Tariffs Are Rising. Your Marketing Needs to Too.
Implemented, these can immediately make your company more resilient.
Two tactical, but dramatic changes, can 10.5X (only slight clickbait used) the attraction and conversion rate of your prospects. i.e. get more money into your account, even during a downturn.
The immediate impact of tariffs pushed into place by economic pressures (and a certain tangerine-toned policymaker) likely won’t be great. Exports are wobbling, markets are falling, costs are spiking, and customers will be counting the pennies with a stronger microscope.
Everyone in the UK will get slapped with the 10% baseline rate, meaning every business needs to pivot fast, back to the basics.
During the 2009 financial crash, it was MailChimp who didn’t just ride the wave, they became anti-fragile.
They didn’t panic.
They re-orientated.
They launched a freemium model - giving away core access to their email marketing platform when small businesses needed it most.
Then, they planted a flag as the most generous, sound, and empathetic tool in the market.
The result?
Users exploded from 85,000 to 450,000 in a year
Brand loyalty skyrocketed
And they set themselves up to excel when recovery hit
But, this wasn’t just about pricing.
It was about owning the most powerful tool in a downturn.
Email.
Email doesn’t rely on algorithm changes or paid ads. It’s direct. It’s controlled. And it’s free.
When tariffs jack up costs, email slashes your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), aka the cash you burn to snag a new buyer. It stays lean, building bonds and driving sales without emptying your wallet.
MailChimp nailed this with dead-simple templates for cash-strapped startups. Today, that’s a UK retailer emailing a ‘tariff-dodging discount’ to loyal buyers, or a service firm dropping a cost-saving tip to hook leads. It’s about being the clutch player when wallets snap shut.
Let’s even take Constant Contact from the ‘90s. CC doubled down too. In the early 2000s crash, they pushed affordable, drag-and-drop campaigns - growing to 150,000 users by 2007 while others tanked.
Picture emailing your list a ‘beat the tariff blues’ offer—same grit, same win.
It builds relationships. It drives conversions. It scales intimacy, without scaling spend. And most importantly, it gets you paid.
We’re talking 36-40:1 ROI, as per the Data & Marketing Association (DMA).
Email’s still the champ, but in a spiralling economy, the instinct is to run paid ads.
So as tariffs crash the party, here’s the real question for you:
How can you expand your offer to include a sneak peek and more freemium elements?
Are you ensuring prospects click on the sign-up button, directly linking those elements to the use of email marketing (still the highest ROI channel on the planet), and use its power to its full potential?
Now isn’t the time to shrink.
It’s time to master the basics to grow.
Just like MailChimp and Constant Contact.
Stay tuned for more tariff-busting tricks in this series.
P.S. Want a second pair of eyes on your next campaign? I help brands write emails that get opened, clicked, and paid.
