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Lifecycle marketing is about delivering personalized communication, nailing the timing, and taking care of your audience before and after conversion. Sounds idyllic, but we know some tricks to make it work!
Learn about all the stages of customer lifecycle marketing and what to do to make your business use its full potential.
What is lifecycle marketing?
Lifecycle marketing is a way of keeping your customers hooked and satisfied from start to finish. It focuses on building lasting relationships and making people stay loyal at every stage of their buying journey, as well as before and after it.
Lifecycle marketing: what does it bring to the business?
A well-performed lifecycle marketing strategy helps businesses attract prospects and retain existing customers. And here’s what comes along with it:
01 Higher customer engagement
It’s all about engaging website and app visitors before, during, and after they convert. Their brand awareness is pretty high, and if you deliver content your audience enjoys right from the start, they are more likely to interact and engage with it.
02 Increased customer retention
Keeping in touch with prospects and customers at every stage lets you build a relationship with them. It leads to customer loyalty and repeat business. To make it happen, use an omnichannel tool that will make customer lifecycle marketing a breeze.
03 Better customer satisfaction
As businesses address their customers’ needs at every step and across multiple channels, customer satisfaction scores might go up high. But not only. A solid lifecycle marketing plan drives conversion rates, open rates, and click-throughs as well.
04 Improved revenue flow
As you can engage your web visitor at a certain time, it might increase the revenue and lead to repeat purchases. Use AI chatbots to recommend relevant products based on customer purchases.
Lifecycle stages vs. customer journey
Those two terms might be regarded as the same concept, but there is a difference.
The customer journey represents the entire path a customer takes from brand awareness to post-purchase, while the lifecycle stages specifically refer to the phases within that journey. For example, the acquisition stage, retention stage, loyalty stage, and more.
What are the stages of lifecycle marketing?
Lifecycle marketing takes different stages, each of which requires a bit different approach and care from a different angle.
Figure out what they are and how to tackle them.
Reach & engage
It is the first stage, where you grab the attention of potential customers and keep them interested in your brand. It’s your time to create the first impression and build brand awareness.
Very often, it engages various marketing channels, like social messengers or emails.
Nurture & educate
Once you’ve grabbed the attention, you need to keep your audience interested. It’s an exciting lifecycle marketing stage where marketers do their best to build strong relationships and help your target audience understand the value you bring on board.
At this stage, your job is to offer valuable information, resources, and support to nurture their interest and address their questions. This is when they decide to trust you.
To make it happen, share insightful content, entertaining stories, and handy tips that show them how your products or services can solve their problems or make their lives better. It’s not about selling, though. Share your expertise and respond to their questions. Let them know that you’re an expert in your field.
Convert & close
And here it turns out that all the effort you put in before pays off. Because the prospects turn into paying customers.
But! It doesn’t mean that now you can just watch. This lifecycle stage also calls for extra care. Make it easy for customers to move forward in the sales funnel – provide clear calls-to-action that encourage them to buy, sign up for a subscription, or interact with your business.
And make these processes as simple as possible, not giving the reason to give up at this point.
Support & grow
Even if the conversion is done, the process is not over. Now, it’s time to troubleshoot any issues they may encounter after the purchase or conversion. Also, it’s your chance to grow after their feedback. Ask for it and listen to their suggestions.
Show that you care about them after closing the deal and that you want to change for the better. Send them emails asking for opinions or spot them browsing your website after receiving the product using a chatbot.
➡️ Send amazing emails to enhance your lifecycle marketing strategy.
What makes customer lifecycle marketing strategies strong?
There are a few tactics you can use to make the most of marketing at every stage of it. These are:
#1 Tools for reaching out to your clients and prospects
Get your audience where they are! And there’s no need to have thousands of apps and tabs open. You can follow your audience using one tool – Xtremepush.
With its many great capabilities, you can engage your audience across every device. For example, welcome them when they first open your app and explain its main features through automated messages.
And besides streamlined communication, you can get useful data. Keep an eye on email open rates, click-through rates, customer engagement, and more. These insights will let you understand your audience better and what makes the lifecycle marketing plan even stronger.
#2 Well-defined goals
Setting goals is the base of every undertaking. Without a clear goal, it’s easy to get lost or feel a bit unmotivated. On top of that, these goals make your lifecycle marketing strategies align with your overall business objectives. You can control whether your marketing efforts go as planned.
#3 Good understanding of customer lifecycle stages
When you understand all the customer lifecycle stages, you’ll be able to make the most of it. You simply have the insider knowledge that guides your every move and can create an effective strategy to increase customer lifetime.
For instance, you understand that support is equally important before the conversion as well as after.
#4 Personalized and targeted communication
Targeting takes communication a step further because you reach the right customers with the right messages at the right time.
Having a robust segmentation in place, including demographics, behaviors, and interests, you can deliver messages that are highly relevant to your audience: using your clients’ names, referencing their previous interactions, or recommending products based on their preferences.
It’s a way of showing them that you remember them and they’re special to you.
📨 Send a returning customer who previously purchased running shoes a message with a recommendation. Offer them a complementary product or other items from the collection.
#5 Seamless and consistent customer experience
When customers encounter a consistent brand voice, messaging, and visual identity across various channels, it’s like a familiar tune that they can easily recognize. They just know that to expect – they know that whenever they contact you, buyers encounter a professional who is ready to help, maintaining a consistent brand voice.
