Lifecycle marketing is an effective program to reach current contacts and customers for repeat and referral business. It’s a special case of segmentation because it’s one you have direct knowledge of – the prospect and customer’s exposure to your product and the sales process.
Lifecycle marketing is strongest where there are clear and immediate signs of purchase intent, such as clicking an ad or filling a shopping cart. But it also applies in the B2B world for self-employed professionals and small businesses.
Your customer message depends on where they are in the lifecycle. Here are a few examples.
- After initial lead acquisition, send educational information and offers to help that reinforce your messaging, unique selling proposition, value, and special product features. Stage this over time or use an autoresponder to maintain an ongoing relationship during this crucial time.
- After initial use, such as first login, ask if there are questions or for immediate feedback.
- After different levels of use or different features are first used, send appropriate tips.
- After a positive transaction, such as a referral or purchase, send a thank you.
- Before an important service or billing date, such as subscription renewal or lapse, remind the user of your service value and upcoming transaction.
- Before an important date, such as service or use anniversary, send a personal email to show your appreciation.
- After a customer demonstrates that they’re one of your top customers, such as through usage, level of purchase, community support, or other engagement, send a loyalty email that shows your appreciation and recognition and turns them into an evangelist.
- When customers become inactive or at-risk, re-engage them to learn what happened and how you can recover their business.
TOOL TIP – WeMeUs contact management and lead generation is a personal CRM (Customer Relationship Management). WeMeUs both reminds you to stay in touch with top contacts and tracks the status of all your sales opportunities from initial contact through discussion and engagement. Use tags to further track customer segments and affiliation.
Business shrinks to nanoscale
Published March 3, 2010 Business , Commentary , Entrepreneurs/Startups , Future Leave a CommentCaroline McCarthy writes Why the social-media aggregator has croaked. Their downfall was inevitable. It’s no different from the roaring 90’s boom. A grand slam like Twitter inspires thousands of innovation-less entrepreneurial marketers and developers. Pop tech media celebrates the new and hip. Investors get infatuated and pile on.
The business is exposed as a technology with no market. A few lucky ones flip their ventures to the big boys. And everyone scurries like cockroaches to find and gush over the NEXT big thing.
This market froth will be repeated ad infinitum. The online sector has entered an unprecedented era of computing abundance. This is similar to the record industry 15 years ago when technology from MP3s to the web to P2P pried open monopolistic content scarcity and destroyed mass media.
Open source, APIs, high-level development platforms and databases, the cloud, and free services combine to not only make it easy and cheap to create an app, but also lower the competitive bar to virtually nil. You no longer need a company with several employees and a mil in the bank. Individuals and partnerships , not companies, can and are creating valuable services. Look no further than the wild success of numerous iPhone developers.
And we can help.
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