When setting up complex customer journeys that run fully automated along with ad-hoc, highly engaging campaigns, marketers often lack a framework to gain insight into their setup. You regularly get ideas and use cases from inside your organization that you want to exploit within your retention channels.
However, you often lack a simple categorization in these messages and campaigns to see in which lifecycle a customer is. This framework helps and can ensure that you focus on turning new customers into loyal ones.
Why do you need a framework?
As part of your Customer Retention Strategy, a Customer Life Cycle Framework gives you insight into which stage your customers are in. It also helps you to set goals and distribute focus to the stages that require your attention the most. Earlier, we noted that "Customer Retention is all the actions you take as an organization to retain a customer. Retention is the foundation of growth because the more customers you keep, the less you need to do to acquire new customers". The ultimate effect is that you increase the Life Time Value (LTV) of the customer as well as the Average Order Value (AOV)
A Four Stage Framework:
Onboarding
Notificare platform usually starts after the acquisition has taken place and focuses sight on retention. Therefore, the first phase is to onboard new users. Whether user onboarding is done via Push, Email or SMS depends on many factors and through which channel the customer identifies himself. One thing is for sure, the proper onboarding of your users is vital. You have spent much on ads to get them in, and now the first steps are critical in deciding whether the customer remains a customer or walks out.
Within the onboarding phase, as a marketer, you need to define goals for moving customers from onboarding to the next stage. You want to provide them with specific knowledge and explanations for your product and possibly also get them to make their first purchase or perform the first use of your product. Your campaigns serve these goals, and by educating the user of your service or product, you are leading them to the next phase.Activation
During the Customer activation stage, you will motivate customers to move toward the next stage of their customer life cycle. By sending the right messaging strategy, they will move faster than they would on their own.
Here, you build the foundation for when and how to engage users — it helps keep your audience interested in your product and brand throughout the buyer's journey. As users have been learning about your product or service and benefiting during the onboarding, they'll now recognize the value. Here you focus on offering and selling more or different products through cross- and upselling campaigns. Actively responding to consumer behavior is so crucial here, for example, when a shopping cart is abandoned.Winback
The win-back phase is your dead zone. This is, of course, not where you want customers to be because before you know it, they've left you. You identify customers who are less active and where your activation works less. By looking for win-back campaigns with the right incentive, you try to motivate your dormant users to become active again. A customer who regularly does groceries with you and suddenly doesn't for months could be won back by a "free delivery with your next order" campaign.Loyalty
Customer engagement is the ongoing interactions between company and customer, and when done right, you'll build customer loyalty. A loyalty program can support you by accommodating more interactions, creating touch points, and rewarding customers for these interactions. By communicating with your customer in a personalized way through the retention channels Notificare offers, you turn your customers into ambassadors.
Need help with the framework?
Our Customer Success team is ready to help you with any questions you have. We will assist you with analyzing use cases to establish highly engaging campaigns that accommodate these. If you have an Enterprise Plan, feel free to contact Customer Succes now.