Lifecycle Management
Our Marketing Automation Platform is incredibly easy to use
Everything you need to manage the lifecycle of your prospects and customers.
Why is it relevant to marketing automation?
Awareness
You are aware of the problem or need – e.g. your current marketing activities are failing or not delivering the number of leads needed for your business
Research
You now need to find out what is available – what is important for you. Is it price or service or some special element that you must have?
Comparison
Now that you know what is important to you, you start comparing the different options and decide what is the right solution for you. Maybe it is a trial or downloading a whitepaper to examine the finer details.
Purchase
This is the big one. You now need to decide who to buy from. Is the company a good fit? Are you looking for ongoing help or maybe you just want to buy and be left alone.
Lifecycle Management: #Awareness
This part of the process is lead generation. You are the experts in your business. You live, breathe your business and understand more about it than your visitors. You want to be aware of this and offer high-value information that your visitor will download in exchange for their email address. Once the form has been completed the email marketing comes into play during the stage:
- The Welcome email
- These are opened more than any other type of email, and their reception is critical because it establishes your relationship with your new subscriber. The importance here is to lay out exactly what they should expect, both content and frequency.
- Engage with us on social media
- Encourage your new subscriber to engage with you further through social media. If the welcome email is received well, subscribers are more likely to share the content with their friends and colleagues, thus increasing the number of new subscribers.
- Introduce other Information
- Your new subscriber is at the awareness stage and probably looking for more information, so it is essential to direct them to our resources, like whitepapers, eBooks and your blog.
Finally, the plan is to progress the new subscriber from the awareness stage to the Research stage. Every email should encourage subscribers to dig a little deeper, and when they do, your lifecycle management comes alive.
This is an example of an awareness stage offer. At the bottom of this screen, you will see a box titled “Download the complete guide to email marketing”. Go ahead and download a copy for yourself.
This means tailoring your communications to your contacts and their situations. All your contacts will be at different stages in the customer lifecycle, and your automations should reflect this. Utilise other platforms such as emails, SMS and social media to ensure the right message is being sent at the right time.
Every stage of the marketing lifecycle is crucial; you need to ensure a comprehensive approach covering all areas. At Flowbird, we work with clients every day to develop lifecycle campaigns to suit their businesses. You can leave the hard work to us, or we can point you in the right direction. We can be flexible to provide the level of support you need.
The first stage of the lifecycle is when a new contact interacts with your business for the first time. The most common example of this is subscribing to your newsletter.
Your new lead has actively chosen to contact your company, and this is an opportunity you need to grab with both hands. Whilst your customer is open to hearing more from your company, reach out to them with a dedicated welcome campaign.
Additionally, try to collect essential information on their preferences and interests. This will make it easy for you to begin sending tailored campaigns right from the get-go.
Everyone loves being celebrated now and again. Use birthdays and anniversaries to reach out to your contacts and make them feel valued.
Email them with a celebratory offer or to say congratulations. This works well for birthdays but can also be used for customer anniversaries.
Birthdays and anniversaries can make up an integral part of the customer lifecycle, and they’re easy to set up without needing a lot of data.
A re-engagement campaign aims to encourage a dormant customer to become active again. However – even if you fail – you are allowing that inactive customer to unsubscribe, rather than driving them to resent your business by continuing to send them emails they don’t want to receive.
With re-engagement campaigns, it’s important to remember that there’s nothing more effective than winning repeat business from an existing customer. After all, retaining a customer requires less input than generating a new one.
Following on from above, customer retention is key to a successful business. Your customers are what keep your business ticking over. It’s only fitting to reward them with exciting and valuable communication.
Segmentation is critical for successful customer retention. Use the wealth of data you have on your customers to send them tailored campaigns that will interest them. Tailor your communications to your customers’ purchases and other complementary products or services they may be interested in.
Behavioural targeting can range from abandoned cart emails to respond to visitors’ activity on your website. Marketing is all about interactions, and behavioural emails should react to your contacts.
You should be able to engage your contacts and encourage purchases by sending very relevant communications to them.
The Buyer's Journey
The buyer's journey is a vital concept in inbound marketing.
It is a concept that Hubspot extensively uses in its inbound methodology. As the name suggests, it depicts the buyer's journey from their awareness of your company to becoming part of your customer base.
The Awareness Stage
Stage 1
The awareness stage is when the buyer has recognised a potential opportunity or a problem that they need to solve.
The buyer does some non-specific research on their issue.
Ideal Content:
- Blog articles
- eBooks
The Consideration Stage
Stage 2
In the consideration stage, the buyer understands their issue and has ideas on how to solve it. The buyer does more specific research on the options available for their problem or opportunity.
Ideal Content:
- Expert opinions and guides
- Videos tutorials
The Decision Stage
Stage 3
The decision stage is the stage in which the buyer is choosing exactly how (and with whose help) they are going to solve their problem.
The buyer compares options and makes a choice.
Ideal content:
- Free trial
- Free consultation
Growing Your Database
Once you’ve grown a decent database, you’ve got a lot of robust data at your disposal. You need to use this wisely and make the most of it to engage and retain your contacts. You need to attract prospective customers to give you their details in return for emails, content and other communications that are of value to them. An ultimate goal is to balance growing your list of contacts whilst only sending to people interested in your business and communications.
Acquire
There are many tactics and methods you can use to grow your database. We can help you put together a strategy that will increase your contact numbers in no time. Using the following techniques, you can grow your contact numbers and the amount of information you have about them.
Data capture forms on your website and social media pages are the most common ways to collect contact information. These are the places your contacts are most likely to be attracted to visit. Use eye-catching, easy-to-use forms and put them in areas that are most likely to catch your visitors’ attention.
Subscription confirmation emails work well to keep your database clean. They ensure that your subscribers genuinely want to receive your communications.
Another method includes ‘share on social media links when a contact signs up for downloadable content. It encourages your contacts to spread the word of your company and increases the number of form fills with minimum effort.
Using text data capture across your offline channels can help attract different audiences in-store and by direct mail. Additionally, custom QR codes on your advertising materials can widen your reach further.
Engage
Growing a wealthy database of contacts is only the first part of the job. You need to keep your data accurate and up-to-date, ensuring that you’re not sending emails that don’t want to be received. Luckily for you, many email service providers will automatically deal with unsubscribes and hard bounces.
It would help encourage your contacts to update their details and preferences. Not only will this keep your data clean, but it will also mean you can continue to send tailored and personalised emails to your contacts.
You work hard to grow your contact database, and losing subscribers is never a nice feeling. However, it’s important to remember that unsubscribes are not a bad thing. Yes, perhaps they are not enjoying your communications, but it’s better for them to unsubscribe than mark your emails as spam.
Retain
Once you’ve got a wealth of recent, accurate information on your contacts, you need to do something with it. To retain your customers, you need to use their details to send them engaging, personalised communications. We can help you retain your customers through well-crafted campaigns that deliver value to your contacts.
Looking to build the perfect sales cycle and ensure that all prospects and customers are accounted for?
The Perfect Customer Lifecycle download helps you understand the crucial stages of the sales cycle and prioritise them.
Download today and find out how to implement a strategy to maximise your leads and customers.