On top of that, it builds brand loyalty. As long as your customers have a positive experience at every stage, they’re more likely to stay with you in the long run. Also, it is very probable that they may want to recommend your products or services to others.
And it’s worth remembering that word-of-mouth marketing is a very powerful tool.
#6 Data-driven strategic decisions in lifecycle marketing
Having all the useful data, you can determine which channels are most popular with your clients. And reaching them there is a great way to optimize your resources! You can identify opportunities for personalization and targeting and deliver relevant messages at the right time and through the most effective channels. But first – customer lifecycle analysis.
And with the data, such as who your audience trends or where they tend to engage with your brand, you can create an effective lifecycle marketing campaign. To make it happen, track key metrics: conversion rates, UCaaS metrics like quality of service, customer lifetime value, customer engagement levels, and more.
Then, you understand your buyer personas better and create effective lifecycle marketing campaigns.
#7 Continuous testing and optimization
Add extra power to your lifecycle marketing strategy and test regularly. Testing is excellent when you want to determine which of your campaign elements work the best. Check out new CTAs, slogans, visuals, and anything you think could do better. A/B testing may come in handy here.
Speaking of optimization, it is an ongoing process of improving your strategies based on testing results. It’s the next step after testing. Also, optimization provides a means of adapting to changing consumer behaviors and market dynamics.
#8 Integration of multiple channels and touchpoints
Email, social media, Instagram messages, website, and offline interactions – these are all channels and touchpoints that you can integrate for more effective customer lifecycle marketing. Having them all in place makes engaging customers a breeze.
Keep consistent messaging and branding across channels – strengthen your offering, and provide a seamless customer’s journey as customers move between points of contact.
#9 Proactive customer support
Being proactive means anticipating your customers’ needs and connecting with them before they ask. It’s a signal that you genuinely care about their satisfaction.
It’s worth using this strategy at different stages, not only the initial ones. Whenever you spot newcomers or those who are at a high loyalty stage, send them a message proactively. They might be welcome back messages, invitation to loyalty programs, or a coupon.
This kind of support may build trust and loyalty as well. When you go out of your way to offer help and support, customers appreciate you, especially if you provide quick and relevant information. And it’s possible they become your brand advocates.
💡 Identify upselling or cross-selling opportunities when reaching out to customers first.
#10 Scalability and flexibility of lifecycle marketing
Being able to expand and handle increased demands may mean managing higher volumes of customer interactions and supporting your business as it grows. And in this case, flexibility is needed as you adapt to a new environment where you manage many customers.
Scalability and flexibility future-proof your efforts. When designing lifecycle strategies like this, you save many resources in the long run – you may be sure that your customer lifecycle marketing strategies can grow with your business.
Use Xtremepush to turn prospects into lifetime customers
Xtremepush is marketing automation software that lowers customer churn, boosts sales, and improves customer lifecycle efficiency.
Check out what we offer!
#1 Omnichannel customer experience
It’s a complete customer engagement platform with a built-in Customer Data Platform (CDP). Give it a go and make the most out of hyper-personalized omnichannel marketing. It is a must for lifecycle marketing.
#2 Personalized marketing
Drive signups and increase monthly active users with targeted messages. Use various platforms to create a more personalized and engaging experience at every stage of a customer journey.
Acquire, engage, and retain using only one tool!
#3 Drag-and-drop journey builder
Use a drag-and-drop journey builder to visualize and create campaigns such as abandoned shopping cart campaigns to capture lost sales. It’s a useful feature for lifecycle marketing to plan and implement targeted and efficient advertising.
#4 AI-backed multi-stage campaigns
The platform lets you create campaigns with multiple stages backed by artificial intelligence. You’ll never get stuck with your work again. Use AI support for smooth, easy creation processes.
#5 Single customer view
Break data silos and get a single customer view. At Xtremepush, you’ll see all the customer data in one place, even if acquired from different channels.
Our software collects and sorts relevant data on individual users, such as time spent on the site, visits and viewed pages, and more. All to give you a clear picture of the buyer’s journey.
#6 Real-time engagement
Attract customers with real-time engagement. Send in-app messages and push notifications on every device. Deliver optimized, profitable campaigns on every device through Xtremepush.
#7 Various channels of engagement
The tool supports various channels of engagement, including mobile apps, web browsers, email, SMS, and social messengers. Contact a potential customer through a preferred channel during the entire customer journey, and consider hiring a business plan writer to go along with it.
#8 Tools for success
Use tools for successful lifecycle marketing, including visual journey builder, GDPR compliance, analytics, intelligent delivery, CRM integration, segmentation, and more. See the additional features for a full picture of what the Xtremepush can do.
All provided by one tool with plenty of possibilities, which are:
- personalized and engaging customer experience
- effective marketing campaigns
- a deeper understanding of the customer better
- optimized, profitable campaigns across all devices
Contact us to learn more about Xtremepush!
Now you know everything about lifecycle marketing and its stages
Increase customer retention thanks to a deep understanding of lifecycle marketing. Use all the tips and tricks and reach out to your audience whenever you want. Use Xtremepush for a customer lifecycle marketing strategy.
Contact us to see a demo and see how Xtremepush works in practice!
