Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking to our best-in-class partner for email marketing, Klaviyo. As email marketing specialists, Klaviyo’s curious and engaging team was eager to learn how, at Base Beauty Creative Agency, we harness the power of data-driven creativity throughout the ENTIRE digital ecosystem. This is the crux of my message to them as I spoke about how effective our holistic approach has been in helping our clients drive growth, expand market share, and increase valuation for stockholders. I shared the example of a professional skincare brand where, in two years, we were able to help them achieve 5X growth in valuation. Our strategy really does work!
Because Klaviyo’s mission is focused on one piece of the digital marketing puzzle—primarily email and SMS marketing—I thought it was especially important to talk about the big picture for their team, showing them what the puzzle looks like when all the pieces work together. I spoke about how Base Beauty’s COO, Aleni Mackarey, Ph.D., MS, and I have organized our agency according to separate functions while weaving them into a seamless tapestry of success for our clients. No silos. No territories. Everything is shared as we constantly cross-pollinate within our major departments and functions, including:
- advisory and brand strategy
- branding
- public relations
- content creation
- social media
- influencer & professional relations
- paid media
- digital marketing
Each tactic impacts and drives forward all the other tactics. Spending their days in the world of email marketing, the Klaviyo team needs to understand the whole. That’s why I was thrilled to be able to share this with them and see how excited they are to invest their time in learning more about programs outside of their tool. When I speak on this topic, I often use the human body as a metaphor to illustrate how different parts of a business must work together to achieve success, just as different body parts work together to maintain overall health. The Klaviyo audience gets it.
The attendees asked me some great questions, and I was happy that there was time in our program to address them. Here are a few:
Question #1: When starting with a new brand, what lever have you found has the greatest impact on valuation? Acquisition? Retention? Pricing? Sales? If you read the preceding paragraphs, you’ll know that the answer is all of the above. And more. It is an absolute ecosystem. We can’t just look at one thing. You can’t pull one thread out of the tapestry without it unraveling.
Question #2: When pitching a new client, how do you address their hesitancy or doubts? We start by learning about the prospect’s pain points. They might say they don’t have the staff to manage this program, so we show them how we really manage it for them, providing better data and actually making their lives easier so they can show their leadership solid results. The transition is always challenging, so we work closely with clients to help them adjust to these amazing tools. Holding hands at the beginning is worth a lot.
Question #3: How do you demonstrate to a client the ongoing value of the platform and prove the efficacy of a particular test if all the results are interconnected? By fastidiously measuring individual metrics as well as overall growth. We compare year-over-year, month-over-month, sometimes getting even more granular than that, sometimes running longer six-month test-and-learn programs. We cover all the bases, the micro and the macro.
Question #4: How important are KOLs (key opinion leaders) in your marketing? I cannot overemphasize the importance of experts. When you put the expert voice out there, it will impact everything in the digital ecosystem, and we have so many avenues for doing that, from paid to owned to earned.
I was thrilled to be able to share our Base Beauty expertise with the eager-to-learn Klaviyo team. Special thanks to Maria Almquist for her partnership and for the opportunity to spread the word on holistic marketing.
Message our CEO with your thoughts: What pieces of the digital marketing puzzle is your business missing? I’d love to know!