The problem that many businesses today face when it comes to email marketing is talking to the right people at the right time. It can be difficult for a company to understand exactly what type of message their prospects need to hear; after all, someone learning about the products or services that your company offers has different needs than someone who is comparing you to a competitor that they already know about.
Enter lifecyle marketing (LCM). With lifecycle email marketing, you can use event-triggered email campaigns and other types of marketing tactics that allow you to target the right prospect base at the right time.
How exactly does this work? There are a few important things to know about the basic premise of lifecyle or event-triggered email campaigns and how it will segment your email campaign to improve your marketing ROI.
Dividing up Your Email Campaign
Most marketers understand that their email campaign has to be aligned around the right part of their brand that they are promoting. Some companies send newsletters about company events, while others will build an email campaign around a new product launch.
What many marketers forget is that for maximum success, this segmentation needs to be taken a step further so that email campaigns can be divided up based on the part of the brand being promoted as well as the particular phase of the buying cycle that the prospect is in.
For example, consider a campaign to let people know about a new store that a retail company is opening up. A marketer might send out a single blast email message about the opening of the store, and this would certainly get them some publicity. However, a more effective approach would be to divide up the different emails that are sent based on the recipient and where they are in the buying cycle. This particular marketer could create one message meant for people who have never heard of the company, one for people who have already made a purchase in other stores, one for people who are on the company’s mailing list, etc.
The actual segments of the lifecycle vary from company to company: while there are some standards out there, for best results you’ll need to tweak your lifecycle segmentation based on your industry and your prospects.
At Conversion Insights, a visual funnel graphic is provided of a broad lifecycle broken down into four different types of prospects: people who are interested in similar products, people who are interested in your product, people who are ready to buy, and people who are actively buying. You can also use event-triggered email campaigns, which are designed to send out messages when a user completes a certain activity, such as completing a survey or downloading content on your web site.
Why Lifecycle Email Marketing Works
This type of email marketing strategy is effective because it aligns with the philosophy of marketing in the new age: providing customers with unique, dynamic content, instead of blasting them with generic messages without them asking for it.
Most of the research supports segmented email marketing as well: HubSpot’s Pamela Vaughan writes that 39% of marketers who segmented their target lists experienced higher open rates for their email campaigns. The key to success with lifecycle marketing and event-triggered email campaigns is making sure that you segment your list appropriately so that it is based upon your prospects’ specific tastes and interests. The better you are able to meet the needs of each person on your email list, the more successful you will be overall with your email campaign.
Lifecycle marketing yields results. By creating content that guides the prospect along the learning journey (i.e., their lifecycle stage), you can begin to map content—from awareness to decision—that gets delivered to them at the right time to boost engagement and conversions!
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