Hi Community! Tim here.
Email marketing as a type of combat
It’s true that in war and marketing, a multi-pronged approach is most effective. You don’t want to be physically attacking your audience obviously, but you do want to make sure that you’re covering all of your bases and engaging with them at every relevant opportunity in a marketing sense. A thorough engagement strategy will encourage your customers to stay engaged and hopefully make you the first company that comes to mind when they’re looking to purchase.
How to retain your customers
One of the biggest retention problems I see with my clients is that they often lose track of their customers once they’ve entered the funnel. It's so much easier to retain a customer that’s regularly receiving marketing or engaging with your brand than to try to win back a passive customer. It’s imperative to keep track of those customers and engaging with them consistently is key. This strategy is referred to as Lifecycle Marketing.
As the name suggests, this approach is focused on keeping customers engaged in a cycle, rather than pushing them through a funnel in a one-time process. There are three basic points in the Lifecycle of a customer, but the most effective way to use it is to tailor the cycle to your customers.The basic diagram for this cycles moves from first Contact → Action → Loyalty and then back around again.
Never stop testing
How do you know how to personalize this cycle for your business? Test it! Klaviyo’s easy A/B testing is one of my favorite features. I see every send as an opportunity to test. I would start with simple tests if you’re new to the process. This could include testing send times and subject lines to begin. Once you get more used to AB testing, trying out different creative elements is the natural next step. Personally, I’ve tested gifs vs static images, using the Klaviyo editor vs image-based emails, as well as long-form vs short-form copy, to find what garners the best response for each client’s audience to get them to engage with our content.
Why LifeCycle Marketing increases customer loyalty
The ultimate goal of this strategy is loyalty, so you want the end of the cycle, aka the loyalty stages, to be the most optimized emails to your audience since these are your most loyal customers. However, these are the hardest to test since there are fewer sends. It’s important to get these tests up and running quickly so you can start gathering data. Remember: every email is an opportunity to test!
The testing and analyzing will be pretty hands-on, but luckily Klaviyo flows are a great resource to automatically trigger contact with your email list and keep the cycle going with customer-specific personalization. Thinking about the customer and their needs is important. You can’t just constantly tell them to buy buy buy, that’s a quick way to get these customers to unsubscribe. Instead, a better approach is to provide value for these customers through quality content.
Utilizing product feeds is the first step. I use this with my clients in abandoned carts, browse abandonments, cross-sells, and review requests. Once you have those flows built out, you can move to more content-focused testing. Showing how customers use your products and telling their stories helps build loyalty.
Discover your perfect cycle and keep it going
So, in conclusion: keep your customers engaged in your cycle by testing emails at every opportunity, prioritizing your customer’s needs, and engaging with them after the purchase point to continue promoting loyalty and to keep the cycle going.
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