South helps growing companies find, hire, and pay top Latin American talent. Build high-performing teams in 21 days or less.
.svg){kind=logo}
Your marketing automation platform is probably running at a fraction of what you paid for it. Most companies buy HubSpot or Marketo, build three workflows, and never touch the engine again. When you hire a marketing automation specialist through South, you get a pre-vetted operator in your US time zone who turns that expensive platform into a revenue machine: scored leads, branching nurture flows, and clean handoffs to sales. Placement in two to four weeks, 30 to 60 percent below US cost, no large upfront fees.
A marketing automation specialist builds and manages the systems that nurture leads and customers automatically. They design email and lifecycle workflows, set up lead scoring, manage the marketing automation platform, and keep data flowing cleanly between marketing tools and the CRM. The role turns a static contact list into a responsive, revenue-generating engine.
The job lives at the intersection of marketing, data, and operations, which is exactly why it is hard to fill well. A weak hire treats automation as "sending more emails." A strong one treats it as building a machine. They map the entire lifecycle, from the moment someone fills out a form to the day they become a paying customer and beyond, and they instrument every step. They build the welcome series that converts a free signup into an activated user. They design the lead-scoring model that tells sales which of the 500 new MQLs this month are actually worth a call. They wire up the re-engagement campaign that wins back customers before they churn.
Underneath all of that is plumbing, and the plumbing is where most automation programs quietly fail. A marketing automation specialist owns the integration between the platform and the CRM, usually Salesforce or HubSpot, making sure a lead's score, source, and lifecycle stage sync correctly so sales sees the full picture. They manage list hygiene, suppression rules, and consent so you are not blasting unsubscribed contacts or tanking your sender reputation. They build the UTM and attribution scaffolding that lets you actually prove which campaigns drive pipeline. None of this is glamorous, and all of it is the difference between an automation program that compounds and one that decays.
The best specialists are also analytical. They do not just launch flows and hope. They set up A/B tests on subject lines, send times, and branching logic. They watch open rates, click rates, conversion rates, and deliverability, and they iterate. When a nurture flow underperforms, they can read the funnel, find the drop-off, and fix it. Increasingly, the strong ones write SQL or work comfortably in the data layer, because modern lifecycle marketing in platforms like Braze or Customer.io depends on event data, not just static contact properties.
This is a role where the platform expertise is real and specific. Someone who is a Marketo expert is not automatically a HubSpot expert, and a Klaviyo specialist who lives in e-commerce flows is solving different problems than a Pardot admin in B2B SaaS. When you hire, platform fit matters as much as general skill.
Hire when you have invested in a platform and are not getting the return. If you are paying for Marketo or HubSpot Enterprise and your "automation" is a single welcome email, you are leaving money on the table every month. A dedicated specialist unlocks the capability you already bought.
The second trigger is lead volume your sales team cannot manually triage. Once marketing is generating hundreds of leads a month, you need scoring and routing to separate the serious buyers from the tire-kickers, or your reps waste their time and your good leads go cold. That is exactly the problem a marketing automation specialist exists to solve, in close partnership with your demand generation manager.
The third is lifecycle complexity. When you have free trials, multiple products, expansion motions, and churn risk all happening at once, you cannot run that with manual sends and a spreadsheet. You need someone to architect the lifecycle in software, the way a lifecycle marketing manager thinks about the full customer journey but with deep hands-on platform execution.
Who should not hire yet: if you are early, with a small list and a simple funnel, a full-time automation specialist is overkill. A capable email marketing manager or even a generalist marketer can run your basic flows until volume justifies a specialist. Likewise, if your underlying data is a disaster, with duplicate contacts, no consistent lifecycle definitions, and a CRM nobody trusts, hiring an automation specialist to build on that foundation will just automate the chaos faster. In that case your first hire might be a marketing operations manager to fix the data layer. And if you do not yet have a clear, agreed definition of what an MQL even is, sort that out with sales before you build a scoring model, because automation cannot resolve a strategy disagreement.
Lead with platform depth in your specific stack. A candidate can be brilliant in Marketo and still be lost in HubSpot, because the platforms model data and workflows differently. Ask them to whiteboard, literally, how they would build a lead-scoring model in your platform. The strong candidate talks fluently about scoring properties, decay logic, behavioral versus demographic points, and how the score syncs to the CRM. The weak one talks in generalities.
