Lifecycle Marketing That Drives Real-Time Customer Engagement

Published: January 23, 2013

By Joe Cordo, CMO, Extraprise

When marketers identify the need to leverage transactional and behavioral data they are making a conscious decision to build a marketing data structure that is optimized for lifecycle marketing. Forrester Research defines the four stages of the customer lifecycle as discover, explore, engage and buy.


Joe Cordo
By Joe Cordo, CMO, Extraprise

When marketers identify the need to leverage transactional and behavioral data they are making a conscious decision to build a marketing data structure that is optimized for lifecycle marketing. Forrester Research defines the four stages of the customer lifecycle as discover, explore, engage and buy.

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This definition, which applies to B2B and B2C marketing endeavors, has vast implications for the use of transactional and behavioral data to increase market share, upsell/cross-sell opportunities and share of wallet.

The Lifecycle Marketing Hub

The concept of a hub for the marketing lifecycle must encompass the following elements to achieve dynamic engagement during the lifecycle: 

  • Support of structured and unstructured data from internal (offline) and online data sources;
  • Real-time optimization that includes the processing, analysis and optimized preferences of customer engagement data in real time;
  • The use of customer intelligence that spans basic segmentation, data visualization and predictive modeling in a holistic process that complements marketing strategy and execution; and
  • A marketing automation/cross-channel campaign management platform that enables marketers to build audiences and publish once across many channels simultaneously, based on transactional, behavioral and lifecycle conditions.

 

Today’s lifecycle marketing hub requires an evolution from today’s transactional marketing systems, and it demands the ability to integrate new, unstructured data sources. Most marketing organizations believe they are moving through that evolution by adopting and/or increasing their use of marketing automation systems, cross-channel campaign management platforms, and an assortment of new technologies that optimize elements of social media, mobile, display advertising and search engine marketing.

The Critical Role Of The Customer Profile

However, these systems and technologies are disparate in nature and in many instances they are not future proofed to support unstructured data. Moreover, when marketing organizations adopt technology they often ignore the DNA required for its successful evolution: the customer profile. 

The customer profile, combining elements of structured (i.e. demographic and firmographic information) and unstructured data (e.g. conversations, social media dialogue, email and geo-location, from offline and online sources), constitute the DNA of highly segmented marketing in the customer lifecycle.

Marketers can use these elements to create multiple profiles for each segment; they can then map back to the stages of the customer lifecycle. This approach is highly scalable and taking segmentation mapping to more sophisticated levels enables marketers to prioritize segments based on market and revenue opportunity at each stage of the customer lifecycle.

The customer profile as the DNA within the lifecycle marketing hub enables marketers to know whom to market to, when to market to them, and how to market to them – all in a highly optimized way that uses real-time customer engagement to drive revenue growth, profitability and lifetime value. 

Joe Cordo is CMO of Extraprise, a provider of right time revenue optimization for B2B and B2C enterprises, providing database marketing and demand generation services. For more information, contact the author at joe.cordo@extraprise.com,visit www.extraprise.com or call +1(888) i2iMKTG.

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