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How Does Your Marketing Fit in the Customer Lifecycle?
Think about your customers and their lifecycle within the scope of your business. Like any living thing, it is born, lives, dies, and if you believe, it can be reincarnated. Like doctors who try to prolong people's lives and heal broken parts,marketers have the responsibility of not only bringing in new life through new customers, but also in healing damaged or neglected relationships. For most marketing efforts, we distribute to targeted audiences. Looking forward, though, perhaps we should target our campaigns as well as our customers.
The key to marketing has traditionally been to "cover all the bases" - in other words, to get in at all customer touch points. This can be a dangerous concept. Think back to your last interaction with a company that "covered all the bases." Was it an overwhelming experience, on the border of annoying? Quite possibly, especially if that company tried to cover everything all at once.
Recently, we were dealing with a national fulfillment company who not only covered all the bases, but did it with such persistence that it became overbearing. While we appreciated their thoroughness, their continual emails became bothersome - to the point where we will have to think twice about using them again.
eROI is consistently refining its customer lifecycle graph, but that does not mean adding more touch points, necessarily. In Figure 1, we show the overall customer lifecycle with the most relevant touch points.
We are not just dealing with email marketing, but also with two other important and often overlooked aspects of marketing: surveying and tracking. Surveying and tracking lie on a baseline because they are something that should be done for both current and prospective/lost customers. It is difficult to survey a lost customer, mainly because they don't want to hear from you anymore, but any insight you can get from them can be a powerful tool for improvement. This can also have
a positive effect on them. This turn for the better can happen because the lost customer now thinks you care about them enough to ask for their feedback.
Tracking is not a new technology or idea, but the correct analysis or simple review of the data is still something more than two-thirds of companies overlook. In a recent survey, more than 70% of businesses that have implemented either web analytics or CRM packages do not review or analyze their data. We don't need to discuss the importance of reviewing web analytics or CRM reports, but coupled with proper surveying, you can gain a huge advantage over your competitor who isn't taking advantage of these tools. Quantitative data supported by qualitative answers tell you, why, how, what, not just when and where.
So let's start by breaking this graph down into three of the four parts and we will proceed in the following order:
First, we must find a potential lead or customer d Second, we must make them a customer and keep them happy e Third, should we somehow be unfortunate enough to lose this customer, we must fine a way to get them back.
Opt-In/Welcome Email. Let's start with finding our potential lead. Do you have a lead capture vehicle on your site? Do you gather any information when a user downloads a whitepaper, downloads a demo, or attends a webinar? If you don't, you need to start. By not doing this, you are missing a serious opportunity to grow your customer list.
Introductory offer. Now that you have an opt-in area, it is time to entice a customer; this means an introductory offer. This can be a simple email that gives the recipient a reason to come back to your site and get more familiar with it. Offers can include:
- Access to whitepapers
- Free download of software
- Money-off coupon
- Free shipping for first order placed
- Behind-the-scenes access at a webinar (talk to the analyst)
The offer needs to be relevant, worthwhile, and should drive qualified traffic to your site.
Surveying at this stage is a crucial piece that is often overlooked. Not only should you look at your email metrics, but you should follow up with those customers that did not opt to utilize the promotion to find out why and how you can make the promotion more enticing.
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