Customer journey management, is one of the most crucial aspects of building business relationships, right from gauging potential customers, nurturing and acquiring them to customer retention and building loyalty. However, this process is complex and involves running and assessing multiple processes simultaneously. Fortunately, the digital market has tools and software to help you deal with these complexities.
Before we start naming software, it’s important to note that there’s no single tool that will take care of all your lifecycle marketing needs. This is why marketers or lifecyclists rely not just on a single tool or platform but a software stack that comprises multiple tools that cater to different aspects of the customer’s journey.
In this blog, we are going to discuss what a lifecycle marketing software stack is, what kinds of software it must contain, why they are critical for scaling customer relationships, and how you can create the right stack for yourself.
What is a lifecycle marketing software stack?
A lifecycle marketing software stack refers to a collection of digital tools and platforms designed to help businesses manage and optimize customer interactions across different stages of the customer journey — right from the initial awareness stage and lead generation to customer retention and advocacy.
Each tool within this stack serves a specific set of functions. Carrying out each of these functions timely ensures smooth, data-driven interactions between the business and the customer, tailored to the customer's unique needs and behaviors at different touchpoints.
To elaborate on the functions mentioned above, a lifecycle marketing software stack may include:
Here's the information in a table format:
| Tool / Platform / Software | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Customer relationship management software | To store and manage customer data and segment audiences | Salesforce, HubSpot |
| Email marketing platform | To perform end-to-end email marketing processes, and set up email marketing automation and workflows | Mailmodo |
| Analytics tools | To track user behavior, measure marketing campaigns, and provide insights for optimization | Google Analytics, Mixpanel |
| Multi-channel marketing platforms | To enable reach across multiple platforms like email campaigns, SMS, push notifications, social media and social media ads | Moengage |
| Data collection & visualization tools | To collect and analyze data to identify patterns and uncover insights | Segment, Dynamic Yield |
| Customer experience software | To gather user feedback and refine the customer experience | SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics |
| Mind mapping tools | To brainstorm, plan, and strategize across different stages of the customer journey | Miro |
How to find the right lifecycle marketing stack?
A lifecycle marketing software stack isn’t a single tool or platform–it’s a stack of tools that guide the interactions you have with your customer base at various touchpoints in their journey, from start to finish.
An optimum lifecycle marketing software stack will contain tools that:
Allows you control and flexibility to segment audiences
Set up automated workflows
Reach people through various channels
Measure and improve marketing campaigns
Therefore, you need to be mindful when putting together the right lifecycle software stack to ensure that it comprises tools and software that take care of multiple functionalities that you need based on the processes you run.
One way to go about this is to first list out all the processes you’re planning on running and features you might need, and then think of how you can use tools optimally to streamline these functions and carry out the processes. Once you do this, you can build a stack based on your requirements and budget.
Key features to look for in lifecycle marketing software stack
When choosing the right tools to build your lifecycle marketing software stack, you might have to check out a number of permutations and combinations because the tools you’ll test would have overlapping features. So how do you choose what’s best for your requirements?
This is when it becomes vital to look at features you should ideally prioritize as part of your stack. Here’s a look at some key features you must have in your lifecycle marketing software:
Segmentation and personalization
Not all customers are the same. This is why you should choose a tool that lets you create different audience groups based on behavior, location, interests, and other unique traits and personalize your content marketing based on that. Accurate and advanced segmentation ensures that your customers receive relevant content and marketing messages based on their behavior and demographics. This is key to boosting customer engagement.
Automation
Automation forms the backbone of your lifecycle marketing efforts. It allows you to create journeys that respond to customer actions in real time. For example, when someone signs up, they automatically receive a welcome email series in their inbox. With automated workflows, each step of the customer journey can be smooth, responsive, consistent, and timely, ensuring reduced manual effort. Mailmodo, for instance, provides multiple automation functionalities, including the ability to set up email workflows with multiple triggers that can identify the action taken by the user and send specific email campaigns based on the action the user takes.
Multi-channel messaging
Multiple platforms have led to customers having multiple preferences—some are glued to their email, while others respond faster to SMS or push notifications. An effective lifecycle marketing software stack will enable you to reach customers across a variety of channels without duplicating efforts or creating separate strategies.
Analytics and reporting
The ability to track how each campaign or message is performing is crucial. As a business owner, you would want valuable insights on multiple metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, conversions, customer lifetime value, and churn rates. This will help your marketing team understand how well or poorly your lifecycle marketing campaigns are performing and if they’re resonating well with your audience. You can use this data to refine your approach right from the awareness stage to the engagement stage, making potential customers become brand advocates.
Why Mailmodo stands out as the ultimate lifecycle marketing software
Mailmodo is a tool that can be a crucial part of your marketing team’s software stack. As an all-in-one email marketing tool, it does away with traditional marketing, and offers multiple functionalities.
It allows for dynamic segmentation, so you just have to set up the segmentation parameters once, and it keeps segmenting your audience based on the given criteria. You can also use multiple customer attributes to personalize your messaging. Email automation is another cool feature that helps you reduce your routine tasks. You can even set up multiple email workflows to cater to specific customer needs and guide them through the customer journey and sales funnel. It also offers robust predictive analytics so you can keep track of customer needs from a single comprehensive dashboard. It also offers additional features like send-time optimization so you can send marketing messages, A/B testing of subject lines and gives you a customer engagement platform to view actionable insights during each stage of their journey.
What’s unique in Mailmodo is that it offers a free trial so you can gauge interactivity within your emails, and experience how this increases customer engagement. Your recipients can fill out forms, scroll through carousels and even play games within the email itself. What’s even better? You can reach your customer base with these email campaigns without writing a single line of code.
You also get a customer view in the form of a visual customer journey builder to design your workflows. You can also access a robust email template library to go through interactive email templates for multiple use cases.
With a tool like Mailmodo, you get to strengthen your customer relationship management using a single user-friendly solution, designed to lead to higher engagement and conversion.
Create and send interactive emails without coding in minutes
Takeaways
The benefits of a well-put-together software stack are undeniable—it streamlines your efforts, aligns your team’s focus, and scales your marketing efforts for greater impact.
Selecting the right lifecycle marketing software stack is a critical step in building effective, customer-centric marketing. Key factors to consider include segmentation capabilities, seamless automation, multi-channel engagement options, and insightful analytics. The right platform should make it easy to orchestrate personalized journeys that engage customers from first interaction to long-term loyalty.
