By Buffy Cranford
When reviewing other marketing techniques, such as Batch and Blast, lifecycle marketing delivers exceptional results in the current, tech-savvy marketplace. Lifecycle marketing has grown in popularity as companies understand the importance of customer relationships and discover that the program enhances customer retention.
Beneath the lifecycle stages, email designs and measuring returns, lifecycle marketing also entails establishing goals for the product, developing a strategy, profiling customers and building customer relationships.
Product Goals
In other product campaign models, companies may set a product return goal, launch the campaign and wait for the profits. If the campaign fails, the company may relaunch the product using a different marketing technique or scrap the marketing campaign altogether.
In lifecycle marketing, goals are often established based on data for similar products, and companies use analytical measurement throughout the advertising campaign. As numbers fluctuate, companies may change tactics or gather additional consumer data for personalizing product promotions.
Strategy Planning
Product goals provide companies a tangible, short-term target, but for the long-term, lifecycle marketing allows for strategic planning. For example, the Nike brand has established goals and strategies for half a century with “Just Do It,” “Be Like Mike,” and numerous other campaigns. The company takes each shoe line through a product lifecycle, planning marketing, developing strategies and launching a product with prime product positioning.
In fact, the company embraced lifecycle marketing long before Internet sales even existed by establishing a larger budget for promotions than advertising in the 1970s and 1980s. The leaders at Nike learned early that strategy can influence the direction of your company for the next two to 3 to 30 years.
Customer Profiling
Goal and strategy planning are interwoven with customer profiling. Often, before goals are established and strategies implemented, the vision of the product revolves around customer profiling. Although you may have a specific customer in mind during a product launch, with the flexibility of lifecycle marketing and the use of analytics, your target audience could easily change overnight.
Just a few years ago, including the name of your customer in the tagline of a marketing email grabbed their attention. Now that same email likely enters their growing junk mail pile. Lifecycle marketing differs from other email campaigns in that companies can monitor customer behavior and come up with creative avenues for promoting products.
Customer profiling can vary among marketing plans, but in lifecycle marketing, customer profiling can be used for promotions, coupons, recommendations and even surveys. Plus, with behavioral analysis, your company can determine which customers are in the declining stage and make a decision to continue a reckless pursuit of the customer or let them go.
Conclusion
The four stages of the product lifecycle; introduction, growth, maturity and decline each include numerous measurements for marketing validity. Coupled with goals, strategy, customer profiling and email marketing techniques, the lifecycle marketing program is an established success. As more companies adopt a plan that embraces relationship marketing, customer loyalty and retention, companies can profit from the customer lifecycle model.
Read the full series:
Part 1: Getting Started
Part 2: Email Design Elements
Part 3: Honing Your Message
Part 4: Measuring Success
Part 5: Why It Works for Small Businesses
About the Author
Buffy Cranford has over 20 years of experience in writing and publishing. Her writing background includes newspaper journalism and reviewing and researching computer software and hardware for Smart Computing and PC Today magazines. She has worked with established companies such as Dell, IBM and Acer.