As the consumer decision journey becomes more accessible to marketers, having touch points at each step is a must. Today’s consumer decision journey looks less like life on a linear path and more like an experience within a cycle. Email marketing has a similar process. You have the opportunity to meet the customer at every stage in their lifecycle. This is called lifecycle email marketing with WhatCounts.

a little refresher

Let’s review the consumer decision journey to describe how lifecycle email marketing fits in. Picture the journey as a loop with stages, instead of a linear path. The stages are initial consideration, active evaluation, moment of purchase, and post-purchase experience. If you successfully retain them, they follow your loyalty loop back to moment of purchase. If you aren’t that lucky, the consumer starts back at the initial consideration phase.

Now, let’s go through each stage of lifecycle email marketing so you can learn how it parallels with the consumer decision loop. Within this process, you need to be identifying where the gaps are located for your brand.

stage 1: capture

Lifecycle email marketing provides touch points for the consumer at every stage. The first stage is capture. This is parallel with the initial consideration stage. When the customer is shopping around for options, you have the chance to capture them as a subscriber through acquisition tactics.

stage 2: convert

This stage of lifecycle marketing comes between the active evaluation and moment of purchase stages in the consumer decision loop. You have already captured the consumer, so they are evaluating your business. If you are persuasive enough to get them to convert, they will be lead to the moment of purchase.

stage 3: grow

Once you have obtained their initial business, it’s time to grow your relationship with them. This happens during the post-purchase experience of the customer’s decision loop. What emails are you sending them to persuade them into doing more business with you? If you do well in the growth stage, you will further increase your ROI through email marketing.

stage 4: retain

This is also a stage that runs parallel with the post-purchase experience step in the consumer decision loop. This area is all about sending them messages to keep them engaged with you. They have stayed with your business this long. Are you doing anything to thank them? Are you enticing them to buy more or stay updated with your latest news? This step is vital to the lasting relationship you have with your consumer, and it determines the actions of the last step.

stage 5: win back

If you are successful in the retain stage, this might not apply to you. But if you have ever lost a customer after one or more purchases, the win back stage of lifecycle email marketing is applicable to you. The win-back stage of your email program should be an automated trigger that sends out emails to consumers that have strayed off the decision loop of your brand. You need to get them back on.

you might have some gaps

If you were reading through this blog thinking to yourself, “I am not exactly sure where all of my gaps could be,” that’s okay. WhatCounts offers a strategic lifecycle gap analysis service for your use. We analyze all of your campaigns and where they fit into your customers’ lifecycle. We find the gaps, and then provide you 3 to 5 actionable ideas to fill those gaps. This ensures touch-points in every stage of your buyers’ journey.

It is a proven practice

We have witnessed the success of our customers that have utilized this service. We have an entire blog series, ebook, and case study of TrueCitrus and their success using our lifecycle gap analysis service. We pulled this quote from their testimonial about our work. WhatCounts was able to provide tailored success based upon their objectives.

We had a number of issues in our email marketing that we wanted to address. That’s when we decided to take advantage of WhatCounts’ full-service email agency, utilizing their strategic, creative, and campaign services. […] By the end of the year, the numbers said it all. –True Citrus

let us help

We know you want to up your email game, so click here to read more about what is included with lifecycle gap analysis. We care about bringing you customized success at WhatCounts. Please talk to your account manager about the lifecycle gap analysis or any of our other services. If you aren’t a client, don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly to discuss how we can help.