You must have heard of segmentation before. The sinews of war in marketing. Have you heard of customer lifecycle segmentation? This type of segmentation allows you to communicate differently depending on the stage where your consumers are. In other words, you personalize your messages depending on whether your customer is a prospect, a loyal customer, a customer who hasn't purchased from you in several months, etc. The tool CRM allows you to identify the different phases of the life cycle of your customers and thus makes your task easier!
Understand the customer lifecycle
Understanding the customer life cycle is simple. Think about the different stages a customer goes through throughout interactions with you. Thus, you will identify different stages such as:
#1: The suspicious individual who might be interested in your products since you were able to determine that his profile corresponds to your target. However, you have little information about it.
#2: The prospect is the one with whom you have established contact and you have already begun to understand their expectations. You know what types of offers may interest him.
#3: New customers are prospects that you have been able to convert and who have already made a purchase with you.
#4: Active customers are those who buy from you loyally and therefore quite regularly.
#5: Inactive customers are those who haven't purchased from you in a while. You need to determine the profile of your inactive customers based on the characteristics of your active customers. Indeed, if your active customers are used to buying from you every 2 months, an inactive customer will then surely be an individual who has not bought from you for more than 6 months.
#6: Lost customers are those who haven't bought from you for a while and above all who no longer respond to any of your requests. These lost customers are sometimes also those who have unsubscribed from your newsletter or who no longer follow you on your social networks.
Other consumer profiles can also be identified depending on your objectives. It's up to you to see which ones are the most suitable for personalizing your messages afterwards.
Segmenting your database according to the customer life cycle will allow you to automate your campaigns in order to ensure optimal customer relationship monitoring. Obviously, offer relevant content depending on the stage at which your customers are.
Something obvious but sometimes forgotten, consider creating a document that lists the different profiles and characteristics of your customers. Indeed, it constitutes an identical work item for all members of your team. Everyone knows what your criteria are for defining an active or inactive customer, for example.
When using a CRM, this categorization of individuals can be done automatically, which saves you time. For example, when an individual in the database has not made any purchases for more than 6 months, he is automatically added to the list of inactive customers.
Create a relevant and effective segmentation strategy
When creating any of the segmentation strategies, certain performance elements must be met.
For example, you should limit yourself to a certain number of segments to focus on. At most, you should have 5 differentiating segments. On the other hand, your segments must be homogeneous. This means that the individuals of the same segment must resemble each other on a set of criteria and above all differentiate themselves from other segments. It seems perfectly obvious, but sometimes certain segments are too similar in order to be able to create an adequate targeting strategy later.
Finally, to finish, your segmentation must be easily usable and operational. In other words, everyone on your team should be able to easily understand your different segments and the strategies behind them.
