Why lifecycle marketing is the key to sustained consumer engagement

Today’s marketing landscape is complex. There’s a ton of competition, customers are more informed than ever, and brand loyalty is dwindling. In a recent survey, only 8% of customers thought of themselves as firm loyalists. In other words, customers want what they want when they want it. Knowing the best time to interact is essential to keeping their business. Therefore, having a clear lifecycle marketing strategy is the best way to keep customers engaged. In a recent webinar hosted by Industry Dive, Danielle Henneberger, Director of Strategic Advisory at Simon Data, meets up with Annie Jalto, Senior CRM marketing manager at Vivino, to discuss the dos and don’ts of lifecycle marketing. To that point, they open up about common misconceptions of lifecycle marketing and how to avoid them.

Best Practices, That Aren’t

1. The Marketing Lifecycle is not Lifecycle Marketing

We aren’t trying to say the marketing lifecycle isn’t important. But rather, it is just part of the full picture. As is, the marketing lifecycle focuses on ‘me’ (the brand) and the company’s wants. The best marketers pair that with the customer lifecycle (‘them’) and loyalty (‘us’). By looking at all three, you gain context into customer behavior and how they are engaging with your brand. It is only with those data points you can truly understand a customer’s wants and needs. If you're like most companies, all this data lives separate and siloed across the organization. This predicament makes it challenging to get a unified view of all three lifecycles. Having a centralized data hub is the best way to understand what customers want. Only once you figure out what a customer wants, you can start thinking about when they want it.

2. Quality over Quantity

It's strange to think that a phrase that dates back to ancient Rome is a relatively new concept to marketers. Still, the notion of quality over quantity content is still catching on. The old way of sending out mass emails and hoping someone would bite is obsolete. Consumers are now used to getting a more personalized experience. If you don't follow suit, users might not open emails or, worse yet, they may mark them as spam.  As Annie went on to say, when Vivino first started, email quantity was their exact problem. Vivino was sending daily messages to their entire database about upcoming sales. With the assistance of a customer data platform, Vivino can see all its customer data in one place. Simon Data sits on top of their data warehouse and uses Vivino’s recommendation engine to create daily deals personalized by their database. Simon Data enables Vivino to send emails that directly correlate to their customers’ personal preferences. Since changing its model, Vivino has seen a monthly email ROI increase of 220%. Judging by this increase, it's not just when you talk to your customers but how you talk to them that matters.

3. Tailoring - Not Personalization

Personalization is one of the hottest trends in marketing. From personalized messaging in emails to customer experience, brands are trying to figure out how to make customers feel a campaign is uniquely them. The real solution to this is tailoring, not personalization. When you start an email off with the reader's name, you are personalizing it. However, when you add more personalized elements, you begin to tailor that message. In fact, emails with three or more personalized pieces see 2x greater CTR and 6x boosted conversion. Are you doing enough to make your campaigns truly your customer?Genuinely connecting with your customer is about understanding their wants and needs. Understanding your customer is essential, from things as simple as how often they want to hear from you to more complex things like their behavior. Lifecycle marketing aims to give customers the best experience for the entirety of your relationship.