LIFECYCLE
MARKETING 101
RIGHT ON INTERACTIVE PRESENTS:
Written by Lori Grass and Troy Burk
WHAT EVERY B2B MARKETER NEEDS TO Know ABOUT CLM
LIFECYCLE MARKETING 101
This guide is designed for B2B marketers, senior executives, sales enablement professionals, or those looking for a better understanding of what Customer Lifecycle Marketing (CLM) is, what it is not, and practical advice on how to use CLM to take your business to the next level. Every company has a “customer lifecycle” that prospects and customers go through with their brand from awareness to brand advocate. The number of stages, the names of the stages, and the gate criteria that determines when movement happens from one stage to the next is unique for each business. In this guide, we have identified five customer lifecycle stages: Attract, Convert, Onboard, Expand, and Appreciate. We will walk you through the various lifecycle stages and provide tips for engagement to increase revenue at each stage of the journey.
DOES CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETING SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS?
There is a misconception that CLM is only for marketers who want to focus on the top of the funnel. Done properly, lifecycle marketing affects every aspect of a businesses’ operation. Sales, marketing, client success, and product all come together with a single view of the customer and understand if their contribution is helping to move customers into more engaged relationships.
The first step in adopting a CLM strategy is to determine the business problems you are trying to solve which may include: driving more new business acquisition, shortening the sales cycle, enabling sales reps to ramp faster, increasing the average annual contract value, increasing the share of wallet, increasing renewal rates, having customers amplify your brand, or delivering a more personal and relevant customer experience. Does your organization strive to improve in any of the previously mentioned areas? If so, this e-book will provide a guide to understanding CLM and offer tips for engagement at each stage in the customer lifecycle.
COMMON PROBLEMS IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP STAGES
Attract Convert Onboard Expand Appreciate
• Leads are not converting.
• Marketing and sales are not aligned with the definition of a good lead.
• Sales reps aren’t making quota and pipeline is false. • Sales reps don’t know
who is engaged and ready to buy.
• New customers do not have a consistent experience.
• Customer service has no visibility into lack of new customer engagement. • Customer retention is
an issue.
• Sales is calling the same customers. • Existing business is
not growing. • New product
rollouts fall short.
• Losing good customers and little awareness they are at risk.
WHAT EXACTLY IS CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETING?
The foundation of a successful CLM strategy is engagement. Understanding where your prospects and customers are in their relationship with your brand allows you to deliver relevant messaging and resources at each stage of the journey. CLM provides visibility to the prospects that are truly going to convert and become new customers. Existing customers are tracked to determine who is at risk versus who is positioned to buy more. Right On Interactive has worked with hundreds of brands from start-ups to Fortune 20 companies.
Despite the size differences, we have noticed five themes that correspond with problems companies are trying to solve: Win, Keep, Grow, Improve, and Measure.
The 5 major benefits of CLM include:
1. Increase in new business (Win) 2. Improve retention rates (Keep)
3. Upsell and cross-sell current customers (Grow) 4. Market more efficiently (Improve)
5. Calculate ROI (Measure)
77% of CMOs at top performing companies indicate their most compelling reason for implementing marketing automation/lifecycle marketing is to increase revenue. (Gleanster)
ROI CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE STAGE MAP
Attract Convert Onboard Expand Appreciate
Lif
ec
ycle
G
oals
Awareness/Customer ConsiderationCustomer Sees
CLM starts at the Attract stage, when all you know is their name, to the Appreciate stage, where they have become a brand advocate.
CLM supplies one, single view of the prospect and customer. This includes all engagement touch points.
CLM uses data from all systems - CRM, ERP, POS, BI, and in some cases, manual spreadsheets.
CLM allows you to engage with prospects and customers across all lifecycle stages.
A journey is the opportunity stages in a CRM system. A customer can have multiple opportunities, but only one brand journey.
CLM is limited to tracking email opens and clicks and/or website behavior through a basic email tool.
Using only data from a CRM is CLM. Utilizing only CRM data may limit the view and could miss important product and purchasing information
CLM is focused solely on lead and prospect nurturing and conversion.
• • • • • • • •
TRUE
CLM tracks and moves prospects and customers through the journey they take with a brand.
CLM is marketing automation (MAS). CLM has MAS features, but MAS does not have CLM features.
FALSE
• •
Lifecycle marketing has recently become a buzzword. The popularity of CLM terminology has created some confusion for marketers between CLM, email marketing, and marketing automation. This checklist highlights what is true and false about CLM solutions.
