Lifecycle Marketing: Step-by-Step Lifecycle Marketing Strategy
Lifecycle marketing is a surprisingly effective strategy that allows you to get the best results from every single marketing action and always reach the customer with the right message and at the right time.
Whether it materializes through sending an email, launching an offer, or putting premium content online, customer lifecycle marketing allows you to reach a specific target with the appropriate tone and message at the exact point of the buyer's journey.
Table of Contents
What is Lifecycle Marketing?
Lifecycle marketing is a client-focused, one-to-one marketing strategy that integrates the entire customer experience in a single approach, from the first contact, through to acquisition and retention. To do this, the marketer uses the information given by the behaviors of his prospects and customers (purchases, visit to your website, recency, frequency and monetary value, etc.).
Marketing customer lifecycle is divided into 3 phases - attract, convert and keep a customer - within the buyer’s journey, oriented on customer loyalty and the generation of repeat purchases.
Lifecycle marketing is about adjusting the style of communication to the current preferences of the client. It proposes to create a marketing plan taking into account the needs of various types of recipients - new, returning, inactive. That contact with the consumer should be individualized and consider the current stage on the purchasing path.
Another important aspect of product lifecycle marketing is understanding the client's needs in the long term. This means that advertising messages should be distributed not only to people looking for a given product or service, but also to inactive recipients. Providing dedicated newsletters, rebate codes, birthday discounts - these are just some of the incentives to buy.
Adapting marketing messages to the current needs of users is particularly valuable in the e-commerce industry. Marketers have at their disposal a full range of tools to support potential customers in making purchasing decisions. In order to create personalized messages, you need to use a variety of sources of information. Not only the data left when shopping online is taken into account, but also open rate or click rate.
Marketing Lifecycle Stages
If you want your campaigns to be effective, you need to implement a plan with 3 marketing lifecycle stages:
1. Attracting attention
This stage is about delivering content that may be of interest to potential users. These are i.a. infographics, research reports, publications in social media, blog articles. Their purpose is to collect user data for the purpose of delivering personalized mailings or newsletters.
2. Conversion/Sales
The second stage of marketing customer lifecycle is the involvement of users interested in the offer. For this purpose, you can create promotional campaigns supplemented with dedicated mailings. At the same time, user behavior should be analyzed, including track whether they open offer links or fill out forms.
3. Keeping customers
Selling a product is not the ultimate goal of the adopted strategies. Marketing activities should also be carried out after the transaction is completed. Loyal customers are very valuable to the company. They recommend a given brand to their friends, becoming its ambassadors. In addition, on subsequent purchases, they are able to spend up to 22 times more than new users. So let's take care of them using the content marketing lifecycle.
The Additional Benefits of Lifecycle Marketing
Since the marketing lifecycle process is made up of different phases, it is important to be clear that each of these corresponds to a particular type of action, aimed at obtaining the maximum degree of attention from a target that is in that specific phase of the buyer's journey.
Lifecycle marketing is so strategic precisely because:
- it allows you to optimize the marketing process, making every single action more targeted and effective;
- it allows you to reach consumers from the first stage of the buyer’s journey and to ensure their satisfaction and loyalty since they are mere leads. Compared to waiting for them in the decision phase, now ready to buy (and they may not necessarily be ready to buy from you), there is a big difference;
- seeing you always present by their side reassures customers and creates a relationship of loyalty immediately; targeted messages (which seem written especially for them) at each stage will also increase the feeling of trust.
Marketing customer lifecycle doesn’t end its cycle with the purchase, and this emphasizes your reliability and authority. Constant communication, including after-sales, also increases the loyalty rate and the possibility that the purchase will be repeated.
Step-by-Step Lifecycle Marketing Strategy
Correctly implemented lifecycle marketing strategy allows you to keep the attention of recipients, regardless of what stage of the purchasing path they are at.
The relationship that exists between brands and their customers is based on the notion of value. If a customer does not derive value from their relationship with a brand, he will gradually disengage and abandon ship at some point.
So, there is a moment when a potential user becomes "a lead", or even makes his first purchase if you sell low-involvement products.
Then you have to increase this value to build loyalty and keep a customer over the long term. In fact, the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. This is why it is necessary to exploit the “honeymoon” phase which follows the first purchase, and to build the “habit” of using and/or buying your product.
