If your north star metric is growth, you’ve come to the right place! Starting a business is no small feat, especially when you’re juggling the balance of time, money, and resources. So we’ll jump straight to the point.
Email is the ultimate growth hacking tool for startups. It’s easy to create powerful campaigns that can deliver personal experiences all without having to dive too deep into your wallet. So we’re going to show you examples of growth hacks that will help build a strong list of genuine leads and revenue streams.
Capture all your leads with forms
Capture genuine website visitors by embedding your sign-up forms on any page of your website. Unlike website popups, signup forms are less intrusive and don’t cause any disruptions to the users’ browsing experience.
If you want to make sure your forms will gain traction we recommend the following:
- Embedding your sign up forms on landing pages which draw the most traffic
- Adding CTAs to join your mailing list on your most popular blog pages
- Gatekeeping your high-value content like webinars or whietpapers in exchange for users’ email addresses
Remember to set up double opt-ins so contacts are forced to verify their email address before being added to your list. While it does add an extra step to the signup process it makes sure your lists are free of spambots and full of genuine subscribers.
Personalise your communications
Another huge advantage to email is how easy it is to personalise your communications. It’s a simple solution if you’re looking to build trust and breed lifelong customer loyalty. However, the key to all successful personalisation strategies starts with the data you’re collecting in your forms.
Before you create any signup form you need to know exactly how you are going to be segmenting your audience. Think about what kind of content you’re going to be serving up to your subscribers once they’ve opted into your communications.
Did these subscribers come from an ad campaign promoting a special offer? If so, think about using conditional content to promote your latest sale. Where do they live? Are there certain retail stores in the nearby area you want to promote?
Revamp your email automations
Promotional emails consume our inboxes, which leaves many to be lost and ignored. Transactional emails on the other hand, deliver eight times more opens and click rates than any other email, making them one of the most effective email growth hacks to engage your prospects.
Not only do these emails save you valuable time, but they are also crucial for establishing trust with your customers. Here are a couple of examples of how to transform your transactional emails into growth hacking machines.
- Use your order confirmation emails to suggest similar products or services
- Add an incentive to your abandoned cart automation
- Promote your referral programs in your welcome email
Increase loyalty with referrals
Instead of working tirelessly to promote your brand, let your loyal customers advocate your business for you through referral campaigns. Referral programs not only reward existing customers but are way more likely to convert new visitors if they’ve been referred by family or friends.
You can run a standalone campaign or even work your referral program into your onboarding emails to reinforce the subscription value right off the bat. Here’s an example of Tradesy who use their shipping confirmation emails to promote their referral program to existing customers.
Refine your audience targeting
Don’t exhaust your budget by opting for a broad awareness campaign. There are many ways you can leverage your email database to deliver more personalised ads that speak to different phases of the customer journey.
Active Leads
If you’ve had a lot of website visitors but no conversions, it may be time to launch a retargeting campaign to keep your brand front of mind.
When a user visits your website for the first time they aren’t always ready to make a purchase or they get distracted and forget. An effective way to reconnect with your leads is by serving ads that specifically relate to the products they were browsing or the content they downloaded on your website.
New Prospects
Our integrations with Google Ads and Facebook Business allows you to create lookalike audiences or similar audiences so you can serve ads to users that are more likely to convert. You can also make sure your current database is excluded from seeing any of your ads so that you’re not wasting your budget on existing customers.
Existing Customers
If you want to increase your number of repeat customers think about serving existing customers ads that give them exclusive access to special offers like early-bird tickets to an upcoming event.
Make the most of your email signature
Need to promote a new feature, service, event, special offer or sale? Consider using your email signature as a new way to run your ads for free. There’s a high chance you’re emailing potential prospects day in and day out. Your email signature is prime real estate to promote your brand without coming across as too sale-sy.
Here’s a great example of growth hacking by Sigistr, who promote their recently published report to direct traffic to their website. Using value-add content like this is more likely to drive engagement. Users are also more likely to sign up to your email communications if they can see the content you’re pushing out is to a high standard.
Are you ready to hack your way to the top with powerful email campaigns? Sign up for a free Vision6 account to get started.