Probe the integration and data side hard, because that is where programs break. Ask what happens to a lead's score and lifecycle stage when it moves from marketing to sales and back. Ask how they handle a contact that exists in both the CRM and the marketing platform with conflicting data. The candidates who have actually run production systems have scar tissue here and will tell you specific war stories. The ones who have only built campaigns in a sandbox will not.
Check that they are analytical, not just operational. Anyone can launch a workflow. You want someone who launches it, watches the funnel, sees that 70 percent drop off at email three, diagnoses why, and fixes it. Ask for a specific example of a campaign they improved through testing, with before-and-after numbers.
Confirm deliverability fluency. A specialist who does not understand SPF, DKIM, DMARC, sender reputation, and list hygiene can quietly destroy your email program by getting you flagged as spam. This is foundational and surprisingly often missing.
Who should not hire yet, as a hiring caution: do not hire a pure campaign executor and expect them to architect your lifecycle strategy, and do not hire a strategist who cannot actually build in the platform and expect them to ship. Know which gap you are filling. The rare specialist who does both commands the top of the range and is worth it. If you only need one or the other, scope the role and the comp accordingly rather than overpaying for a half-used skill set. If your real need is custom platform development and complex CRM customization, that is closer to a HubSpot developer than a marketing automation specialist.
In the US, an experienced marketing automation specialist runs roughly 6,500 to 9,000 dollars a month, around 7,500 as a midpoint, and senior platform experts in competitive markets command more. Add payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead and the loaded cost climbs another third. Demand for these people is high because every company that bought an automation platform eventually realizes it needs someone to actually run it, so the market is tight and salaries reflect it.
Through South, a comparably skilled marketing automation specialist in Latin America typically costs around 3,500 dollars a month, roughly 53 percent less. The candidates we place have the same platform certifications, the same hands-on Marketo or HubSpot experience, and the same analytical chops you would require from a US hire. The discount comes from geography and currency, not from a drop in capability.
The ROI case is straightforward. A specialist who improves your lead-to-customer conversion by even a couple of points, or who recovers a meaningful slice of churning customers through a re-engagement program, generates revenue that dwarfs their cost. Against a fully loaded annual cost in the low 40,000s, a well-run automation program that influences hundreds of thousands in pipeline is an easy call.
South charges no large upfront fees and bakes no recruiting multiplier into the salary. You pay a clean monthly rate, you own the relationship with the person directly, and you get a full-time, dedicated specialist rather than agency hours billed against a retainer. Compared to a US marketing agency that charges premium rates for junior staff to fiddle with your workflows, a dedicated in-house specialist through South is both cheaper and far more accountable.
Time-zone overlap matters more for this role than people expect. A marketing automation specialist works hand in hand with your demand gen team, your sales ops people, and often your sales leadership. They need to be in the campaign review, on the call when a lead-routing rule breaks the day of a big launch, and available to ship a fix before a send goes out. A specialist in Latin America works US hours, so you collaborate in real time instead of trading messages across a half-day gap.
The talent is genuinely strong. Latin America has a fast-growing pool of digital marketing professionals trained on the exact platforms US companies use, HubSpot and Marketo chief among them, often through work with US-based companies or agencies serving US clients. Many hold the same vendor certifications you would look for locally. Because so much of the LatAm tech and marketing ecosystem is oriented toward the US market, candidates already understand US buyer behavior, US compliance norms, and US-style go-to-market motions.
English proficiency is high in the markets South recruits from, which matters because this role writes copy, documents workflows, and communicates constantly with US stakeholders. You get clear, professional communication without the friction of a language barrier.
And the economics drive better retention. A skilled marketing automation specialist in the US is a hot commodity who gets poached constantly, so US tenure in the role tends to be short. For an equally skilled LatAm professional, a stable full-time role with a US company at a strong local wage is a job worth staying in. Lower churn means the person who built your automation architecture is still around to evolve it, which is exactly what you want for a system that compounds over time.