The starting point for a CLM strategy is data. Typically, the more data you have, the better; but you can start with simply names and email addresses. In the “Moving Through the Journey” section of this e-book, we will address the specific data points desired at each stage of the journey and the actions to be taken. Data hygiene is always a concern. Most B2B marketers complain that they must “clean up” their data before they begin a CLM program. This is not true. Data hygiene is not a one-time clean up. Start with these 5 ongoing practices:
1. Eliminate duplicates.
2. Create uniformity by using dropdowns. 3. Do not capture data you don’t need.
4. Understand what is missing and which of the current data has blank fields. 5. Append data you do not have.
Having a place for your sales reps to enter contact data and maintain their sales pipeline is an important step. If you already have a CRM, but your sales reps struggle to use it, try these 5 tips:
1. Reduce required fields.
2. Align CRM with the sales process, so they don’t feel it is something “in addition” that they must do.
3. Incentivize the reps for usage.
4. Integrate with useful sales apps reps enjoy. 5. Allow mobile access on phones and tablets.
Data
CRM
Adoption
Lifecycle
Stages
& Gate
Criteria
Whether you are using a tool like Right On Interactive’s CLM software, or managing CLM manually, having defined lifecycle stages with gate criteria is essential. Typical B2B lifecycle stages include the following:
• Attract - Contacts who do not know very much about you (or at least you do not know much about them).
• Convert - You begin talking about products and the prospect begins to realize your value.
• Onboard - New customers who experience your differential and feel glad they chose your solution.
• Expand - The time in the relationship for cross selling or upselling. • Appreciate - Loyal customers who buy often.
The number of stages you have and the names should be unique to your organization. For example, if your business is a start-up, you may have four lead stages and only one customer stage. For an established manufacturer, there may be no lead stages and all customer stages. Once you’ve determined your stage names, establish the gate criteria for each so you know when a prospect or customer is ready to move to the next stage.
• The gate criteria should be based on data you have available for all contact records. If you are trying to use data attributes to define the stages, but only a portion of your database has this information, it will not work. Advocacy, satisfaction, and loyalty are all important elements to track, understand, and leverage. However, these attributes can occur in nearly any lifecycle stage and should not be considered gate criteria for lifecycle stages. Specific programs and campaigns can be deployed to increase all three of these elements throughout all stages of the lifecycle.
• Customers should not be able to jump past a stage. A new customer should not automatically be placed in the far right stage of the customer lifecycle, just because they made a large purchase. There should be a natural progression.
GATE
CRITERIA
OPTIONS
Purchase history – This information leverages the unit of time or share of wallet.
Tracking recency and frequency of purchases is easy to capture and the data is available for all customer records. Buying additional SKUs or purchases across product categories will move customers to a different level in the relationship. Monetary (amount or margin) can be used for segmentation and for profile scoring, but not for lifecycle stages.
1.)
Product consumption or utilization - Although someone purchased your product, that does not mean they are using it. Cloud services and cellular companies measure minutes and storage used. With mobile apps, companies are able to track how many times someone accesses the app, updates information, checks-in, etc. The more you use the product or service, the further you progress in the relationship.
2.) (1-2 purchases)
CUSTOMER STAGE 1
(3-5 purchases)CUSTOMER STAGE 2
(6+ purchases)CUSTOMER STAGE 3
Activities or Events - For example, higher education tracks students through inquired, applied, admitted, and enrolled stages. You cannot move forward until you complete the preceding step in the process. Companies have levels of certification or milestones; once completed they move to the next stage of the relationship. Software companies might have different events such as “signed up for free trial,” uploaded data, completed profile information, etc. In the traditional B2B sales model, leads do not become qualified until an opportunity is created.
3.) Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement CUSTOMER STAGE 3 Pr ofile Engagement CUSTOMER STAGE 4 Pr ofile Engagement
Increase in product consumption furthers progress in relationship
Customer Stage 4
Customer Stage 5
Pr ofile Pr ofile Engagement EngagementTime - This measurement is used to track where someone is in the relationship. Non-profit organizations or membership organizations, such as fitness facilities, might track prospective members, new members, five-year members, ten-year members, etc. Stage duration is not important as all would be the same, but conversion or churn by stage would be a strong indicator of future success.
