Every company needs to see continuous growth in order to survive. In a challenging business environment such as we see today, it can be harder than ever to hit the right notes with potential customers.
There’s a direct connection between companies that thrive and detailed growth strategies. If you want a plant to grow tall and strong, give it something to train on.
If you want a company to develop resilience that will help it to overcome any challenges, you have to do the same thing.
Developing Growth Strategies That Fit Your Company
Simply put, a growth strategy is a plan that you lay out for your company’s future in order to continue to thrive and get past any obstacles that get thrown in your way.
The pandemic since March 2020 is a notable example of one such potential obstacle. Sometimes we can see challenges coming; other times, they take us unawares.
The best method for growth strategy is to be prepared for anything that might come, whether it’s a statistical likelihood or a once-in-a-lifetime event like the pandemic.
Growth strategies differ in efficacy, and the individual strategy that you choose depends on your company and your circumstances. But a simple, easy, and cost-effective strategy centers on email marketing.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is basically exactly what it sounds like: a way to market your business or services to your clients, through the medium of email.
It’s extremely common for businesses to use this avenue, which is why we have an average of thirteen unread commercial emails in our inbox at any given moment through the day. Unfortunately, partly because it’s so common, brand emails often end up shunted into the spam folder — or, at the very least, they often don’t get read until long after the information within them is long out of date.
Email marketing can be over-used just as easily as it can go under-used, and the results of either are both detrimental to the brand. Effective email marketing requires balance and — you guessed it — strategy.
With so many potential downfalls to email marketing, why is it recommended for an effective growth strategy?
Why Use Email Marketing?
When employed judiciously, email marketing can be extremely beneficial as a growth strategy. To start with, it opens up a wide audience: 99% of internet users check their email every day, with many of us checking it frequently — even up to twenty times a day!
According to the same source, there are also encouraging statistics when comparing email marketing to social media marketing. Generally speaking, we think of social media as “the” place to go to when planning a marketing campaign, and social media can be very useful.
But the engagement rate for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram combined is only 0.58%. This is small, and looks even smaller compared to the click through rate for email, which hovers at around 3.71%. That’s a wide difference in engagement, and it doesn’t even factor in the much larger gap between social media interactions and email open rate, which stands at just under 23%.
In short, email marketing works as a growth strategy, even more so than other marketing platforms. So what are the key factors in establishing an email marketing strategy in a way that will boost your brand growth?
Using Email Marketing In Your Strategy
There are several factors that play into the effectiveness of email marketing. Remember, too much is just as bad as too little.
Here are some other key points that must be factored in to your growth strategy centered on email marketing:
- Know your audience. Email marketing is more useful for some demographics than others. It’s more effective among the demographic that is more likely to use email as a main mode of communication; for instance, according to research, among the key demographic of people aged 25-44, more than 93% use email on a daily basis. The numbers stay high for most demographics, but lower drastically to 85% once you get to the 65 and above demographic. It’s a worthwhile piece of information to factor into not only how long your emails are, but how often you send them.
- Make it relevant. 43% of consumers will unsubscribe to email lists if they don’t think the information they’re getting is relevant. This includes deals with time limits and a reduction in relevancy of the brand itself. You won’t be able to retain every customer who signs up for emails, but gather information about why they signed up and what they’re hoping to gain, and factor that into your email structure.
- Use it to build relationships. Emails are excellent ways to boost brand loyalty, simply because they can be a dedicated conversation space between a brand and the individual. Put the brand personality on display, and make sure that each piece of content is branded with a company logo in a way that will draw the eye. If you haven’t got a professional logo then now is the time to get one. Try a DIY tool, or if you can afford, hire a graphic designer to design a logo.
- Tailor content to your customer. Use personal names, mention their searches or purchases, ask for feedback, or offer incentives to return.
- Don’t over-send. Of the top three reasons why consumers unsubscribe from email lists, getting too many emails led the pack with 59%. You’ve probably experienced email exhaustion yourself. It’s tempting to take every opportunity to reach out to your customers, but it’s much better to limit it to once or twice a week, rather than multiple times a day as some brands do.
Email Marketing Tools
Successful email marketing relies on three major aspects:
- Lead generation. In order to set up an email list, you have to gather emails from your customers. Lead generation usually happens on the main website, or through landing pages.
- Content creation. Every email needs to be crafted in a way to boost the growth strategy and build brand loyalty.
- Scheduling and response. Timing is important, and so is responsiveness. Be ready to follow up on complaints, comments, questions, or unsubscribers.
It may sound like a lot, but the only way to build something worthwhile is by using the right tools. There are plenty of email marketing and content management tools available; here are a few of them, with the added bonus of being free:
- Hubspot.com
- Sender.net
- Benchmarkemail.com
- Mailchimp.com
- Mailjet.com
Beyond that, however, the most important thing in ensuring the success of this growth strategy is keeping a close eye on the process. There is no tool that can substitute for human input, and subscribers will quickly perceive if everything is automated.
Growth strategies really only work if they build a connection between the client and the brand. So as you pursue your email marketing strategies, don’t lose sight of what really matters: the conversation.
About Veronica Johnson
Veronica likes reading, writing and exploring through her travel. With her freelance guest writing, she hopes to achieve both her passion and career in online content marketing. She writes on topics like business, advertising and digital marketing.