August 2021

CLM is easy to understand, you can check the definition from a previous article “What is CLM“. but how can you use it in your eCommerce business? While the process of customer lifecycle management is different for every business, here are some smart tips to help you make the most of it.   1. Make ads and content that cater to different stages of the customer’s life cycle. Your marketing campaigns and content should address the need or interest of your audience at the time they encounter it. This is the key to success and part of why CLM is so important. A message tailored to their journey will work best for prospects who are just hearing about you and customers who have been with you for many years. When planning your marketing and advertising strategies, consider what customers are thinking and feeling at each stage in the customer’s lifecycle. Then, create messaging that matches.   2. Keep track of your relationships with customers and leads. CLM is only possible if you know where customers are at each stage of their customer lifecycle. This means that you need to keep track of all information about how people have interacted with your brand. There are some legal and ethical limitations such as GDPR to how much data and tracking you can (or should) do however, there’s still plenty of information you can reasonably collect and save without crossing any ethical lines. It’s possible to keep data about whether customers have downloaded ebooks, which products they’ve bought, what offers they responded to, and what customer service interactions they had in the past. These are all ethical and expected. It is a smart decision to invest in customer relationship software (CRM), or any other type of database, to organize this information and make it available for customers and marketers.   3. Personalize wherever possible This strategy can benefit from the (ethical data) you have collected in the last step. You can use the information you have learned to send your contacts content and offers relevant to their interests. You can do this by creating segmented email addresses based on what products or content they are most interested in. A person who has not yet purchased beauty products may not be interested in your latest line of healthy snacks. However, they will want to hear about the upcoming sale of their favorite brand of makeup.   4. Prioritize customer service It doesn’t matter if you have great products or brilliant marketing. But if customers have a bad experience with your company, it is not worth the effort. It’s possible to be dead to them. Research from Zendesk found that around half of customers will leave a brand after one bad experience, and 80% will surely leave after the second. If you want your brand to be successful beyond the point of conversion, it is important to provide consistent, quality customer service. This is key to loyalty.   5. Reward your best customers. Loyal customers make a difference. To get a customer to become a loyal customer and advocate for your brand, they will need to be more than satisfied with good customer service. You should think about how to reward customers for loyalty and advocacy. A good way to do this is by creating a loyalty program, amplifying their voice on social media by sharing their posts about your products, or sending special offers and coupons based on actions they take.

Customer lifecycle management (CLM) is a key concept to help you build a solid online business strategy and it’s high time you learn about it if you want your online business to grow and prosper.   What is Customer Lifecycle Management? Customer lifecycle management refers to the process of understanding the customer’s typical lifecycle and tailoring your strategy accordingly. The customer lifecycle describes all the stages a customer experiences throughout their relationship with your brand. There are a few reasons why customer lifecycle management is important: It allows you to provide relevant marketing messages. If you know where your customers are in their customer lifecycle which in turn will make your marketing more relevant and effective. Can result in increased sales and customer retention. More money is what you get when your marketing is more effective and leads to more sales and repeat customers. It allows for better analysis. Different parts of the lifecycle will have different behavior. This allows you to better understand the behavior of different tactics and allows you to analyze them more effectively. Five Stages of the Customer Lifecycle Depending on what type of business you run, the details of the customer’s lifecycle may look different. In most cases, however, it can be broken down into five major stages.   1. Awareness Marketing tends to focus on the awareness stages. These are the ads and content that you create to get your brand on the consumer’s radar. For any stage to succeed, awareness is essential. It is vital, but marketing strategies can over emphasize it in comparison to other stages.   2. Conversion Once you have attracted a customer’s attention, the next step is to convince them to buy. Conversion (or acquisition) is the moment when a consumer takes that first step to becoming a customer. This is the second of five stages in customer lifecycle management.   3. Nurture It is more profitable to retain customers that you have already earned than to focus on new customers. This is where nurturing comes in. Invest in the purchase of the one-time item and building a relationship with it. Send follow-ups with professional business emails and create marketing materials focused on how to use your products or get the most of them. Offers and coupons that are tailored to your customers may be a good idea. Also, ensure exceptional customer service and product quality.   4. Retention When all the nurturing is paying off and customers return for more, that’s called retention. For consumable products and subscription software, retention rates (discounted) are binded to the time when a customer has the chance to renew or cancel. It refers to customers making additional purchases from your website for the same or other products.   5. Advocacy While retention is great, there are ways to go beyond that. Advocacy refers to when loyal customers love your brand and products so much that they talk about you on social media. They also tell their friends about you, share case studies, or give testimonials. You can earn advocacy by providing great customer service and a great product. You can also encourage your customers with loyalty and referral programs.   CLM plans for the entire experience not just sales Every business should strive to earn sales. Loyal customers will help you go further. CLM will change the way you view your customer relationship. It will allow you to think differently about how you interact with customers and make sure you work as hard as possible to retain their loyalty.