4.)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) - CLV leverages time, but is solely focused on the customer side of the journey. CLV is a measurement of the total expected revenue from a customer throughout their relationship with a company. Simply create your stages based on your average customer churn rate and each stage would represent a period of time. Suppose you have a retention rate of 80 percent, this would mean that your customers, on average, have a relationship with your brand for five years. You would have five customer lifecycle stages. Decreasing the churn rate across any of these stages would increase the CLV rate, providing your margins and customer acquisition costs remained static. 5.) Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement
Customer Stage 2
Customer Stage 3
5 Year Member 10 Year Member
Retention Rate = 80%
Relationship Avg. = 5 years
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement Pr ofile Engagement
GATE
CRITERIA
OPTIONS
Cont.
Decrease in churn rate across any stage
=
Increase in CLV rate (when margins + customer
3D Profile
scoring
Profile scoring allows organizations to define the “ideal” fit customer. 3D profile scoring means overlaying the scoring algorithm on top of the lifecycle map. Profile scoring allows you to eliminate the “needle in the haystack” approach to prospecting. You can identify your profile targets by two different methods:
1. Analytical – Export your existing “best customers,” as identified with your lifecycle stages. Then analyze the like attributes and trends. For example, are there trends in their job title or geographical location?
2. Gut – Gather your team and brainstorm the attributes that make up your best customers. Think about your top customers and consider the relationship (firmographics, demographics and psychographics). What are the trends? The profile scoring is then applied to both prospects and customers. While lead scoring is important to provide sales teams stack-ranked lead lists to prospect, customer scoring is just as important. Customer scoring can identify which customers fit the profile to purchase more or to purchase a new product that has recently been rolled out.
Possible Profile Criteria
Firmographic • Title/role • Years of experience • Size of company • Revenue • Industry • Year founded • Public/private Psychographic • Personal interests • Hobbies • Social influence • Specific social networks • Attitudes • Opinions • Values Your Relationship • Account type • Purchases • Technologies • Lead source • Budget • Years as a customer • Pay terms Companies that
excel at lead scor-ing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% low-er cost. (Forrestlow-er Research)
3D
Engagement
scoring
Engagement scoring measures the level of interaction with your brand. From prospect to customer, it is important to continuously monitor engagement of all activity including purchase history, email response, website activity, traditional media, social media,
event engagement, and sales team interactions. The first step is to make a list of all engagement touch points. Think beyond marketing to the sales team, customer service, logistics, and operations. By measuring engagement, you begin to understand what your prospects and customers want from you, and the messaging that is resonating throughout the lifecycle journey.
Possible Engagement Criteria
• Emails • Website • Landing pages • Webinars • Tradeshows/ Events • Podcasts • Product demos • Sales meetings • Sales calls • Sales emails • Forms • Case studies • Surveys Sales Marketing Demographic • Age • Income • Marital Status • Education • Family status • Geography • Affiliations • Honors/awards
Web and
Social
Analytics
Identifying visitors on your website and social channels can be one of the greatest sources of leads for your sales team and can show a quick return on investment with a CLM
strategy. The recommended approach for this visibility is to provide automated reports to your sales team for both identified and anonymous visitors on your website, Twitter and Facebook. Here are some best practices associated with these reports:
1. Identified Visitor - You become identified in one of two ways. The first is through a form the lead fills out on the website. The second is they have clicked on a link in an email from your CLM provider. The identified visitor report is great for watching activity of current clients and lapsed clients.
Best practices for identified visitors:
• Set-up the report to pull the owner from your CRM system, to show who is responsible for follow up with each contact. A sales manager assigns any account without a rep. • Based on the engagement, marketing should determine if there is a nurturing track they are being dropped into or if a sales action should take place. For example, if someone downloaded a white paper about digital services, you may drop them into a campaign about digital.
• The sales rep has visibility into engagement activity in their CRM system and makes a call.
2. Anonymous Visitor – This report is largely for the inside sales team to research. Best practice for anonymous visitors:
• Automate the report to send to an inside sales/lead qualification team. If this team does not exist, then it can be sent to sales reps or sales managers. • Review the report for anyone that looked at 3+ pages of the visitor’s website. • Look at the businesses’ website – research if they appear to be a good target. • Input business into your CRM.
• Look up on LinkedIn and look for the title of the individual you would normally deal with - such as a VP or Director of Marketing. Link in with the individual with a relevant or personal message.
• When the individual accepts the LinkedIn invitation, send a non-sales email providing something of value.
