Win with Lifecycle Marketing: Carrying a User Over the Finish Line

Lifecycle journeys are ideally timed at what I like to call critical moments – times where a user is most likely to need a piece of communication in order to complete a goal that is in line with your brand’s goals. 

We’ve been focusing on welcome series recently, and the welcome moment is definitely critical for a user to make their first purchase. Their interest is high enough to want to hear more from you. They’re seeing ads, opening emails, SMS and push notifications from your app, and likely, you’re putting your best foot forward to help them find the product they want so they can get it into their hands. 

However, there’s always a considerable subset of users who don’t complete that goal. Maybe they stopped engaging, were just looking for a deal, or just lost interest. While bringing all of those users back to site to complete an action probably isn’t realistic, increasing the share of users who eventually purchase can have huge long-term effects on your business. 

If you bring in 100 users a day and 10% purchase at an AOV of $100, that’s $365,000 in revenue per year. If we were to increase the share of users who purchase from 10 a day to 12 a day, that’s an additional $73,000 in revenue per year, just from the welcome message. That’s a big deal. 

So, how do you increase conversions from email? 

Sending the right message at the right time.

By now, you should have several different pieces of communication in your welcome series, maybe even 5 or 6. Take a look at the open and click rates for that series. Typically, each piece of communication you send has a diminishing return, which is to be expected. However, if you have a high performer later in the series, that means you should be sending that piece of communication sooner – when a larger share of users are still engaged. This simple optimization can often unlock a lot of potential. 

If your welcome series is doing what you’d expect it to do already, then your next test is to introduce a couple of new ideas early on in the series. Perhaps that’s a personal touch like curated items, a special discount, or some kind of competitive advantage that your product has over others – the only way to know what’s going to drive users to react is to test these ideas. So, introduce tests that compare these concepts against each other and put the best performing concepts sooner in the series so you’re striking while the iron is hot. 

Sending the right message to the right user

Not all users to your site are the same and they might not all be trying to solve the same problem with your product. If you introduce different experiences to different users, you can unlock potential for those users that you might miss out on with more general messaging. 

Let’s say your brand sells three products: Sunglasses, Hats, and T-shirts. Introducing interest in the signup form could help you personalize the welcome experience so that you’re showing the most relevant messaging to users. You won’t miss out by guessing the kinds of products they want to see. Or, you could make different signup modules on different landing pages so that users who sign up on the sunglasses page get messaging focused on sunglasses and users who sign up on a hats page get messaging about hats. This simple execution can help guide users to the best possible experience and drive increased conversion over more general messaging. 

Going, going, gone…

Some users are just less likely to engage over time, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. Think about the way your business does things. Do you always send emails at the same time and day? Maybe those users are always busy at those times, and you need to break the mold in order to bring them back. Introducing an email on an off-day to inactive users can often unlock unknown potential simply due to the fact that you’re sending at a time when a different set of users are available. Or perhaps your business drops products at a certain time each week – consider dropping products to new users sooner than everyone else since those users are likely to be engaged and might be more likely to take advantage. 

The idea here is that disruption to what you normally do can create opportunity for the end user. Thinking about how what you do is received by the end user can help guide you to tests and scenarios that will help revenue grow. 

I love looking at programs and finding these hidden pockets of potential, so I’d encourage you to reach out to us to see how we can help your program unlock its hidden potential.