Go for the stable partner

Email marketing doesn’t get the attention it deserves. 

Robbie Fitzwater, founder of MKT Rhythm, compares it to the person who parents want their child to date in high school – stable, reliable, and smart. But their child favors the more daring, sexy option.

It’s time to pick the stable growth partner. In his presentation at the Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX), Robbie shares the five things to do to make that a reality:

1. Recognize the worth: To grow your business revenue, you can:

• Increase the number of customers
• Increase the average order value
• Increase the lifetime value of a customer (number of purchases)

The first option – expanding your customer base – requires expensive acquisition costs. Focusing primarily on that choice may seem like the most impactful way to grow a business, but it’s not. “We’re not building a vending machine; we’re building a business,” Robbie says.

Email can open the gate to a stronger and longer-term relationship with your customers.

2. Focus on and own your audience: If you’ve been part of The Tilt community for a while, you’ve heard this preached. With social media, you don’t have direct access to your audience. The platform determines who sees your content – even if they subscribe or follow your account. Also, to communicate directly to those subscribers and followers, you must go through the platform’s gates.

“With email, you don’t have to worry about social media’s whims,” Robbie says. You can truly focus on the audience and its data and shape the behavior you want them to take.

3. Create a hierarchy: Driving the audience’s behavior requires knowing the progression you want them to take. Robbie offers this simple ladder of audience value: 

• Social follower
• Email subscriber
• Engaged email subscriber
• Engaged email subscriber who has viewed products
• One-time customer
• One-time customer who refers
• Repeat customer
• Repeat customer who refers

4. Earn the right to ask for more data: Your audience won’t follow the hierarchy you set up to grow your business if you aren’t helping them along their journey.

“Good data allows you to scale more intimate interactions that you couldn’t otherwise,” Robbie says. It allows you to elevate the context of your content so the audience sees you recognize their pain points and even themselves.

He points to a horse tack business that collects birthdays and the name of the customer’s horse and uses that information to craft warm and fuzzy emails at the appropriate time that the recipients truly appreciate.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to ask a question to get more data. Robbie points to a coffee business that differentiates its thank-you-for-your-order emails. A new customer gets an email that reads, “Your first order is on the way.” A second-order customer receives an email that starts, “Hello, friend! So great to see you again.” A subscribing customer gets an intro, “Thanks for being a Methodical regular.”

5. Automate the journey: Tailoring your emails to your audience members and sending them at the most appropriate time in their journey is a task to automate. Working with a quality email platform, you can set up triggering events to make this personalization and customization possible. Through this strategy, you can scale up your work to grow your business with repeat customers and increase their lifetime value.

– Ann Gynn

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