In order to run your business well, you want to have a map of the people in your database, based on their user journey.
There may be shifts for individual business needs, but the basic flow will always be the same.
The diagram gives a view of lifecycle stage movement across the stages:
The aim is to move people from ‘pool’ to ‘pool’ (stage to stage), and to assist this process you can employ several methods, including retargeting and remarketing to ‘Leads’ (i.e. the entry level – Top Of The Funnel).
Using Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn’s ability to reconnect with your website visitors, not only can you help people who haven’t opted in become leads, but also move people between stages e.g.
In addition to this, you can employ a series of emails and phone calls to move the person forward.
This process should be based on feedback at each stage as to what is working.
If an email open rate is only 25% then 3 out of 4 people are missing that communication; as such, you should listen, and then look to communicate via additional channels e.g. phone/text.
Exercise: Build a map of the customer experience based on the actions you take and the stages they pass through.
Here is an example:
Tip: As well as personalised communication (via email sequences, phone calls) all contacts consider sending a weekly newsletter, and then look to move those who engage (e.g. click a link) on to list for follow up by the sales team.
You are probably familiar with the concept of split testing.
In essence, split testing – or A/B testing as it is commonly called – is when you isolate one variable at a time, and then compare Test Case A with Test Case B.
There are many factors that you can test, including:
These test everything from: opt in rates, to email open rates, to click rate etc.
Once you have assessed the success of a variant on e.g. a sample size of 300 leads you will roll out the successful approach/approaches for the rest of the email list for that campaign.
If you have the functionality, you can look to use progressive profiling on Forms i.e. for a second download (e.g. of an ebook), you ask additional questions to deepen our understanding of a person’s needs.
Again, dependant upon your system, Smart Forms allow an existing contact to ‘see’ an alternative form on a page once opted in to the original.
Tip: be careful about attempting to over use every tool you have without first building it into an ‘outcome focused’ approach i.e. Ask yourself: What would using this tool get more ‘more of’?
Even though I never used to be that convinced about Personas, I’ve become a convert.
You should look to ascertain the key factors that your main customer types have in common – to start aim to have about 3 of them.
From there you can use Personas in conjunction with: email campaigns, progressive profiling, website pages visited, and your Sales Team’s approaching each one different.
Note: this is different to ‘streaming people’ based only on Product interest, and create much more nuanced communication e.g. a small business owner interested in a program for their team; compared to a HR professional interested resolving cultural issues.
Tip: before you automate, test what works best on feedback from your Sales Team.
Then look to support them with email campaigns, and smart content, that is based on their insights.
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