Possible Engagement Criteria
• Social media • Digital media • Traditional media • Blogs • Product quantity • Type of products • Profitability • Free trials • Net promoter score • Calls to the call center • Press releases • Search activity • Online directories Purchasing MediaEngagement and profile scoring are melded together to create a Score Index. This aggregate allows you to pull lead lists for your sales team based on who is the best fit and most engaged at any stage. On the contrary, clients in the bottom left corner are the least fit and least engaged. When reviewing your client stages, these are the clients that are at risk.
Lead scoring provides an ROI of 138% versus companies that do not score leads at 78%. (Market-ingSherpa)
Dynamic
Audience
Segment
Builder
Once your lifecycle stages are defined, your scoring algorithms can be determined and applied to the entire database. You are now ready to execute marketing tactics by stage and audience segment. With CLM, relevancy is key. Prospects and customers demand personalization and messages that are of interest to their specific needs. Should a lead from a trade show (from a register to win program) deserve the same discount as your brand loyal advocates? The more granular you build your audience segments, the more relevant the messaging will become. The process goes in this order:
1. Segment first by lifecycle stage.
2. Segment by whether or not they are engaged.
3. Final segmentation is by persona or profile attributes.
Dynamic audience segments allow you to build the segment one time and as contacts meet the criteria, they automatically populate into the audience segment. This increases efficiency compared with list-centric segment builders that require a list to be uploaded for each campaign.
On average, organizations that nurture their leads experience a 45% lift in lead generation ROI over those who do not. (Gleanster) Automated marketing allows you to set up nurturing
campaigns and alerts to team members based on specific behaviors and actions taken by your prospects and customers. The marketing automation engine is fed with past results and experiences, allowing increased relevancy in future communications.
Automated
Marketing
Campaigns
Automated marketing tools are a feature of CLM systems, but are also found in marketing automation platforms. These tools include email, landing page, campaign, and form builders. Look for solutions that provide the following:
1. Visual campaign builder with an easy-to-use interface. 2. Simple email tool with drag and drop functionality. 3. Forms that offer progressive profiling.
There are two terms important to know regarding marketing automation: Drip Campaigns and Nurturing Campaigns. The terms are often used interchangeably, but they are different.
Drip
Campaigns
Drip campaigns (also known as Auto-Responders or Follow-Up Sequences) are a series of touch points based only on time. For example:
1. Welcome Email – Sent on Day 1
2. Introduction Phone Call – Alert sent to rep on Day 7 3. Feature Benefit Video – Sent on Day 14
4. Free Webinar – Hosted on Day 21
Drips work well to educate customers with company offerings and less expensive, transactional products.
Nurturing
Campaigns
Nurturing campaigns are a series of touch points based on lead or customer behavior. 1. New lead signs up for a free e-book. Email is sent with e-book – Sent Day 0 2. New lead visits the website a 2nd time, email about a free webinar is sent – Sent
Day 10
3. New lead visits website for 3rd time (post webinar), sales rep gets a triggered email about a “hot lead.”
4. Sales rep schedules demo and nurturing stops automatically.
Nurture campaigns are better for companies with more expensive products (at least $20,000 a year).
Nurturing and drip campaigns are important elements to converting a lead to a buyer; however, these automated campaigns are not limited to lead conversion. Nurturing can help an existing buyer realize the additional products and services you offer.
Often, in their haste to get a campaign out the door, marketers get absorbed in thinking about the content of an email and the graphics without considering the entire scope of the campaign. In addition, a campaign should not be email centric. Today’s B2B buyer expects an omni-channel experience involving the engagement actions that are relevant to them – email, web, digital, social, mobile, traditional advertising and sales calls. Take the time to sit down with your team and discuss the following 10 key questions you should ask before you start designing.
10 Campaign Questions Before You Start
Q1: Objective: What is the overall objective of the campaign?
Q2: Audience and Source: Who specifically will be the audience for the campaign? Q3: Key Messages: What are the key messages that will be leveraged?
Q4: Value Prop Supported: What is your differentiation?
Q5: Channels: Besides email, what tactics will you use - phone call, direct mail, landing pages? Q6: Content Assets: What assets already exist vs. need to be created?
Q7: CTA (Calls to Action): What do you want the prospects or customer to do after campaign exposure? Q8: Results: Campaigns are not just about opens and clicks. What is the measurement?
