Automating lifecycle marketing takes time. It takes effort.
You will never be done because it’s a journey and there will always be room for improvement.
Dramatic improvement at first and then incremental improvements over time.
To fully automate your lifecycle marketing, you have to create lead magnets, and write content for emails, landing pages and thank you pages.
You have to write emails that will welcome your new customers and start building a relationship with them.
You will need to write content that reengages your customers when they stop buying.
And you will need to write other emails for countless other lifecycle marketing opportunities.
The promise of lifecycle marketing is that you can deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, automatically.
And guess what? You just don’t know what will work until you try and test.
Rather than guess, take the lean approach and start from the top.
Lets say you have 10,000 unique visitors coming to your online store every month and only 200 visitors end up buying. That’s a 2% conversion rate. Not uncommon.
What about the other 9,800 unique visitors? What can you offer them in exchange for their email address and their permission to communicate with them?
Is it a 10% coupon code that expires in 30 days? Or a 20% coupon code?
Or perhaps a coupon code is not needed at all, and instead, all that your visitors are looking for is a bit more information to make a decision.
Maybe they're comparing you against your competitors and they simply want a comparison sheet that explains the differences and provides them with evidence of your unique selling proposition. Or perhaps they simply want a fact sheet that explains the features/benefits of what you offer.
You just don’t know what will work.
So rather than picking the one you think will convert the best, and then building out a long, detailed 10-part email nurture sequence that will turn your leads into customers, all before you launch the campaign, start from the top, and split test your way through the entire campaign.
I’m a big fan of Perry Marshall, and a lot of what we do at Revenue Conduit, from the approach we take in integrating your online store with Infusionsoft to how we consult with our clients, has been informed by Perry in one way or another.
Split testing is simply creating two different versions of something and testing them against one another to see which performs better.
I learned from Perry to split test forrest first, then trees, then branches, and finally, leaves.
Your “forests” can be your vastly different lead magnets - a coupon code versus a fact sheet versus a comparison sheet.
Create three popups, one for each lead magnet. Then create a single email follow up for each lead magnet. Don’t make it perfect. Just get it done and launch.
The first thing we are testing is our ability to get a visitor to the site to fill out the popup webform. That’s it. We’re not yet testing for a sale. We simply want to know the best offer for getting a unique visitor to become a lead we can market to.
Launch one popup at a time or, depending on your popup provider, use their internal split testing feature. Then see how each performs. Maybe the coupon code lead magnet gets a 5% conversion rate, while the fact sheet gets a 3% conversion, while the comparison sheet gets an 8% conversion rate.
Once you find the best lead magnet, proceed to split test the popup by switching the order of your words and lines. That’s getting into split testing “trees” within the “forest.” Then move on to other smaller and smaller elements. Again, you're looking for incremental improvements!
While you’re split testing the popup, now is the time to build out your lead nurture campaign. But stick with the lean approach and test what you don’t know. Will a three-part email sequence work, or do you need 5 emails?
Start with the least amount of work possible. It’s better to build something that is decent and launch it fast rather than build something that is perfect and take forever to launch.
I’ll be writing a lot more on Lean Marketing. It’s a powerful concept and we’re starting to use it more and more with our client work. Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment!