These 3 Strategic Principles Will Help You Keep Clients From Outgrowing Your Services

When I founded my email marketing company SellUP, our very first client was a small — at the time — cosmetics company, called e.l.f. Cosmetics.

You’ve probably seen their displays in Target, CVS, or Rite-Aid. Their products are now sold in many major chain retailers, along with through their website. But back when we began working with them, they were just beginning to take off.

That incredible growth, which they experienced throughout our partnership, could have easily made it hard for us to keep up with them. They could have outgrown us. Instead, we made a concerted effort to grow alongside them.

Here’s how we did it.

1. We focused on building trust from the start.

From the start of our partnership with e.l.f., I was in their offices twice a week. I knew their CEO was investing a great deal of time in the partnership, and I wanted to do the same.

I also wanted my client to trust me enough to treat me as a member of their team, not an outside influence. So, I worked hard to build that trust.

I sat down with e.l.f.’s leadership (face-to-face, not over the phone or via video chat — this is important), and we worked together to conceive new ideas, break down data, and alter strategies.

My team and I didn’t simply say, “The numbers are telling us to do this. Trust us,” as many marketing consultants might. Instead, we built trust by explaining to them exactly why the numbers were telling us to move in a given direction.

And once we built trust, we built e.l.f. into something great together.

While we were investing a lot of time on the client, they were returning the favor by giving us the opportunity to succeed alongside them.

2. We started with the knowledge that a good partnership must be built on a combination of education and investment.

We invested the time to truly learn about their brand, and educated ourselves on every aspect of e.l.f.’s processes, from top to bottom.

Of course, it helped that they were an incredibly inclusive organization. Every level of their business was involved in meetings — from customer service to creative and design to upper management. Every voice within the company was heard.

So we took advantage of the opportunity to hear those voices as well.

We learned from merchandising what was selling, and what wasn’t. Marketing told us which campaigns performed well, which didn’t. Customer service enlightened us on common customer complaints.

This all helped us understand how we were doing from the ground level, the consumer level, which made us incredibly aware of what e.l.f. needed from us.

3. We were always ready to adapt.

After we’d been working with e.l.f. for a couple of years, several massive retail partners, including CVS and Target, decided to feature e.l.f. products. The company, of course, took off. Shortly thereafter, an investment bank bought e.l.f. — and took the company public.

All of a sudden, we weren’t dealing with the midsize company we’d come to know so well. Now, we were dealing with a massive, corporate client.

Their needs changed — so we did too.

For example, once online sales outgrew retail sales, we began to promote differently. We now had to make sure we weren’t offering products cheaper online than they were in stores. (This is always a big concern when a business has multiple channels: not polluting one specific channel.) And we also didn’t want to promote too aggressively online, effectively drowning out retailer promotions.

This required creativity.

Focus shifted from driving sales, to creating engagement. Email marketing became not only a sales channel, but an opportunity to define our brand.

The services we offered also became more sophisticated. If someone purchased a foundation, we would send them an email a couple of months later, reminding them to repurchase the product when they ran out. If a customer hadn’t purchased from us in a while, that would trigger a reintroduction email, featuring some of e.l.f.’s new or most popular products. If someone with an e.l.f. account had never actually made a purchase, we would create ways to engage them, from coupons to product-specific promotions.

These features took our marketing to the next level — the corporate level, in this case.

Instead of being outgrown by our client, we grew with them. Know that, when your client begins to grow exponentially, you can too — as long as you focus on creating a strong, trusted relationship, educating yourself on their brand, and continuing to evolve and offer new products and services to fit their changing needs.