Conversion Tactic #4: Customer Lifecycle Management

Welcome to the fourth installment of the conversion series. After detailing cross-sell and upsell techniques, today we will dive into customer lifecycle management, a key marketing technique used to maximize online conversions.

You’ve captured the attention of a customer, but what’s next in the process? Of course, you want to convert them. Conversions are the ultimate key performance indicator in your digital communications endeavors. It is proof that your agency’s content resonates enough for the public to promote action.

Customer lifecycle management is a key to providing customer-centric experiences and conversion opportunities during multiple points of a citizen customer’s journey with your organization. Every public sector organization wants to better the community through transformative action, and engaging in customer lifecycle management campaigns is the key to this.

What is Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer lifecycle management is when an organization reaches a customer throughout various points of a product/service lifecycle using strategic communications management.

Customer lifecycle management is all about delivering repeated and long-term messages based on customer needs through a progression of steps. These steps are:

• Stage 1: Awareness
• Stage 2: Consideration
• Stage 3: Adoption
• Stage 4: Use
• Stage 5: Advocacy

Why is Customer Lifecycle Management Important?

Effective customer lifecycle management offers powerful customer interaction strategies to better reach and convert your audience. Customer lifecycle management ensures your audience has repeated interactions with your organization, from awareness through activation. Success hinges on how every new audience member is communicated with during the entire course of their lifecycle as a “customer” to your agency.

How Does Customer Lifecycle Management Work?

You can send different messages at various stages of the lifecycle through customized communications. Use the following steps to start a customer lifecycle management program:

1. Setup Performance Measures: Before you start a campaign, establish goals for benchmarking. Performance measures help you quantify your efforts and calibrate your internal team to reach a common goal.
2. Define Your Customer: Use measurable dimensions such as open cases, demographic information, psychographic information – essentially anything that makes sense for your organization to better understand your customer and how your customer behaves.
3. Define Triggers: Create a list of any trigger you want to automate. Then, create a process for each case.
4. Track Your Customer: Through a marketing platform like GovDelivery, you can identify key customers, determine their digital interactions with your organization, and communicate accordingly.
5. Create Templates: Draft content that directly supports your customer’s pain points. Then, answer questions. Also, use basic email best practices like personalization, calls to action, clear design, and a catchy subject line. Be informative, clear, and use design templates that are easy to read.
6. Targeted Messaging: Create content that supports each stage of the customer journey. For example, if a customer visits a particular webpage on your site, you can identify that action and subsequently respond with a strategic email giving them the information they need.

A Real-life Example

Customer lifecycle management is effective for any type of organization, from e-commerce to public sector organizations. For example, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission could use product safety alerts for newborn products to new moms, and alerts for toddler toys as the child gets older. They could adapt their communications based on the age range of the baby, offering unique product information about recalls and safety tips.

Do you have a case study on customer lifecycle management you would like to share? If so, let us know! We would love to feature you in a webinar or case study. Connect with us online on Twitter or Facebook, or send us an email at info@govdelivery.com.