South recruits, vets, and places full-time marketing automation specialists from across Latin America with US companies that want their platform investment to actually pay off. We screen for the combination that makes this role work: deep platform fluency in your specific stack, the data and integration sense to keep the plumbing clean, and the analytical instinct to test and improve rather than set and forget.
You tell us your platform, your CRM, your funnel, and what you are trying to fix, whether that is dead leads, no scoring, a broken handoff to sales, or a lifecycle that runs on manual sends. We come back with a short list of pre-vetted candidates who fit, typically within days. You interview, you decide, and you own the relationship directly. The specialist is a full-time member of your team, not an agency resource split across five accounts. Placement usually takes two to four weeks.
There are no large upfront fees and no salary multiplier hiding a recruiting commission. You get a dedicated, time-zone-aligned automation specialist at 30 to 60 percent below comparable US cost, plus the upside of a platform finally running at full capacity.
If your automation platform is gathering dust, your leads are dying in the funnel, or your sales team does not trust the leads marketing sends, the answer is a specialist who owns the engine. Book a call with South and we will show you vetted marketing automation candidates who can start rebuilding your lifecycle program within the month.
A full-time marketing automation specialist through South runs about $3,500 per month, versus roughly $7,500 for a US hire, around 53% in savings with no large upfront fee. You get dedicated automation and lifecycle support without the US salary.
Yes. South places automation specialists across Latin America who overlap US business hours, so campaign builds, QA, and cross-team coordination happen in real time with marketing and sales.
They build and run the automated campaigns and lifecycle flows: email sequences, lead scoring, nurture programs, and the integrations that connect your marketing platform to your CRM. A strong specialist ties automation to pipeline, not just sends.
Look for fluency in a marketing automation platform like Marketo, HubSpot, or Pardot, CRM integration with Salesforce, deliverability basics like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and lead scoring and segmentation logic.
Most placements happen in about two to four weeks. South pre-vets for platform depth, campaign experience, and English fluency, so you review a short, qualified list.
Full-time and dedicated. South does not place gig workers. Your automation specialist is a long-term member of your team, which matters because automation systems get more valuable as someone tends them over time.
The region has the perfect mix of everything you want in remote employees: English skills, shared time zones, hard-working, and depth of talent. They are already accustomed to working remotely for top US startups and Fortune 500 companies.
Absolutely! The US and Latin America have basically the same time zones. No Latin American city is more than two hours ahead of EST.
Every hire is sourced based on your exact needs. They will arrive ready to support your business right away. They can do basically any tasks done remotely, but we recommend starting them as support so your team has more bandwidth for high-value strategic tasks.
All types of roles - customer service, executive assistant, sales, accounting, email marketing, lead generation, content writers, operations, social media marketing, and more!
You can pay directly through us (most popular) or we can connect you with one of our payroll partners.
You don't have to deal with any American labor laws / taxes when hiring full-time remote contractors. They aren't US-based, so no visas or sponsorships to deal with either.
We recommend market pay which varies for each role. See our salary guide and success stories for some ideas.
Then, we have two different models:
Staffing (most popular) - We charge a small monthly fee for each employee's monthly salary to make the process hassle-free. The fee covers sourcing, recruiting, admin, payroll, compliance, ongoing support, and a free replacement if necessary at any point. There are no cancellation fees or minimum commitments. You only pay if you make a hire.
Headhunting - A one-time simple fee once we've found the perfect candidate. This comes with a 120-day replacement guarantee.
For both options, you only pay something if we find you someone great that you want to hire.
Yes, we only recruit for full-time and we strongly recommend full-time hiring if you can. Stability (full-time & long-term) is highly sought after abroad. The top caliber candidates are only looking for full-time work.
You're also going to spend time training and getting them up to speed on your processes. It would be a waste to do that over and over again with new people all the time.
We recommend training new hires on one thing at a time.
For example, once they get up to speed on lead generation, you can add the next role writing blog posts or whatever you'd like. You can definitely overlap roles until you have enough work for multiple people.
The cost of living is much less in Latin American countries. Many of our employees are able to own homes, raise families, provide for their parents, and have in-home help of their own with their salaries.
If you aren't happy with your hire in the first 120 days, we will work with you to conduct a second round of search for the same role for free.
Just email us at Hello@HireInSouth.com and we will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.
