What’s Customer Lifecycle Marketing Automation Really All About?
There’s a difference… Do you know what it is? What makes lifecycle marketing automation different from marketing automation? Are there any determining factors that make one a better candidate than the other?
Can lifecycle marketing work for B2C companies? More specifically, can they work for your automotive dealership? Organizations of all sizes ask these questions to determine how to appropriately use this within their business models. So here it is, the truth about lifecycle marketing automation.
To start off, lifecycle marketing automation is based on the concept of lifecycle marketing. Lifecycle marketing focuses on engaged relationships instead of the more traditional marketing approach based on connections.
Where a person is in their journey or lifecycle dictates how the contact or company is communicated to, by whom and how often.
Most of the time, marketing used to be connected to a database filled with contacts. These contacts were connected to an organization, which included their phone number, street address, and email.
Instead of the “batch and blast” approach marketers used in the past, lifecycle marketing focuses on the individual or organization and their journey with your brand. Where a person is in their journey or lifecycle dictates how the contact or company is communicated to, by whom and how often.
Take the concept of lifecycle marketing and build it into a marketing automation platform, and you have lifecycle marketing automation.
Mega Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a marketing and sales solution that takes email marketing, marketing campaigns, lead nurturing and reporting to the next level. It’s really gaining more popularity and attention these days, too. According to Focus Research, marketing automation has seen the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last 5 years.
“Profile and engagement scoring can’t always give you information about the relationship a person or business has with your brand.”
Scoring is a leading feature when it comes to lifecycle marketing automation. Marketing automation platforms can score leads based on how they engage with campaigns or content. Scoring can also be based on demographics or lead attributes such as business size, title, revenue and location. These scores can build highly desirable stack-ranked lists of prospective car buyers for sales teams to contact.
Take marketing automation to the next level. Not only will sales teams have leads ranked upon on engagement and profile scores, but also their lifecycle stage. Profile and engagement scoring can’t always give you information about the relationship a person or business has with your brand. With lifecycle marketing, sales and marketing teams alike have visibility into contacts’ engagement with the brand, relevant profile attributes and where they are in their journey with the company.
How Do I Know if Lifecycle Marketing Automation is Right for my Dealership?
Here are some statements to consider when evaluating marketing automation solutions to help determine whether or not it could be a good fit for your dealership:
- Your sales process takes weeks or even months from beginning to end.
- You want to send different messages to different contacts based upon profile attributes, level of engagement and/or lifecycle stage.
- You want to measure the ROI of marketing efforts based upon engagement and moving contacts through your brand’s lifecycle instead of open and click-through rates.
- Your marketing team has access to lead and customer data but either doesn’t know what to do with it or doesn’t have the time/capability to use it effectively.