I recently met with Indianapolis-based Right on Interactive about their customer lifecycle marketing products. While I know the importance of moving the customer through various stages of a buying cycle, it was interesting to see how new technologies are helping companies capture and track engagement, as well as use the information to assist in the sales process.
Looking at how your customer engages and travels through the lifecycle can help you learn to market to them better.
Before we get into details about lifecycle management, let’s take a step back and ask you this question: Do you know who your most engaged customers are? In your mind, an engaged customer might be someone who:
- Attended a trade show
- Visited your website
- “Liked” your Facebook page
- Has clicked on a link from your social media pages
- Commented or shared something you posted on social media
- Accepted a call from a sales rep
- Opened or clicked something in your eNewsletter
- Purchased a product or service from you
Think of the importance of each of the actions above, and give each of the actions above a specific score, or ranking, with higher numbers for the more important action items (such as purchasing a product). Now let’s say each time one of your prospects completed of these actions above, they received that score. If you added up the total given to each person, this would represent an engagement score, with the higher score indicating the more engaged, or involved the person is in your business.
To further qualify your prospects, let’s also rank customers individually by their tendency to purchase, using certain demographic or psychographic information to give them a profile score. I’m sure that you have certain ideal customer types, or those customers in the right income level, zip code, type of business, or other such criteria that makes them more likely to buy from you. Assign a number again to these categories, with the higher number given to the more ideal demographic or psychographic quality.
Now take your list of prospects and add up their totals of engagement plus profile score, and you have a very rudimentary formula for finding your most targeted prospects.
Using the Data for Actionable Steps
Doesn’t it make sense to nurture those people who have a higher engagement with your company? Or who by nature are more likely to purchase your products?
The technology that Right On Interactive deploys involves plugging in the above criteria, and customizing it for each business. The more data you can capture, the better view you’ll have of your overall customer list. This technology can identify visitors to your website by name, as well as followers on your social media pages, and subscribers to your email newsletter. All of these are called digital touch points, and they can help you understand how customers are engaging with your brand. You can not only capture this data, but you can also integrate it into your customer relationship management system, making the data actionable for your sales team.
With customer lifecycle management, you can identify customers in each stage of the buying process, so you can can start customizing content to these customers based on their profile score or level of engagement. For instance, if someone has attended a trade show, opened an e-newsletter and viewed a demo, and they are also the ideal customer type based on their profile, you may want to move them to the top of your call list, or reach out with a special offer to close the sale. If a certain category of profile isn’t engaged, you can create a separate email or advertising campaign to reach them.
If your marketing is stuck, try finding out who is engaging with your brand.
This is a simplified version of customer engagement. But looking at customer lifecycle management, you may find that there are clues to help you market your business better to certain prospects, or focus on the low-hanging fruit that could help you drive revenue faster.
Let me know if you’re interested in implementing a customer lifecycle management solution for your business, or even to help you to identify your ideal customers or track them along their lifecycle. Looking at the numbers behind each customer will result in greater success for your marketing and sales efforts.