What Your Lifecycle Marketing Is Missing: Targeted Promotions

No matter the industry, as a smart marketer you want to drive sales, increase revenue and improve customer engagement.

You also know for your customer-centric marketing promotions to succeed, delivering the right type of promotion, at the right time, to the right customer is imperative.

So why are you still blindly discounting all your products and sending offers to all your customers?

Try targeting customers with tailored promotion campaigns at each stage of the customer lifecycle.

Of course, lifecycle phases depend on your business model, but today we will discuss:

The key to lifecycle marketing is to deliver value to your customers at every phase of the customer journey. The promotion ideas in this article will help you optimize your communications and see improvements in customer retention.

Here are 4 promotion campaign ideas designed specifically for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

Who they are: Maybe they have browsed your site but never made a purchase, signed up for a newsletter or set up a profile.

What to do: Offer a “money-off purchase” discount on their first purchase so they can benefit from savings right away and step into your conversion funnel on Day 1. Set a minimum purchase value to increase ROI.

Why:

Tactics: Deliver a valuable discount that customers will remember. Once they make their first purchase, they are much more likely to convert again and make a repeat purchase. By consistently delivering an exceptional brand experience, you can bring these customers into the active or loyal phase.

Who they are: These customers know who you are, might already like your business and/or have made a purchase (one-time or repeat).

What to do: Offer customers who make regular high-value purchases a “Thank You” 25% off their next order and free shipping. Include a time-limit to add a sense of urgency, keep them engaged and aware of your products and services.

Why:

Tactics: Find the right cadence for your promotions - at this stage, you should send regular communications to keep customers active, but you don’t want to annoy them or overspend either. Use your CRM data to create tailored discounts based on previous purchases, suggest related products and discover the optimal time and frequency to communicate with your customers.

Who they are: These are customers in the "danger zone". This definition depends on your business, but typically these customers have not made a purchase for X amount of time (or ever).

What to do: Give these customers a real reason to come back to you with a well-crafted re-engagement email offering a free subscription or a 15€ coupon on their next purchase (something they can't turn down).

Why:

Tactics: Don't give up on customers at this stage, after investing in acquisition and engagement it is still worth communicating with them. Ask why they aren't happy or where they've been to show a more personal side, just remember to offer a valuable and relevant reward at the same time.

Who they are: They love your brand, recommend your services to friends and choose your products over the competition. Typically high-spend or super active customers that make regular purchases.

What to do: Invite these customers to join your VIP loyalty program that offers exclusive rewards, discounts on new products, access to private events or any other premium benefits you can think of that make this package valuable to your users.

Why:

Tactics: Determine the best loyalty program structure for your business, then deliver compelling and personalized rewards to these special customers. Not only are they your most effective form of advertising, they are also the most profitable.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. If you're serious about lifecycle marketing and increasing your customer engagement, you should be leveraging highly targeted and well-timed promotions at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

With the customer data and analytics available to marketers these days, it’s high time you optimize your promotion strategy with these lifecycle marketing tactics.

Before launching your promotions, be sure that you are tracking all the necessary data points to target users at the right lifecycle stage and achieve your campaign goals.

And finally, make sure your promotion solution is powerful enough to execute these complex workflows.

If your promotion solution isn't flexible enough to offer your clients this type of personalization then get in touch or book a quick demo and we can show you how we do it with our Promotion Engine.