Striking the Perfect Balance Between Lifecycle Vs Trigger Communications

Marketing automation or automating your CRM communications are common terminologies often used within the CRM space.

But what do they refer to; lifecycle comms, trigger comms, or transactional messages? Well, it means all of that! This article delves into achieving the right equilibrium between lifecycle and trigger communications in today’s customer-centric environment, emphasising their pivotal role in nurturing relationships and promoting growth. 

Lifecycle communications centre on delivering pertinent messages to customers at different stages of their brand journey. This approach is strategically designed to guide customers from initial awareness to post-purchase loyalty. In sectors where choices bear significant implications, such as finance and healthcare, a well-structured journey becomes absolutely essential.

Creating Awareness: The initial phase aims to introduce customers to your brand or services. It sets the stage for establishing your brand presence and showcasing your products or services as viable solutions. Tailored content like educational articles, infographics, or explainer videos can solidify your credibility and expertise.

Nurturing Interest: When prospects express interest, nurturing communication comes into play. This is particularly delicate in finance and healthcare, where the balance between offering valuable information and respecting privacy is crucial. Personalised emails, social media interactions, and targeted advertising maintain engagement and interest.

Converting Leads: The consideration stage necessitates persuasive content, testimonials, and case studies to convert leads into loyal customers. Addressing their pain points and highlighting your unique value proposition is key.

Post-Purchase Engagement: After successful conversion, maintaining post-purchase engagement is vital for customer retention, especially in finance and healthcare. Follow-up communications, surveys and loyalty rewards are instrumental in keeping customers satisfied and encouraging repeat business. 

Trigger communications: Trigger communications respond in real-time to specific customer actions or events, relying on data-driven automation to deliver timely, relevant messages.

Timely Reminders: Trigger communications can send reminders for upcoming appointments, surgeries, policy renewals, or account updates, ensuring customers never miss crucial dates.

Personalised Recommendations: Based on recent interactions, trigger communications offer tailored product or service recommendations, enhancing cross-selling or upselling opportunities.

Abandoned Cart Recovery: Items left in the basket and never completed the purchase? A gentle reminder helps increase conversion rates for product and services in which customers may have shown interest.

Effective marketing hinges on striking the right balance between lifecycle and trigger communications. A well-crafted strategy harnesses the power of personalised lifecycle nurturing alongside the immediacy of trigger-based responses.

What’s important is that once you have mapped the full lifecycle journey of your customers and identified all the trigger messages; you take a wholistic view of how many messages a customer may get in a hypothetical scenario of fulfilling all conditions of both kinds of messages. Based on this you should then introduce exclusions criteria to your automations ensuring that your customers are not being spammed.

But how do I tell what is too much? Well, the data tells that story. There is a sweet spot for different messages across different industries. For example, when you are eagerly waiting for your parcel to arrive; you don’t really mind if you are told about 12 times of where your parcel is and exactly when will it arrive and who will deliver it. But on the other hand, you might not feel the same way about an insurance broker contacting you multiple times for the same amazing deal he or she has for you. Hence the insights on each kind of message for every business needs to be derived from the data and exclusions criteria based on those insights.  

Within various industries, mastering the balance of lifecycle and trigger communications is critical for building robust customer relationships. Striking a balance between strategic nurturing and timely responses makes customers feel valued, understood, and supported throughout their journey. By capitalising on technology and data, one can deliver relevant, timely, and personalised messages that drive engagement and loyalty across critical sectors. The power of lifecycle and trigger communications sets the stage for a promising future in marketing.