{"id":14009,"date":"2018-04-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/post\/customer-lifecycle-development-6-steps-to-success-marketo_mops\/"},"modified":"2021-12-15T00:14:58","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T05:14:58","slug":"customer-lifecycle-development-6-steps-to-success-marketo_mops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/customer-lifecycle-development-6-steps-to-success-marketo_mops\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Lifecycle Development: 6 Steps to Success in Marketo"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today\u2019s customers expect marketing communications to be timely and personalized and while acquisition of new customers is critical, modern marketers need to also focus on engaging with individuals throughout the buyer journey. <\/span><\/p>\n Engagement style marketing provides optimized customer experiences, which leads to increased pipeline and revenue generation opportunities. <\/span><\/p>\n Automation platforms like Marketo that capture customer data, allow for personalized communications and tie customers to marketing interactions. This gives you the tools you need to move away from ineffective batch and blast sends and move towards targeted behavioral-based communications that meet the customer where they are in the buying process. <\/span><\/p>\n “Irrelevant content is the #1 reason customers don\u2019t engage more often” – <\/span><\/i>The State of Engagement Report, Marketo<\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/i><\/p>\n According to Forrester, today\u2019s customers \u201cdistrust and resent one-off campaigns that interrupt or intercept them.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n These tools also give you insight into where all of your contacts stand in the marketing, sales and customer advocacy journey. You can report on who is progressing through your customer lifecycle, from which sources and at what rate. Having this data will allow you to start seeing behavior patterns that can inform future campaign strategies.<\/span><\/p>\n But having the tools in your toolbox is only the first step in moving towards more effective engagement-style marketing communications. A critical path activity is creating a customer lifecycle that is constantly evaluated and updated. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A customer lifecycle represents the different stages that your prospects and customers go through as they interact with your brand. The lifecycle is often visualized as a funnel or cycle and may include stages such as discovery, consideration, evaluation, purchase, re-purchase and advocate. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You should create and define your customer lifecycle outside of Marketo first, and then configure your Marketo segmentation, programs and Revenue Cycle Modeler, if you have it, to align. <\/span><\/p>\n Before your team starts configuring in Marketo, go through these 6 steps to help set the stage for a successful customer lifecycle deployment: \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It has often been said, \u201cYou cannot know how to find your way to the destination unless you know where you are.\u201d The same holds true for a customer lifecycle project. Start with documenting all current lead or customer touchpoints and include any current handoff points. <\/span><\/p>\n This will be helpful to have as a baseline as you begin to assess engagement strategy. It will also serve as a great artifact for change management efforts down the road. <\/span><\/p>\n Don\u2019t leave your sales team out of the picture. Get sales and marketing teams in the same room to begin building out your future state lifecycle. Use this as a guide: \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This process will take time. You may need to explain to sales the value of going through this process emphasizing the end result such as increased lead qualification and more customer data sharing. <\/span><\/p>\n Taking the time upfront to work together will create a stronger partnership between sales and marketing and will save you from having to make major modifications in your lifecycle program later. <\/span><\/p>\n Once your lifecycle program is up and running, you will soon have new data to review with your marketing and sales teams. <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n It’s a good idea to proactively establish <\/b>service level agreements (SLAs) between sales and marketing. Here is a great article<\/a>\u00a0on the steps to creating SLAs. Part of this will include developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and agreeing on the measurement and monitoring of the data in a systematic way.<\/p>\n Along with other marketing data such as content performance, you will want to discuss which teams will get value from the data, who will pull the data and distribute it, and what frequency makes the most sense to evaluate it. It’s not enough to get the sales and marketing teams aligned. You need a high-level commitment from key stakeholders as well as the ability to enforce the process and allocate resources as needed. <\/span><\/p>\n Make sure to discuss this upfront – and make it a standing agenda item so leaders regularly review how their teams are doing. For example, what happens if:<\/span><\/p>\n You want to make sure your stakeholders are open to solving these types of problems. <\/span><\/p>\n Document the ideal journey in a visual format. I\u2019ve used tools such as <\/span>Lucid Charts<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Visio<\/span><\/a> or PowerPoint to create these. Here is an example of what this might look like:<\/span><\/p>\nCreate Custom Communications Based on Customer Lifecycle<\/h2>\n
Steps to Defining your Customer Lifecycle<\/h2>\n
#1 – Understand and document your current state:<\/h3>\n
#2 – Bring sales and marketing together:<\/span><\/h3>\n
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#3 – Determine who needs to see the data, how often and in what format:<\/h3>\n
\n<\/b><\/p>\n#4 – Gain stakeholder buy-in:<\/h3>\n
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#5 – Create a visual of your stages that can be translated to Marketo:<\/span><\/h3>\n