Q9: Schedule: When is the campaign going to market? Q10: Costs: What are the hard costs and soft costs and ROI?
Moving Customers Through The Journey
Now the framework of CLM is established, it is time to start moving prospects and customers through the journey to become brand loyal advocates.
B2B buyers today are 70%-90% of the way through the “buying journey” before they
reach out to a vendor. (B2B Marketing)
This startling statistic makes your touch points at each stage crucial. The opportunities for movement are not dependent only on nurturing campaigns. So before you start designing a campaign flow, consider these elements at each stage of the lifecycle:
• Stage description – Who are the contacts and companies in this stage? Ensure all stakeholders are on the same page with stage definition and gate criteria.
• Challenges – What are the business challenges in this stage? • Goals – What do you really want to accomplish with this group?
• Data – What data do you need, what is the source, what will you do with it? • Desired responses – How do you want people in this stage to react?
• Engagement strategy – What ideas do you have to move contacts and companies to the next stage? Once you determine these considerations, prioritize your stages and begin working on them in the order of importance to your company. If you are a start-up with only a few contacts in your database, then the Attract stage is likely most important. If you are a 100-year-old manufacturer, odds are that your business comes from existing distributors and dealers, so the Expand stage will be your starting point.
All stages need to be addressed eventually, but you may not have the resources to address them all in the first month. Having a strategic, phased approach will allow you to capitalize on the quickest wins and the lowest hanging fruit. In this next segment, we will explore each of these six considerations by lifecycle stage and provide common examples for B2B engagement. Your team can go through this same exercise, by creating your own workbook personalized to your company.
Prioritize Your Stage Focus
ATTRACT CONVERT ONBOARD EXPAND APPRECIATE
Kim Registered to win at event Profile: 70 Engagement: 12 Alex Made first purchase Profile: 80 Engagement: 88
Attract Stage
79% of marketing leads never convert into sales
due to lack of lead nurturing. (MarketingSherpa)
Description
challenges
Goal
data
desired
Response
Engagement
Strategy
• These are contacts and companies you don’t know much about. You may only have their first name and last name. They have not yet engaged with your sales team.
• Unsure if these are the right target customers. • Data may not be complete.
• Waste expensive sales resources by sending leads not yet qualified.
• Focus at this stage is thought leadership. Drive prospects to your website to consume your resources and materials. Remember, you are the experts in this field!
• Don’t sell. They aren’t ready to buy. Focus on outcomes and goals, not products.
• Don’t bombard your prospects with features and benefits. They are starting to learn about your company and you need to establish trust through your knowledge.
• Generate more contacts and more email addresses. • Opt-in growth.
• Engage with a sales team member.
• Your website is a hub. Every customer touch point (direct mail, re-targeting message, or email) should have a strong call to action in order to capture web behavior.
• Be present where your buyers are looking for solutions. During this stage, prospects are typically looking for a solution through Google or another search engine.
• Use social media and LinkedIn to engage. Respond to posts with a “non-sales” response.
• If you need to generate emails, consider register to win programs by utilizing landing pages, direct mail, media, or SMS.
• Events are a great way to gather data. Have a structured follow-up plan. Utilize an automated workflow to ensure follow up pre, during, and post event:
- Pre-event: Email with invitation to attend reception. CTA goes to website to download the VIP pass. A week prior, non-responders get sent to inside sales. Sales calls for a personal invite. - During: Monitor social media activity and tweet to people asking them to stop by the booth. - Post: Utilize automated campaigns based on interest from show forms. Alert sales when
engagement rises.
• Data desired: First name, last name, email address.
• List all customer touch points and determine how you can capture data at each point.
• Think beyond the obvious web forms such as a contest with call center reps to gain email addresses when calling prospects.
• Standardize format by utilizing drop downs. This avoids U.S. vs USA vs United States.
• Determine what data is “must have” vs. “nice to have.” Develop business rules for the sales team and add required fields to your CRM.
• Set-up ongoing best practices for data hygiene as opposed to one-time clean up.
• Don’t buy lists. Build your list organically through events, content downloads, register to win programs, and landing pages.
