With BlueConic Lifecycles, you can orchestrate customer lifecycles and specify the content and actions that accompany each stage in the customer's journey.
Before you begin
Plan your BlueConic customer lifecycle by defining goals, audience, stages, and success metrics. Key questions to answer as you design a marketing lifecycle are:
What are your main goals for using lifecycles?
How granular will your lifecycle be?
How will you define the criteria that determine which profiles are eligible for a lifecycle or a stage?
What data points are already captured in BlueConic that will serve as criteria?
Which connections will import or export necessary data to and from your marketing systems?
How do you define when a profile moves from one stage to the next?
What defines a profile that has completed the lifecycle? What is the ultimate goal?
Create a lifecycle
Select Lifecycles in the navigation menu.
Click the Add lifecycle button.
The lifecycle gallery window appears, with a set of templates you can use to create a customer lifecycle. Choose any template to get started.
The new lifecycle opens. Enter a name.
(Optional) Edit the metadata of your lifecycle to tag it as a favorite, add labels and a description, or adjust permissions.
Define the lifecycle entrance criteria
Determine which customer profiles enter this lifecycle by setting Lifecycle entrance criteria:
Click Change criteria to open the Lifecycle profiles criteria window.
Click Select condition to choose conditions for profiles to enter the Lifecycle.
Define your audience by selecting from the conditions (profile properties, group properties, segments, consent objectives, or a combination of these) profiles must meet to enter the lifecycle.
Click Close.
Configure lifecycle stages
The BlueConic example Lifecycles are meant to serve as an easy starting point for you. Each one comes with several prebuilt stages, but you may want to define custom stages to suit your marketing plan.
Each stage has a name and a set of criteria that determine which profiles are eligible for this phase.
Click in the stage to customize its name.
Note that "Profiles not assigned" contains all profiles that meet the Lifecycle criteria but have not yet joined a stage.Click the audience icon in each subsequent stage to set the stage criteria. Note: Stages are mutually exclusive, so be sure to set your stage criteria to have at least one criterion that differs from one stage to the next.
After you have defined which profiles are eligible for each stage, you can add the set of marketing touchpoints to each stage.Click Add touchpoint to add BlueConic dialogues and/or connections to each stage.
An overlay window appears showing all eligible dialogues and connections.When you select a connection with multiple goals as a touchpoint, you need to open the dropdown menu and select a specific connection goal.
You add stages by clicking the plus icon to the right of a stage, naming the stage, and defining its audience. You can add as many as ten stages to a lifecycle, including the 'Profiles not assigned' stage. To see all stages in a lifecycle if they go beyond your window, click the right arrow next to the stage names to scroll.
Define an audience for each lifecycle stage
To define stage criteria:
Click the audience icon in a lifecycle stage.
Use conditions to select which profiles should enter this stage.
Choose the profile properties, group properties, segments, and/or objectives that profiles must meet to enter this lifecycle stage. The Audience icon within the stage shows the number of profiles in this lifecycle that qualify for this stage -- or, when your lifecycle is switched on, profiles that are in this stage.
Click Close.
Set lifecycle completion criteria
You use Lifecycle completion criteria to define when a profile has successfully completed the lifecycle. Depending on your goals or the customer journey you can set a time-based event (for example, completing a purchase) that must occur in order for a profile to successfully complete the lifecycle.
You do this by selecting a time-based profile property that marks a profile as having successfully completed a specified event during the lifecycle.
Click Completion criteria in the right-hand corner of the Lifecycle.
Enable the Select lifecycle completion event option.
Select a date or time-based profile property.
Note: In order for a profile to complete the lifecycle and join the completion group, the profile must meet the completion criteria you set and also have been exposed to at least one marketing touchpoint in the lifecycle. A profile will not qualify as having completed a lifecycle merely by chance of fulfilling the completion criteria.
FAQs
What is the "Profiles not assigned" stage?
Profiles that meet the lifecycle entrance criteria but do not meet the stage criteria and have not completed the lifecycle, are held in the Profiles not assigned category.
Can one profile belong to multiple lifecycle stages?
Stages are mutually exclusive, which means that within a given lifecycle, a profile can belong to only one stage at a time. If a profile qualifies for multiple stages, it will be placed in the highest stage.
Are profiles allowed to re-enter a lifecycle?
To enable customers who have already completed the lifecycle to journey through it again, you can specify what event should allow profiles to journey through the lifecycle again:
Open the Lifecycle completion criteria in the top right corner of the Lifecycle screen.
In addition to enabling the "Select lifecycle completion event" box, enable the second checkbox to "Allow profiles to reenter the lifecycle."
Select a date-time profile property for an event whose timestamp occurs after the profile already completed the lifecycle. For example, a renewed interest in purchasing something, or another action that signifies interest in reentering the lifecycle.
Save your settings.
BlueConic will clear data for the events marking the profile's first lifecycle journey, in order to allow the profile to journey through and complete the lifecycle again.