Email Lifecycle Planning
Email AutomationPlanning for your customers life-cycle
Shortly after onboarding to manage a new brand website, I built a sticky note wall of every aspect of the customer’s purchase journey online. It had every detail right up to the point where it said ‘customer buys’. As I stepped back and looked at it, I wondered why it ended there? I spoke to my director about it.
“How much of our marketing goes towards supporting customers after they purchase? Let’s say for every $100 we spend, how much do we invest in the post-purchase experience?”
“Probably less than $1.” He responded.
I wasn’t necessarily surprised, but I immediately knew this was an opportunity, and one I could contribute to using email specifically. What came over the coming months was a series of automated post-transaction emails tailored to individual purchases. We watched them closely and made improvements or cut programs that didn’t perform, but overall, it was a huge success in driving retention and additional transactions.
Why Do Lifecycle Planning?
Staying top of mind and relevant after a transaction can be quite tricky for some brands, particularly with long periods between purchases. I worked with several mattress brands, and though a mattress purchase comes after several years, there are still relevant ways to stay relevant in a genuine way. Ideally, the customer has you top of mind for recommendations and when it’s time to buy again.
Another reason is simply to capture additional market share. Don’t be surprised how little customers know about what you sell. Don’t ever assume that because they bought shoes from you that they know you sell shoe deodorizer. You’ll lose so much easy business to Amazon because of their convenience and the fact they sell practically everything.
Why email?
For many marketing teams, spending advertising dollars on post-purchase is difficult to justify. The return is often too far to measure a positive ROI. Short-sightedness aside, email costs are minimal and your customer list often grows naturally through transactions. Plus, email is simple to outsource!
Using customer data, we can also be far more specific in the messages we send. Think about it, we have their information and what they bought. With this, we can map reasonable follow up communications that are genuinely value adds to our customers.
Building your lifecycle
Ok, walk through what it’s like for a customer after they buy and how they experience your product.The product still has to be deliveredThey will receive and unbox the productThere will be a honeymoon period with the productLikely there is maintenance, service or educationEventually the product will be replaced.
The below stages don’t work for every business, but you’ll see a general pattern.
Stage 1: Fulfilment
This stage should be thought of through the lens of LIFT principles.
Overcoming anxietyIs the customer waiting for delivery? When is it coming? Who is delivering it? Do I need to be home? Do I need to prepare for delivery? Just because you outlined this on some policy page somewhere doesn’t mean the customer understand your fulfilment process. Email and SMS can be used to reduce anxiety and give customer’s peace of mind that you have everything under control.
Example: Working in appliances, we knew there was a lot a customer had to do to prepare for their fridge delivery. Measure your doors for one! It never failed to surprise when a customer failed to measure a space for their new order and it created an incredibly negative and costly experience.
Adding RelevanceDoes your product require installation? Setup? Could it benefit from another product or service? A ‘how to’ touchpoint is a gracious way to onboard somebody into experiencing your product. It’s easy to ignore if it’s not relevant, but an essential opportunity with complex purchases. Also, if you sell installation services and relevant add ons, this is the perfect time to introduce it.
Example: Sticking with appliances, a new washer and dryer combo often needed service. Moving the old appliances, hooking up the new ones with new hoses, and even removing the old appliances from the home were amazing add ons most customers bought.
Stage 2: Arrival
If you have a great deal of certainty about when your product arrives, it’s an easy opportunity to welcome customers to your brand. “Thank you for supporting local.”“Thanks for supporting green manufacturing.”
I’ve always felt that it’s a big miss to not welcome customers to your brand. It’s an opportunity to reinforce your feel-good brand messages and the reasons why a customer chose you over a competitor.
Stage 3: Checking In
How’s it going with your new purchase? Do you need any tips? Would you mind providing a review? Within the first couple weeks, you have an opportunity to connect with a customer and ensure satisfaction, and ideally acquire product reviews.
Having spent years in retail eCommerce, I can tell you that collecting product reviews passively is nearly pointless. Setting up automated solicitation is a simple process, provides a worthy touchpoint with your customer and drives those golden product reviews.
Stage 4: Life Stages
MaintenanceDue for an oil change? Sofa need cleaning? As the brand, you should know how best to extend the value of your products and services. This is something I see extremely rarely, and it creates a strong vision of good will from a company. Think of some ways you can help a customer keep enjoying what you sold them and keep your brand top of mind.
ReplacementIn some cases, replacement means that your product came to the end of its life. Other times products naturally get replaced as individuals change their lives. Children grow and change sizes, people move, economies shift; these are all key triggers for buying.
If you have a product that fits a stage, let’s say back to school gear, you 100% know what products matter to who and when. If you know the products they bought (which you do) you can make predictions about what they’ll need next year in greater detail than one big broad ‘buy school stuff’ email.
This final stages of email lifecycle are often the least developed because the lists start getting quite specific and small, so the value of building them out gets smaller and smaller. You have to be strategic on where you spend your time, but know that once you set it up, you only have to check in once and a while to see it’s performing well.
Key Takeaways
As I mentioned earlier, this won’t fit every business, but you should be able to map your customer’s journey post-purchase and assemble a lifecycle plan. Email is a valuable tool in your arsenal not only because it can target many of these points, but it’s also cheap to setup.