• 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (MarketingSherpa) • 90% of all tradeshow leads are never followed-up with. (Chris & Mike at Sandler Sales Institute)
• 76% of customers say the most important factor in website design is, “the website makes it easy for me to find what I want.” (Ecommerce & B2B)
• Content marketing generates 3x as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric) • People are more likely to visit a B2B tech company’s website after seeing a tweet from the company, getting them one step
closer to becoming a lead. (KoMarketing Associates)
Convert Stage
50% of qualified leads are not yet ready to
buy. (Gleanster)
Description
challenges
Goal
data
desired
Response
Engagement
Strategy
• By the time a prospect is in the Convert Stage, they are likely “qualified” in your CRM. These prospects have shown an interest in your product and are engaging with the sales team.
• Sales reps are not making quota.
• No sense of urgency, so sales loses interest.
• A lack of understanding of the client’s problems and if they really need your products. • You are unsure why they won’t buy.
• You want your prospects to recognize the value of your products and services. • Ensure everything in the qualified pipeline is really qualified.
• Prospects make an initial purchase of products/service. • Say “no” if they are not interested.
• Buyer is researching your company, but they are also looking at your competitors. Ensure value proposition and positioning against competition is strong.
• Do not implement one-size fits all emails. Setup a subscription center to understand desired communication.
• Buyer is transitioning from search marketing to discovery. They want to learn about your products and services, but only the ones that interest them. Segment the communication based on their areas of interest from the subscription center and engagement behavior.
• Send automated alerts to a sales rep when a certain action is taken. For example, if someone looks at more than 4 pages of your website, that may be a “hot lead” and sales should be informed with an automated alert to their inbox or CRM.
• Consider re-targeting ads to ensure your message is where the buyer is searching.
• Sales should be notified of identified and anonymous visitors that come to your website via an automated report sent daily.
• Webinars are an excellent way to share your product details and understand who has interest. Respond to registrants versus attendees differently.
• The sales process should include a comprehensive discovery session to ensure prospect’s needs are aligned with your products and services.
• Data desired: Phone, physical address, industry, company size. • Continue organic building of your list.
• Don’t ask for all data at once. Gather data over time through forms that utilize progressive profiling (ask only 3 questions at each visit).
• Appending fields through a third party is a quick way to enhance your database.
• Automation users have a 53% higher conversion rate from marketing response to marketing-qualified lead than non-users. (Aberdeen Group, 2012)
• Nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report)
• Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research, 2013) • 75% of companies that invest in marketing automation/lifecycle marketing solutions see return on investment within 12
Onboard Stage
It is 6-7x more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer. (White House Office of Consumer Affairs)Description
challenges
Goal
data
desired
Response
Engagement
Strategy
• These are your new customers. The duration of this period could be 90 days or it could be 12 months. Your business will dictate the timeframe.
• Inconsistent onboarding process and inefficiency with manual processes.
• Understanding which new clients are engaging and happy versus those that are suffering in silence.
• New customers experience your differential and feel they are satisfied that they chose your solution.
• Understand full product portfolio. • Be satisfied with purchase.
• Don’t stop communicating. This stage is crucial to make a great first impression.
• Don’t ignore the unengaged. Retention starts the first day a customer comes on board. If they are unengaged in the first 30 days of doing business, they may be a retention risk. • Do make it simple. A good way to streamline the onboarding process is with automation.
Provide triggered alerts for both positive and negative behaviors. For example, you may trigger automated alerts to customer service reps if someone has not logged into the client portal in their first 7 days. If it gets to 21 days, the alert gets escalated to a manager.
• Do provide engagement channels full of instruction and product information. Videos and webinars are great tools for this stage.
• Providing a consistent experience for all customers is one of the biggest advantages of using a lifecycle marketing tool. This ensures that every customer will have the same experience (human error or lack of follow through doesn’t occur).
• Provide lead lists to customer service teams of new customers that are highly engaged and may be interested in additional purchasing.
• Data desired: purchasing, behavior, and psychographic data.
• Continue to gather additional data through forms that use progressive profiling. • Utilize surveys to build existing information and gain sentiment data.
• A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. (Bain & Company) • A customer is 4 times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service - related than price or product
related. (Bain & Company)
• Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer. (Bain & Company)
EXPAND STAGE
The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. (Marketing Metrics)Description
challenges
Goal
data
desired
Response
Engagement
Strategy
• The opportunity to take your relationship with the customer to the next level.
• Customer does not have a comprehensive understanding of your breadth of products/services or they don’t see the value.
• Customer retention.
• Sales reps keep calling the same accounts. • Sales reps are inefficient with their time.
• Understand the customers who are positioned for an upsell or a cross-sell. • Increase average spend, profitability, and/or product depth.
