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Every experienced marketer knows that it’s rarely a first-time exposure that catches a prospect and gets them to convert. By the same token, customers that have already made one purchase from you--while more likely to buy again--need to be reminded of the value your brand has to offer in order to complete the conversion. When it comes to email marketing, the customer lifecycle is a valuable tool for optimizing your strategy; Site Impact’s experts have long been aware of this. But what does that actually look like? Today we’re going to dive into the topic.
The most basic question to answer is what is a brand’s customer lifecycle, and how is that lifecycle specific to the brand? A customer lifecycle is, at the most fundamental level, the process from taking someone from being a prospect to being a loyal customer. The sales funnel is one format that marketers often use to describe the process: how do you get someone who’s never heard about your brand (or one of your products or services) before to buy? But there’s a deeper application that applies to direct marketing efforts like email: how do you simultaneously reach out to new prospects and also reengage existing customers to get both groups to convert? The first step is to identify the specific lifecycle of your brand’s customers. Each brand’s prospects and active customers follow a different series of steps to get from interest to purchase, and identifying your brand’s lifecycle will take you a long way towards optimizing your efforts. Questions to ask yourself:
â— How many times does a prospect open an email before converting?
â— How many emails do I send per customer conversion?
â— Do some emails seem to convert more readily than others?
â— Which campaigns got the most conversions?
There are more questions you can drill down to within these categories, but these are a good starting point.
Say that you’ve identified your lifecycle, and on average you send out 3 emails about a particular deal to get the conversions you’re looking for. This is important information! You know that in general, it takes your customers hearing about an offer 3 times for them to decide. It can seem tempting to try and shorten that cycle, but if you push too hard, you can have the opposite result: instead of boosting conversions, you might find that fewer people convert. Instead, cater to that lifecycle in your strategy, by creating and implementing campaigns that increase the intensity over three emails. Don’t go all out on the sales pitch in your first email of the campaign; instead, provide a steady stream of information and work up to the hard pitch.
This may seem to contradict the point above, but it actually doesn’t; while trying to compete with your customer lifecycle and shorten it dramatically can blow up in your face, looking at the lifecycle to determine what could be causing it to take a longer time for a customer to convert is beneficial. Compare your average to your highest performance and discover what was different about the campaign that got you conversions in one contact, or two, instead of three. Identify what tends to get your prospects onboard more immediately, and incorporate that earlier on in the process. That way you’re not competing with the lifecycle--you’re adjusting your strategy in response to the bottlenecks your lifecycle has revealed.
Your customer lifecycle is a valuable tool for all aspects of your marketing strategy, but when it comes to email marketing, it’s essential. Knowing how many points of contact it takes to get your conversions helps you to isolate what could be going wrong, and also to find out what points need you to deliver the most weight and the hardest-hitting strategies. Contact Site Impact to learn how we can help you boost your email game in every possible way.
