Audit & Customer Journey Mapping
Understanding your current CRM landscape and customer journey is crucial for building a successful Lifecycle Marketing strategy. We’ll audit existing programs and create an Email & Mobile strategy for future optimization, delivering the work in four key phases –
1. Audit
- Complete a thorough review of all campaign & templates used in the last 12 months, including design, CTAs and Subject Lines
- Deep dive into your current tech stack and access to data. Review any technical issues such as deliverability and spam complaints
- Benchmark Email & Mobile metrics and compare against industry standards, including opt-ins, opt-outs and conversion rates
- Review all current automations and targeted campaign programs, including segmentation, personalization and list health
- Conduct a comparative analysis of key competitors to understand how your CRM program stacks up
3. Implement
- Outline a testing plan, primary and supporting KPIs, and do-no-harm metrics such as email opt-out or app uninstall rate
- Stand up templates and build out automated flows
- Conduct thorough QA and end-to-end testing, leveraging Litmus to check rendering across key ESPs
- Establish processes for monitoring and tracking against industry benchmarks
2. Plan
- Develop a comprehensive customer journey map, complete with lifecycle stages and strategy by channel. This will serve as your brand’s CRM marketing roadmap for the next 6-12 months
- Categorize and prioritize campaigns by type and objective
- Identify which campaigns can be automated
4. Optimize
- Measure Email and Mobile Marketing engagement and ROI
- Set up strategies to continually optimize your CRM programs, including A/B testing Subject Lines and CTAs, personalization opportunities, behavior-based segmentation and more
- Constantly monitor, evaluate and make improvements – the last thing you want to do is ‘set it and forget it’
Segmentation & Audience Growth
The ability to group subsets of subscribers based on shared behaviors and characteristics is absolutely necessary for running a successful CRM & Lifecycle Marketing program. We’ll define key customer segments and personas for your target audiences to drive impact for your business.
A customer who has just registered for your newsletter and a customer who has just purchased their 3rd product are in very different stages of their lifecycle journey. As a result, from value props to next best actions, the conversation and type of messaging should be completely different. Depending on your business niche there are several ways to tackle customer segmentation, leveraging both zero- and first-party data, along with layered insights as available –
While we’re here, let’s make sure that subscriber, or opt-in forms and surveys are utilized to collect zero- and first-party data. A few best practices –
- Always include a powerful CTA with copy that is action-oriented
- Explain the benefit customers will receive by subscribing to your emails, downloading your app or completing a survey. Make it clear that you’ll be providing value so that each customer feels confident in participating
- When working with opt-in prompts, set clear expectations for customers around how often you’ll be reaching out, and what types of messages you’ll be sending. This helps to build trust and reduces the rate of future opt-outs
- Make sure the design and copy of all prompts reflect your overall brand aesthetic and tone of voice – consistency in branding is key
Automated Flows & Drip Campaigns
It’s crucial to ensure you’re interacting with customers at every stage, but doing so manually is inefficient, time consuming and complex, even more so as your subscriber list grows. From a comprehensive strategy, to documentation, UAT & QA and ongoing monitoring, we’ll deliver end to end automated solutions for your brand.
From real-time triggers, or transactional emails, to drip campaigns designed around an action you’re looking for a customer to take, marketing automation is the unsung hero of CRM. While there are must-have flows that will often translate across brands, a cookie cutter approach has no place here – a successful program requires a well thought-out strategy, clearly defined goals, and regular monitoring to ensure your CRM automation program is as effective as possible. There are several recommended flows to start with –
Welcome
Abandoned Cart
Post Purchase
Feedback Survey
Win-Back
Next Logical Product
Mobile Integration
Newsletter
and many more…
Targeted Launch Campaigns
From defining which actions you want the customer to take to orchestrating the channel, timing and content to maximize results, campaign planning is an involved process. With deep experience across ESPs, CDPs and Enterprise-level solutions, we’ll set up, organize and deploy Email & Mobile campaigns across all major platforms.
