Data is changing the way that digital marketers make decisions.

It’s a tale as old as time: Learning more about your audience and targeting them with content that anticipates their needs is key to driving growth.

But how can you, a busy marketer, hone this tactic without adding even more to your already full plate? Through growth marketing, which involves testing and tracking how your company’s marketing performs across all stages of the customer experience, analyzing the results and learning from them on-the-go. This approach has been proven to boost revenue and save marketers time, with a focus on retention that cuts down on the work it takes to attract new customers ad infinitum.

To Maya Wilson, director of data science at Mailchimp, it’s about learning to meet customers exactly where they are – and being willing to experiment to get there.

“Think about the last marketing email that led you to buy something,” Wilson says. “When you opened that email, the content probably felt relevant to you. The products they were selling were something that interested you, and perhaps you even needed right then or had already been thinking about.”

Unlike traditional marketing, which typically starts and ends with customer acquisition, growth marketing goes a step further – focusing on relentless experimentation across all levels of the customer experience. In recent years, this approach has been enhanced by data-driven tools like A/B testing (in which a marketer tests two versions of the same communication on two samples of a company’s audience) and search engine optimization (the process of tweaking a website’s design to draw in new users from search).

Both approaches share the goal of increasing revenue – but with growth marketing, the focus isn’t on selling a product, but building a customer base, and a loyal one. After all, acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

Ceren Kolsarici, associate professor at the Smith School of Business, who specializes in AI, big data and digital marketing, looks at growth marketing as a form of “hacking.” (In the startup world, this is sometimes referred to as a “fail-fast” approach.)

“We can measure our impact or footprint at each stage and get feedback through that measurement to improve our actions,” Kolsarici explains. “We update our actions to increase efficiency as well as effectiveness. So, at every touchpoint, we become more and more effective.”

Effective growth marketing means staying relevant to a customer well beyond their initial purchase. Mailchimp’s audience segmentation tool makes this easier. “We provide predictive segments, including likelihood to purchase (high, medium and low), pre-built segments based on conditions like past purchases or relationship age,” Wilson explains. “You can also create your own segments based on behavioural insights from your customers, using tags.”

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The tool helps marketers identify segments of a customer base that are more likely to re-purchase, and informs how and when to approach them. Customer segmentation has been found to cut marketing spend and customer acquisition costs while driving revenue; companies that use Mailchimp’s tool can see revenue gains of up to 88 per cent.*

Wilson offers the example of a kid’s clothing store. “If someone buys infant clothes in 2023, you might tag them with ‘child born in 2023′. In 2024, you’ll know to advertise clothes for toddlers to them, and in 2028 they should be receiving your ‘first day of school sale’ campaigns geared toward parents of rising kindergarteners.”

Aside from segmentation and tagging, Wilson also suggests using A/B testing to drive growth. “If you usually feature product images with models, try some images with your products standing alone,” she suggests. “If your tone is usually joyful, try an urgent subject line and see whether you get more clicks.”

But, she notes, greater segmentation means more content for marketing teams to create.

“Busy marketers don’t have time for that,” she says. So, she suggests letting AI streamline the process.

“AI can help you create different versions of your campaigns to test,” she explains. “It can understand the differences in performance of those variants and … allow you to learn more about your audience and how to more effectively market to them.” Like Wilson, Kolsarici also supports an agile marketing approach. “A/B testing is very popular when it comes to measuring impact,” she says. “Randomized control trials are almost seen as a gold standard.”

The good thing about digital campaigns, such as email marketing, is the speed at which testing can be implemented and changes made – sometimes, within minutes. And, true to the principles of agile growth marketing, if something fails, learn from it quickly and move on.

“It’s really easy to update campaigns when it happens on digital platforms,” she adds.

Getting bold in experimenting with data can feel daunting, but Wilson views it as a practice that can be rewarding for any business.

“When you try new things, you may gain some really meaningful insights about how to better connect with your audience,” Wilson says.

“The more personalized the content is, the more it will resonate,” she adds. “When the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time, customers feel more connected to a business and are ultimately more likely to buy.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Mailchimp. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.