• Understand the value of products/services that are not being currently purchased. • Provide additional opportunities for upsell, or within other divisions of the company.
• Provide visibility into the customers that sales should be engaging with further to cultivate deeper relationships.
• Don’t keep calling the same customers. Defy the 80/20 rule by connecting with all customers. Determine which customers your sales team has time to work and nurture the remaining. This allows you to always stay in front of the client and see who is raising their hand with interest.
• Utilize personal, text-based emails that are automated, but look like they are coming from a sales rep’s email account.
• Do identify complimentary products. Send an automated campaign immediately after an initial purchase with a complimentary product.
• New product releases are a great source of communication for this stage. Sales reps can view the new product interest by watching the engagement activity. If a customer clicks through on an email, downloads a product brochure, and/or likes a post on Facebook about the new product, they have clearly shown interest.
• Provide lead lists to sales teams of existing customers ready to buy more.
• Utilize identified visitor reports to see which customers are going to your website. • Data desired: Profitability by customer and business intelligence data.
• Ensure CRM database is up-to-date.
• Notify sales reps of bounced emails. Create an account in the CRM, called “No Longer There” (NLT). Move contacts to NLT account. Provide an intern with a project to look up NLT contacts on LinkedIn and find out where they are now working. This becomes an instant prospect list.
• A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%. (Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy & Mark Murphy)
• 61% of consumers take their business to a competitor when they end a business relationship. (KISS Metrics) • Marketing automation/lifecycle marketing drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in
marketing overhead. (Nucleus Research)
Appreciate Stage
A 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. (Bain & Company)Description
challenges
Goal
data
desired
Response
Engagement
Strategy
• Your brand loyal advocates typically spend the most or are the most profitable. They are your champions.
• Your teams have become complacent, and are taking customers for granted. • Finding ways to continue to drive value.
• Running out of new ideas.
• Do not have enough case studies or referrals from satisfied customers. • Ensure the client is appreciated.
• High touch communication that is personalized.
• Provide positive reviews on social media. • Agree to referrals and to be a reference. • Participate as a case study partner.
• Feel like your company values the business relationship.
• Do not assume they are done buying or that your rep knows what they need. Host quarterly meetings with these clients engaging your management representative and the original economic buyer.
• Do not assume they are not looking at your competition. Look for drops in engagement and provide alerts to customer service and sales teams when engagement begins to fall.
• Delight and surprise. For example, send a special gift with a personalized message on your customer’s business anniversary. Although high touch, this can be automated directly to a printer and fulfillment house. It’s automated, but looks highly personal.
• Consider the power of “Thank You.” Have the President of the company place a phone call once a year to anyone in the Appreciate Stage to thank them.
• Set-up forums on social media or at events for your best customers to interact and share best practices.
• Create a loyalty program.
• Data desired: Thoughts and opinions.
• Gather information through surveys. Set triggers for your team if a survey comes back with a negative score.
• Host focus groups to get data about new product releases.
• On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. (White House Office of Consumer Affair)
• 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. (Gartner) • A repeat customer spends 67% more than a new one. (BIA/Kelsey)
• 91% of customers say they would give referrals, but only 11% of salespeople ask for them. (Dale Carnegie study)
The future success of your business depends on having satisfied, engaged, and loyal customers. For many businesses, the cost of customer acquisition is so high the customer is not profitable until the subsequent years of the relationship.
The only true differentiation you have over your competition is your customers. The majority of people do not instantly trust your brand messaging or promise. 85% of the conversations about your brand happen outside of your direct control. The number one source (90%) people go to when making a buying decision is the opinion of their peers and friends. The paradigm has shifted; the customer now has the power. CLM encourages starting with your best customers and working backwards to lead generation. The successful companies of the future, will embrace a customer-centric model and will align strategies to ensure customer satisfaction, drive and capture more customer engagement, and will foster greater customer advocacy. ROI’s B2B clients, on average, saw a 12.5% increase in their customer base within six months of using ROI.
By implementing a Customer Lifecycle Marketing strategy, you will gain the visibility to provide a
framework to make better strategic decisions, align the right resources, and have the metrics to prove if your efforts are generating the right results.
For a complimentary discovery session, email [email protected] or call 317-777-7956.
Right On Interactive is a lifecycle marketing software provider headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. The company was founded in 2006. We strive to provide the best solutions to help our customers drive more engaged relationships throughout the customer lifecycle.