Crafting a successful CRM campaign should first begin with identifying the specific goals and objectives of the message you’d like to deliver. There are a number of tactical best-practices and processes we like to implement at scale, and a defined process and campaign calendar means that you don’t need to constantly recreate the wheel. From creative briefing, to rendering checks, pre-deployment review and post-deployment monitoring, we can set your programs up for ongoing success.
Creative Briefs, Content & Copywriting
Does your creative encourage subscribers to take their next best action? Is it following CRM best practices, including trust signals and personalization? Whether you’re wanting to create a content library, or need help briefing and approving creative assets, we’ll optimize systems and ensure your template design and copy is eye-catching.
Utilizing a responsive creative framework that supports brand consistency and leverages message hierarchy can be a game-changer when it comes to developing new campaigns. From working with your in-house creative team, to providing Subject Lines for an A/B test, we can confidently offer the following services –
- Create Subject Line & Preheader Text options that deliver high open rates
- Create CTA & Next Best Action options that deliver high click through and conversion rates
- Craft tailor-made survey to collect zero and first-party data on customer preferences, satisfaction, and more
- Craft custom offers, including discounts and bundling, that grab the customer’s attention
- Write content for newsletter or blog posts
- Write clear and descriptive creative briefs that outline design and or copy elements to be included for future assets, ensuring the creative team is able to understand the objective and goal of each request
- Proofread new or existing copy to ensure accuracy
- Outline a responsive creative framework with recommendations on layout and prioritization of content above the fold
- Conduct a creative audit with clear opportunities and areas of improvement
A/B Testing, Reporting & Optimization
An A/B test requires forethought and planning to ensure that in the end, you can confidently draw conclusions from results. Are your testing goals specific and measurable? Are you isolating variables? Does your test strategy ladder up to achieving your overall business goals? We’ll design a thorough test plan with clear objectives and next steps –
Stage of Test Setup
Example
- Decide what you’d like to test – is it copy, design, audience, moment in time, or something else? The key is to not overcomplicate the test design as this can lead to inconclusive results. Pick a single variable to test, and once that test is complete and results are read out, move on to the next one
Copy for the Subject Line
- Formulate a clear hypothesis
IF we personalize the Subject Line, THEN we will increase the open rate and ultimately increase our chances of customer conversion, BECAUSE subscribers will value having a unique user experience …
- Identify a primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that you will use to measure your hypothesis against – either proving or disproving it. Supporting KPIs and guardrail metrics are encouraged for additional insight, but should not be used to determine an outcome
… WHICH will be measured by Unique Open Rate
- Define your target audience and sample size. Clearly understand which group(s) will receive a control and which will receive a variable treatment(s). As a general rule of thumb, if your list has < 1,000 subscribers, you should split the entire audience 50/50. Otherwise, you may only need to carve out a subset of your list for testing purposes
Isolate recipients of the Weekly Newsletter. Split the audience 50/50 – 50% will receive the Control treatment (existing version as is) and 50% will receive the Test treatment (personalized SL)
- Calculate your run time and requirements for statistical significance. Generally, the larger the audience the faster you can achieve significance, which would indicate that you can be 90% or more confident that results achieved were due to the actual change, not a sampling error. Even if results are inconclusive, testing is still encouraged and results can be interpreted directionally to inform future decision making
With a total audience size of 1,000 and baseline conversion rate of 40%, we’ll need to achieve a 5.2% relative lift to reach 95% significance
- Create a Test Brief by documenting your test design as outlined in steps 1-6. Additional elements to include will vary depending on the scope of testing, as well as if there are other teams that need to be made aware due to potential impact, i.e. Sales, Product or Web teams. Having a well-documented test brief will ensure alignment going forward and allow for other teams and individuals to reference the setup and outcomes
Ready to unlock growth for your business?