Understanding the Customer Lifecycle is Key to Effective Email Marketing

Understanding the Customer Lifecycle is Key to Effective Email Marketing

Today, the internet space is flooded with e-commerce businesses offering a myriad of services but only few of them are able to make a good amount of money. The secret to their success lies in effective email marketing for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

Simply put, the customer lifecycle is the journey of a prospect from merely knowing about a brand to metamorphosing into a loyal customer and then eventually becoming its most powerful advocate. It is divided into five stages, namely:

• Awareness: When a prospect comes to know about your brand/product/service
• Purchase: When a prospect buys your product/service and turns into a customer
• Relationship Building: The strategy adopted by the brand to develop its relationship with the customer
• Retention: Brand works on nurturing its relationship with the customer so that he/she becomes a loyal one
• Advocacy: Once the brand has been able to win over the trust of the customer, he/she starts advocating the former on social media and other platforms.

Lets take a closer look at these:

Awareness: This is the first stage in the customer lifecycle where the customer learns about a brand. Businesses should capitalize on this phase since the users/prospects are new to your brand. You should pitch your product/service to the prospect in the most compelling manner so that they are more than willing to purchase from you.

Purchase: Now that your prospect is more than aware about your brand, the next step is to encourage him/her to make a purchase. Offer a discount on their first purchase and see the outcome - you will be astonished by the sales! Personalizing the offer/email would bring you even better results - stats show that emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened!

Relationship Building: As a brand, your goal is to have a long-term, fruitful relationship with your customer. In order to build such a relationship, you have to keep them engaged with your product/brand. There are a number of ways and means to do so - sending them a monthly newsletter about the inside scoop on new products, how to tips, coupons etc., post-purchase follow-ups and surveys.

Retention: Once you have established a steady relationship with your customer, you now have to nurture them in such a manner that they become your recurring customers. It has been observed that retention costs 5 times less than attracting a new customer. Some effective customer retention methods are as follows:

• Offers Via a Loyalty Program
• Incentives
• Links to Helpful Content

Advocacy: Whether or not a customer decides to advocate your brand on social media and other platforms depends entirely upon how well you have been able to engage him/her with your content. The better your customer relationship building and retention strategy, the better are the chances of your customer turning into an advocate for your brand.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if you follow this five-step approach to building and nurturing your relationship with your customers, it is bound to have a miraculous effect on your business.