Business owners around the globe are struggling to adapt, prepare and adjust for what is slowly turning into what will undoubtedly be the biggest health and economic crisis the world has seen in possibly over 100 years, so here we are trying to help with some free email marketing strategy tips that will help your business overcome CoVid-19.

I know you’re tired of hearing “yesterday’s news” recycled in different forms, so in this post, we’re just going to focus on email marketing strategy and how you can use it to make sure your business does as well as it possibly can during this time of great uncertainty. What’s our approach? Easy - when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

We'll show you how top brands have adjusted during these times.

CoVid-19 Best Email Marketing Strategy post highlights:

  1. What does that mean in general?
  2. What does that mean for my business’ email program?
  3. Best CoVid-19 email marketing strategy tips & tricks
  4. Where do I start?

What does that mean in general?

Well...in general terms, it means that things need to change. Change is never easy, and we know that this is the single biggest reason for some people to feel like they’re going to have a panic attack. Especially entrepreneurs. Especially when you have employees you need to fend for and are responsible for what they put on the tables, not just what you do.

But change is coming. Scratch that. Change came. It arrived. It’s unfortunate that it did - at a time when the American economy was never healthier, never bigger, never better. At a time when San Francisco and the rest of the Bay area was no longer the only biggest hub for growth in the country, but New York, Austin, and even Detroit were now better, bigger and more vibrant than ever.

That said, this is definitely NOT the time to wait around and pout! If you feel like you’re about to have a massive panic attack, take a few deep breaths, count to ten and regroup. You need to move. Your business needs your fast reactions now more than ever before.

What does that mean for my business’s email program?

Many news outlets describe what we’re going through as a war. Sure, it’s not the type of war we read about in the history books at school and it’s definitely not a war we were ready to face, but we need to anyway.

Let’s dial in and see what this actually means for your business and how you can make the best of what’s going on.

It might mean you’ll have to restructure your business.

It might even mean you’ll have to change your business model.

Or your product line altogether.

Change is the word my friends, and I am purposefully mentioning it often enough to get you warmed up for some action items that you would probably have hard rejected if you heard them without having the rest of the story to back them up.

The one thing that’s not any different to normal times, is that we still have all 3 major types of business projections going for us. Companies still grow, shrink, or stagnate. Our friends at Klaviyo put together a really amazing poll where they ask the brands that send emails through their service to fill in a quick daily poll of how their business is going, and it’s nice to see that it’s not all that doom and gloom. Get the latest of those stats here.

So what exactly will you need to change in order to make it? Well, examples are already high & mighty. I’ve heard about an ad printing company that started building plastic face shields. A cosmetics producer started packing a biocide solution and many mom and pop tailor shops started producing single-use masks. The example everybody probably heard about is how General Motors is on-route to start producing ventilation machines for hospitals, and most have already heard about Tesla’s push to distribute as many ventilators as possible, built in their various factories across the country.

Get your wheels turning - if your business has seen the rough downside of this recent crisis, perhaps your best solution would be to - as they say in the army - improvise, adapt and overcome.

As far as your email program is concerned, if you’re not planning on switching to a completely different business model, your best bet is going to be to position yourself correctly.

Best CoVid-19 email marketing strategy tips & tricks

Change your approach - different positioning is adamant.

With public concerns being quite high in each brand’s mind, and with everybody being terrified not to alienate customers by staying open, you need to be honest with yourself and position your brand correctly.

This is a talk we’ve had with pretty much every client of ours during the last couple of months. Positioning is key. We all know it’s pretty doom and gloom out there, but that doesn’t mean we should stop seeing the positives and being optimistic about our possibilities. Where there’s positivity, there’s opportunity.

While a lot of companies are still thinking of closing, our biggest advice here is - well - don’t! If you do, you’ll be another point on another statistic of businesses that went under, because - heck - how are you going to be able to make payroll unless you keep open? Either that or you’ll be a worse point on a worse list of companies who had to lay off tens, maybe hundreds of hard-working employees that now have to cope with the dangers of the CoVid-19 virus while being unemployed and worried about how they’re going to put food on the table. Be creative, adapt, and keep fighting the good fight not just for yourself, but your employees and their families.

Change. Remember that part? It’s time. Go full remote if you can, but you probably already did. Think about other, ingenious methods of monetizing what you can do. Are you an outdoor merchandise brand? Launch a product that can be fun indoors at times when people are looking for new ways to be entertained. Are you a restaurant? Do home deliveries or try to sign contracts with hospitals to feed the virus victims. Change.

