and data schemas.
  • Participate in sprint planning, stand-ups, and agile ceremonies within the marketing operations or RevOps teams to prioritize automation workstreams.
  • Provide hands-on QA and troubleshooting for production incidents, coordinating fixes with engineering and third-party support.
  • Maintain regular cleanup cycles for lists, segments, and suppressed addresses to optimize storage and performance of the MarTech stack.
  • Document runbooks for common operational tasks (campaign deployment, emergency pause, data sync recovery) to reduce time-to-resolution.
  • Facilitate training sessions and create enablement materials to raise MarTech proficiency across the organization.
  • Monitor MarTech spending and license utilization to recommend cost optimizations and consolidate overlapping tools.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep hands-on experience with one or more marketing automation platforms (Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Eloqua, Braze) and the ability to architect advanced workflows and programs.
  • CRM integration expertise, especially Salesforce CRM (Sales Cloud/Service Cloud) data model, lead/contact lifecycle, and sync troubleshooting.
  • Strong SQL skills for audience segmentation, data validation, and ad-hoc reporting across marketing and customer data stores.
  • Proficient in HTML/CSS for responsive email coding, template troubleshooting, and email client rendering fixes.
  • Experience with APIs, webhooks, and middleware (Zapier, Workato, MuleSoft) to orchestrate cross-system automations and data flows.
  • Proven ability to implement and monitor email deliverability best practices including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and list hygiene.
  • Familiarity with tagging, UTM strategies, and client-side tracking implementations (Google Tag Manager, pixel management).
  • Competence with analytics and BI tools (Google Analytics 4, Looker, Tableau, Power BI) for campaign performance and attribution reporting.
  • A/B testing and experimentation methodology experience for iterative campaign optimization and lift analysis.
  • Data governance and privacy compliance knowledge (GDPR, CCPA) and experience implementing consent and preference management systems.
  • Experience with CDPs or customer data lakes and unifying identities for precise audience targeting (Segment, Treasure Data, Tealium).
  • Understanding of multi-touch attribution models and revenue attribution to campaigns for ROI measurement.

Soft Skills

  • Strong cross-functional collaboration skills to align marketing automation with sales, product, and customer success objectives.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills for documenting processes, writing briefs, and presenting results to stakeholders.
  • Analytical and metrics-driven mindset with the ability to translate data into actionable marketing strategies.
  • Detail-oriented and process-focused, with strong QA discipline and an emphasis on reliability and data integrity.
  • Project and time management skills to juggle multiple campaigns, launches, and technical tasks under tight deadlines.
  • Problem-solving attitude with the ability to debug complex system interactions and devise practical solutions.
  • Customer-centric thinking to design journeys that improve user experience and reduce friction in conversion pathways.
  • Change-management skills to drive adoption of new automations, enablement, and process improvements across teams.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity and iterative improvement; quickly prioritizes what to build, measure, and scale.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience in Marketing, Business, Communications, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Marketing, Data Analytics, Business Administration, or Computer Science with coursework or certifications in MarTech.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Marketing
  • Computer Science / Information Systems
  • Data Analytics / Statistics
  • Business Administration
  • Communications / Digital Media

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5+ years in marketing automation, marketing operations, or demand generation roles with demonstrable hands-on experience building and operating automation programs.

Preferred:

  • 3–6 years with at least 1–2 years owning a marketing automation platform and complex CRM integrations.
  • Experience in B2B SaaS, e-commerce, or subscription-based businesses preferred.
  • Certifications in relevant platforms (Marketo Certified Expert, HubSpot Email/Automation, Salesforce Administrator) considered a plus.