Marketing Campaign Executive

A marketing campaign executive plans, builds and runs marketing campaigns - the coordinated bursts of emails, adverts, social posts, events or direct mail that an organisation uses to sell something or get people to act. The job is largely about getting the moving parts of a campaign to happen on time and then reporting on whether they worked. You might do this in-house for a brand, charity, university or B2B company (B2B means selling to other businesses rather than consumers), or on the client side of an agency.

Starting salary: £24k–£30k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct application to an executive or coordinator-level…
They usually ask for: A degree in almost any subject is usually acceptable

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £24,000–£30,000 to start, though this varies widely - London and large corporate graduate schemes sit at the upper end or above it, while charities, smaller agencies and roles outside major cities often start lower.

What you'd actually do

Building and scheduling campaign assets in marketing software - loading an email into a platform like a CRM or email tool, setting the audience list, testing how it renders on mobile, and sending it (CRM = customer relationship management system, the database of customers and prospects)
Briefing and chasing other people: asking a designer for banner sizes, a copywriter for subject lines, an agency for ad creative, and nudging all of them when deadlines slip
Pulling numbers after a campaign goes out - open rates, clicks, sign-ups, leads, sales - and putting them into a slide or spreadsheet that explains what happened and what to change next time
Keeping the campaign plan and calendar up to date so that different teams aren't emailing the same people in the same week or clashing with a product launch

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Writing and proofing short-form copy: email subject lines, landing page headlines, social captions, and adapting the same message across several channels
Sitting in campaign planning and review meetings with sales, product or account teams to agree targets, audiences and messaging
Checking compliance and quality details - that an offer's terms are stated correctly, that data use fits UK GDPR and consent rules, that links and tracking codes actually work

How graduates get in

Direct application to an executive or coordinator-level marketing job - this is the most common route, and many employers will hire someone with an internship, placement year or a year of admin/retail/sales experience rather than requiring a graduate scheme
Marketing or commercial graduate schemes at larger consumer brands, retailers, banks, telecoms and FMCG companies (fast-moving consumer goods, i.e. everyday products), which usually rotate you through brand, campaign and insight teams - competitive and typically autumn-recruiting a year ahead
Internship or placement year in a marketing team, which is probably the single strongest signal on a graduate CV for this role - many placement students are offered graduate roles back at the same employer
Starting in a nearby junior role and moving sideways: marketing assistant, sales development, customer service, events assistant, or an agency account executive role, then shifting into campaigns after a year or so

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Agency route - joining a marketing, media or digital agency as an account executive and later moving client-side into campaign management; common, and a fast way to see many sectors
Apprenticeship or professional qualification route - a Level 4/6 marketing apprenticeship, or self-funding a CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) qualification, which is more often used to top up an unrelated degree than as a first entry ticket

What employers ask for

A degree in almost any subject is usually acceptable. Marketing, business, communications, English and psychology are common, but employers care more about evidence you've done marketing-adjacent work than about the subject itself
A 2:1 is a common cut-off at larger graduate schemes; smaller firms and agencies frequently take a 2:2 if the portfolio, placement experience or interview is strong. This varies a lot
Demonstrable practical experience - running social accounts for a society or small business, a placement, freelance content work, or a student marketing ambassador role. Employers look for this more than any qualification
Some hands-on familiarity with digital tools is increasingly expected: email platforms, social schedulers, basic analytics, and spreadsheets. You are not expected to be expert, but blank unfamiliarity is a problem at interview

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Professional qualifications (CIM, or Google and Meta ad certifications) are nice-to-have rather than required at entry. Some employers fund CIM study once you're in
Many applications involve a task or assessment - writing a campaign plan, critiquing an existing campaign, or presenting how you'd promote a product to a given audience

Skills that matter

Project coordination and deadline management

A campaign has a fixed launch date and a dozen dependencies, so most of the job is keeping track of who owes you what and when.

Spreadsheet and data literacy

You'll be pulling campaign results into pivot tables, segmenting audience lists and spotting whether a drop in clicks is real or a tracking error.

Clear, concise copywriting

Subject lines, ad headlines and landing page text have to work in very few words, and junior people usually draft these before a senior reviews them.

Attention to detail under time pressure

A broken link, wrong discount code or email sent to the wrong segment is visible to thousands of people and cannot be unsent.

Influencing people who don't report to you

You'll be asking designers, agencies, sales teams and legal reviewers for things they haven't prioritised, usually with no authority to insist.

Basic understanding of audience and channel

Knowing why a message that works on LinkedIn for a B2B buyer fails on TikTok stops you producing campaigns that simply get ignored.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Marketing executive / campaign executive - the entry level, where you execute campaigns someone else has largely designed and learn the tools and the approval process.
Senior executive or campaign manager - you own campaigns end to end, set the plan, hold a budget and brief agencies rather than just chasing them. Typically a couple of years in, but this varies widely by employer size: in a small team you may own campaigns almost immediately.
Specialising or broadening. Many people narrow into a discipline - email/CRM, paid media, content, product marketing, marketing automation - because specialists are well paid and in demand. Others stay broad and move towards brand or integrated campaign management.
Marketing manager or head of campaigns - managing a small team, setting annual plans and reporting to senior leadership on commercial results rather than channel metrics.
Longer term: marketing director or head of marketing in-house, or client services/strategy leadership in an agency. Some move into adjacent commercial roles such as sales enablement, customer insight or digital product. Timescales here differ enormously between a fast-growing small company and a large corporate hierarchy.

What people get wrong

“It's a creative job about coming up with clever adverts.”

At executive level most of the time goes on logistics, approvals, scheduling and reporting. The creative idea is often set above you or by an agency; your contribution is making it actually happen correctly and on time.

“You can avoid numbers if you're a 'words person'.”

Campaign work is increasingly measured. You'll spend a real share of your week in spreadsheets and analytics dashboards justifying what spend produced what result, and people who dislike that tend to stall at the first promotion.

“A marketing degree is more or less required.”

Plenty of campaign executives come from history, languages, science or no clearly related subject. Practical evidence - a placement, a side project, a society's social media turned round - usually counts for more at shortlisting.

“It's the same job everywhere, so any marketing role is good experience.”

Consumer brand campaign work and B2B campaign work are quite different crafts, with different buying cycles, channels and success measures, and recruiters do notice which one you've done.

Where this varies

The title covers quite different jobs. In a small company or charity you may be the whole marketing function - writing, designing, sending, reporting and running events - with broad ownership but little mentoring. In a large corporate you'll own a narrow slice of a big campaign with lots of process, sign-off stages and specialist colleagues to learn from. Agencies add client management and timesheets to the mix, usually with faster exposure to many brands but less control over strategy. Sector matters too: regulated sectors such as financial services and healthcare involve heavy compliance review of every word, public sector and higher education marketing works to procurement rules and recruitment cycles, and e-commerce or subscription businesses lean much harder on data and automation. Geographically, London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow have the deepest markets; elsewhere roles are more often in-house and generalist.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.