Finally, to consolidate the loyalty (and profitability) of a customer, educate him to understand the full value of your products or services so that these positive experiences are transformed:
- in sponsorships;
- in the purchase of complementary products;
- in proposal of personalized products;
- and/or in a use even more rooted in his habits.
6 More Tips on How to Respond to Customer Needs Through the Lifecycle Marketing
Personalized content helps to support product lifecycle marketing and increase sales, which allows companies to grow in the long run. So, how to create attention-grabbing content?
1. Use dedicated tools
In order to prepare personalized messages, it is worth investing in the right tools. CRM systems or ERP platforms work well. Thanks to them, it is possible to segment recipients according to various criteria, e.g. age, gender, place of residence, and completed transactions. This makes it easier to send messages to interested people.
2. Analyze your email marketing reports
Marketing automation support tools facilitate not only the distribution of messages, but also their analysis. Thanks to this, you will find out if the e-mail marketing campaigns were effective - you can check, among others, open rate.
3. Test the effectiveness of the message
To verify that the messages you create are well received by users, perform A/B tests. Change the content and subject of e-mails. Check which versions of the message are opened the most.
4. Find out what interests your customers
Create content that will interest users. To find out, you can follow the comments on social media. Also check the keywords on which customers find your website. Google Analytics statistics are also a good source of information. Thanks to them, you will find out what your customers are looking for, which products are the most popular.
5. Convert universal messages into profit-generating content
Content marketing is a great way to gain a group of loyal customers. Today, customers are more and more demanding. It is not enough anymore to create a banner to sell a product. So how do you convince customers to accept your offer? By creating content that they find interesting. They can be, among others guides, personalized newsletters, birthday greetings.
6. Bet on personalized communication
Individualization of marketing messages is a way to develop and increase the company's profits. However, it is important to constantly analyze the activities and improve the way of communication. It is worth checking, among others click rate indicators. You should also remember not to limit yourself to specific campaigns, but look much wider and look for communication gaps. Only then content lifecycle marketing will be effective.
Lifecycle Marketing Examples
Here are the most common lifecycle marketing examples and automated email scenarios:
1. Convert more leads
When your prospects abandon the conversion process and you own their email, you can automate cart abandonment campaigns:
- one hour after abandoning the cart, send a message to verify that it was not because of a particular problem that the prospect abandoned the purchase process;
- a day later, resend an email, possibly including a promo code or a specific offer to encourage the customer to complete the order;
- three days later, remind the prospect that their promo code is still valid but will expire shortly.
2. Welcome new customers
Of course, you can automate welcome scenarios for your new customers:
- start with an introductory email that says more about your brand, your products, your values;
- then, focus your second communication on discovery by sharing useful content or inviting the customer to join you on your social networks;
- you can follow up with personalized recommendations to help shoppers explore certain products they might like but didn't see when they made their first purchase;
- to encourage the second purchase, you can end your message with a discount coupon or limited-time offer to induce a second purchase.
In order to attract customers at the first stage of the lifecycle marketing, you should offer them incentives in the form of discounts and promotional coupons. It is also important to show the benefits of purchasing a given product - newsletters, posts on social media or guide materials will work perfectly here.
3. Retain and make profitable your existing customers
Another popular type of email sequence is the post-purchase sequence:
- send an email to request feedback on your customer's satisfaction with their purchase and product;
- if your customer is satisfied, you can ask them to leave a review on your product;
- if you have also sent a welcome sequence that ends with a time-limited offer, you can send the customer a reminder 24 hours before the offer expires;
- by analyzing what your customer has already purchased, you can send an email promoting a complementary product to maximize your cross-selling;
- if they make a second purchase with you, then why not encourage them to recommend your brand to their acquaintances (referrals)?
Conclusion
To sum up, the main challenge for brands is to maximize their customers' lifetime value and profitability while retaining them and turning them into ambassadors.
It turns out that the lifecycle marketing helps you a lot, by allowing you to communicate to the right person with the right message at the right time - wherever she is in her journey and whatever type of client.
In order to carry out effective product lifecycle marketing activities, it is necessary to collect and analyze a lot of information. It takes into account customer purchase history, click rates for selected mailing campaigns or data from social media. Thorough verification of these elements is time-consuming, but translates into a higher conversion rate.