An interview with Julia Howard, Growth manager at Electrify America
We sit down with Julia Howard, Growth Manager at Electrify America. Electrify America is the largest public fast charging network in the U.S. — letting you charge in as little as 30 minutes
How did you end up at Electrify America and what problem does Electrify America solve for its clients?
I came to Electrify America from Volkswagen of America. The mission at Electrify America is to drive EV adoption by investing in charging infrastructure and educating the general public on electric vehicles. Electrify America has over 800 charging stations in 46 states plus D.C. in convenient locations to help build range confidence and enable consumers to make the switch to EV.
As the Growth Channel Marketing Manager, what are your main responsibilities at Electrify America?
My responsibilities include helping external automaker and real estate partners in this transition to electric vehicles – working with automakers on education and collaborating on customer charging agreements and helping our real estate team secure sites hosts at convenient locations. I also support the marketing efforts, along with my team, of the Electrify Home and Electrify Commercial business units. Electrify Home provides Level 2 home charging solutions for businesses and consumers while Electrify Commercial delivers turnkey EV charging solutions to businesses, utility companies, fleet owners, travel centers and convenience stores.
What role does your Marketing team play when it comes to organising, operating and improving your growth funnel?
Marketing and Sales are closely aligned, and both have full insight into the lead process - from lead generation to lead nurture and follow-up. Marketing does not hand-off, we work with Sales all the way through from the delivery of qualified leads and lead response to the development of supporting collateral and ongoing marketing support once the lead has turned into a contract.
At ColdFire, when we look at our clients' Growth strategies, they vary greatly. Some have found a single, scalable client acquisition process while others thrive on a mix of top-of-funnel strategies. If you had to summarise the high-level LeadGen strategy of Electrify America, what would it be?
Electrify America Marketing supports a large array of internal and external clients, so the strategy is a matrix of processes that can deliver a customize approach based on the unique needs of marketing opportunity. We find the flexibility is necessary for a very young industry that is showing immense growth and rapid changes.
What is a Growth technique that you've used at Electrify America or at previous companies which you believe is underutilized at most Marketing teams - and why?
Transparency and availability of information. With everything available online, you want your potential customers to be able to quickly, easily, and clearly access information about your company that is relevant to their needs. Additionally, providing a clear path to contact you as the business for additional information, with a quick response rate. Establishing a relationship with potential clients where their needs are recognized will help turn relationships into business opportunities.
Growth can happen using marketing and product development. Which has worked better for Electrify America and why do you think that is?
At Electrify America, we have a fantastic volume of leads generated, and we spend the majority of our time sifting through the Evaluation process to find the perfect fit to move through to closing. As we evaluate our process, we are looking to move the Evaluation stage higher in the funnel, automating it so that we have a more streamlined process.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