Be more present now than ever!

Some brands asked us if they should lay low for a while. Why, why, WHY would you ever do that? I’ll reiterate - people are now looking for new ways to be entertained. Now more than ever since they have some extra time on their hands, people are trying to find new and ingenious ways to fight boredom, the stress of our times, and in many places - their inability to leave their homes at all. Be out there. Engage your following, grow your following, rally your following!

Don’t close up shop!

Said this before but going to say it once more. Closing helps nobody. It only piles more pressure on the whole system - not just your own business, but the economy as a whole. Bailouts should be our last case scenario, not what we immediately go to as our first line of defense when the going gets tough.

HugoHoby

Let me tell you a bit about our good friends at Hugo & Hoby. They’re a locally made, sustainably sourced custom furniture fabricator. Their incredible work helps provide for communities of small carpenter shops. The shops they work with are small family-owned ones which would spend time together regardless of the business being open or not, and the company has decided not to do installations at this time.

KnifeAid, for instance, offers a knife sharpening service by mail. You order online, they send an envelope to your inbox and you send it back with the knives you want sharpened. You get them back in the mail a week later. Easy, right? They made sure everybody that can work from home does, they increased the workshop space between sharpening stations, and they of course follow health and safety standards as required by shop work anyway. This business model is especially ingenious in that you don’t need to be face-to-face with your local knifesmith, reap the benefits of CoVid-19’s fairly short lifetime on exposed surfaces (less than their already-quick turnaround time), and have the benefit of being more self-sufficient by preparing your own meals and not needing to worry about if your Uber Eats driver has CoVid-19 or not.

Look for alternative strategic solutions!

It seems like we’re living in an alternative time, right? It’s definitely time for alternative solutions.

Our long-term client FinalStraw was getting ready to launch a new product this year and they were still in the R&D process for that, when the crisis struck. As you can imagine, a travel straw wasn’t as sought after as they would have hoped. So what did they do? It’s quite amazing. They pivoted quite fast and started work on another revolutionary product. One you can help back them up on Kickstarter for, called FinalWipe.

Final Co. responsive email design

As you probably know, FinalStraw is a campaign that we launched on KickStarter in 2018 and is a reusable, collapsible straw that's meant to go on your keychain and is built for travel. Right now, nobody's traveling, they're probably at home in quarantine just like I am, so this is our heil mary, a plea to keep the company alive so we can keep making amazing reusable products forever. Sounds like a crazy idea but it may just work!

Emma Rose Cohen . Final.CO.

The power of crowdfunding is quite a magnificent thing during rough times, and if you are a genuine brand with a strong following, your chances to succeed are quite high. Now more than ever we’re seeing unique products coming to the market, so why should your business miss out on this opportunity to overcome the current global challenge and be a real source of inspiration to other business owners as well as your customers.

Ask and thou shall receive!

Did you ask your customers for support? What?! Why are you looking at me like that? You heard me right! Did you ask your customers for support? How do you think they could ever know of your struggles if you don’t tell them? Be genuine, tell your story, and sell gift cards with a tasty discount. They’ll be able to cash these in after the crisis ends when you’re able to fulfil again, or they’ll give them to friends. In the meantime, you’ll have a healthier cash flow to rely on.

Gift card for you, gift cards for all!

Since we brought them up...Did you know that birthdays, anniversaries and life as we know it is not over? Surprisingly so, since it seems that time is as still as the New York metro train stations. What can you buy a loved one for an anniversary when you can’t leave your home? Hmm...I wonder...Let me know if you have any ideas. GIFT CARD!

It’s time for loyalty email program

It’s time for loyalty, but not just in the sense of staying home and making sure we don’t give each other a terrible virus - not just physically but in the business sense too. If you don’t have a loyalty program, I can’t think of a better time to develop one. There are at least 50 - if not more - different things you can do to build a loyalty program - feel free to reach out to us if you need to do any brainstorming on what we’ve seen works best lately.

Although proper strategy is incredibly important during these hard times, it's still only one piece of the larger marketing pie. You can never discount the merits of beautiful email design and strong, responsive code regardless of the state of the world. With most of us confined to our homes during the CoVid-19 lockdown, more people are shopping online, and as a result, looking to emails for great products and deals.

Did you have any other ideas you think would work well in our article about CoVid-19 best email marketing strategy tips? We’d love to hear them! Tell us what worked for you and we’ll share your story, to help get through this as one - global-wide-large - team.

Love,
Your nerds at CodeCrew.