Best Practice Advice
How to develop your email marketing lifecycle programme
People are consistently bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every day, with this in mind how can you be sure that your email is the one that is read and actioned? Well it’s no easy task. In today’s marketplace people are no longer passive to marketing messages so your email campaign must be as relevant to the individual as possible. Mapping your email marketing strategy against a customers’ lifecycle is an approach you should consider to ensure your message meets a customers’ needs at a particular lifecycle stage.
In this best practice article Gianfranco Cuzziol, eCircle’s Planning Consultant, explains how to take a customer-centric approach to your email marketing strategy with lifecycle messages.What do we mean by lifecycle? One definition is "The purpose of the customer life cycle is to define and communicate the stages through which a customer progresses when considering, purchasing and using products, and the associated business processes a company uses to move the customer through the customer life cycle’’ (Source: http://www.information-management.com).
Make the most of your customer journey with individualised programs: Successful email messages are those that are relevant to the recipient depending on the stage in the lifecycle and the customer value. Engaging customers when they are most eager to hear from you is integral to any lifecycle marketing campaign. Begin by mapping out key customer moments when people are most receptive to getting something from your brand. According to Forrester Research targeted emails generate on average over 4x the revenue of none targeted emails so it’s well worth the effort.Take segmentation step by step, including email engagement analysis: Identify key customer segments that make the most sense for your product / service. Define levels of engagement i.e. not opened email in 1mth, 6mths, one year etc, lapsed, never etc and develop a programme to engage these segments.
Make full use of event based triggered lifecycle emails: An event triggered lifecycle programme can be a highly effective approach to reach out to your customers at a time when they are most receptive. Event triggers are automatically deployed based on click behaviour (email or website) and/or events in a subscribers profile, such as, subscription anniversaries, a welcome series or transactional emails for example. Event triggered programmes provide you with a fantastic opportunity engage your audience in relevant, personalised way whilst simultaneously reminding them of your brand and reinforcing the benefits at a time when they are most responsive.
Customer reviews within an email can increase revenue per email by up to 50%: Product review emails where you ask customers to review product/s they have purchased can be a great addition to any lifecycle campaign. You can use reviews to inform your lifecycle programme and keep customers engaged with a ‘top-rated’ or ‘deal of the week’ product email.
Don’t ignore the mundane..transactional emails can have the highest open rates: Transactional message typically perform better than any other type of email so be sure to exploit the marketing opportunities these messages provide, such as cross-selling related products, using promotional offers and inquiring about preferences.
Set KPIs that support marketing objectives, don’t stop at open rates! When planning your strategy decide on what you want to achieve. What will make a campaign a success for you? Identify key objectives such as increasing relevance, increasing ROI, growing response rates, identify patterns and behaviour, retaining customer interest or increasing spend per customer, for example and set KPI’s that support your objectives.
In conclusion, lifecycle messaging is an approach to email marketing that combines tools and strategy to develop multi touch email programs that evolve through the customer lifecycle. By targeting people with relevant offers at a time when they are most receptive you will ultimately improve your bottom line and engage customers.
At eCircle we offer a full consultancy service and can help to totally develop and execute your email marketing lifecycle strategy. To find out more about eCircle’s consultancy services please visit our website here or contact Gianfranco Cuzziol (Planning Consultant) on 020 7618 4200 or g.cuzziol@ecircle.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If you wish to receive further news from the email marketing sector please subscribe here: www.ecircle.com/en/newsletter.
