Lifecycles enable you to organize and sequence the marketing touchpoints along customer journeys. BlueConic lets you add connections and dialogues as marketing touchpoints in sequenced stages along a customer journey.
Connections
Placing Connections in Lifecycles
Placing connections in Lifecycle stages enables you to:
Export information about the associated lifecycle stage to external systems.
When you configure a connection's export goal settings, you can map data about your profiles' associated lifecycles to a field in the other system.For example, you could send to your ESP a list of profiles that attain a certain lifecycle stage along their customer journeys and use this information for targeted emails. This helps you use profile information from BlueConic in other marketing systems or analysis tools. You can even use this information to create new audiences or segments outside of BlueConic.
Restrict an export goal to export only the profiles in a certain lifecycle stage.
Using lifecycle stage information, you can control whether and when profiles are exported to your marketing systems. This lets you run a campaign for prospective buyers, for example, or to easily target different groups of customers or prospects. Another use might be to run stage-specific campaigns that cut across customer segments.Set optional thresholds on lifecycle stages to limit exposure to connection goals in that stage.
With Lifecycles, you can limit campaign pressure on profiles in a certain stage by setting stage thresholds. For example, you can make sure a profile is exposed to only 3 marketing touchpoints per day/week/month/quarter during a particular stage on their customer journey. Some connection goals are counted toward the stage threshold limits.Note: A touchpoint will only be registered on import; because connections can be scheduled at the same time, it's possible for the number of touchpoints to exceed the threshold.
Because of differences in how connections work, connections differ in how they interact with lifecycles and stage thresholds. Review the Connections section for details on how each connection works.
Tips for adding Connections to Lifecycle stages
Placing a connection goal inside a Lifecycle restricts the audience for that goal to only the profiles present in that lifecycle stage. So a best practice is not to reuse a connection goal outside the lifecycle – because its audience will be limited by the lifecycle criteria.
A connection goal that is placed in a lifecycle cannot be used in other lifecycles -- nor can it be used outside the lifecycle. To reuse a connection goal in multiple lifecycles, create a copy or duplicate the connection goal.
Connections differ in how they interact with lifecycles and stages, and whether they are aware of stage thresholds.
A valuable feature of adding connections to lifecycles is that it lets you target profiles by stages or by segment.
Targeting profiles by lifecycle stage helps you separate the timing of the interaction from the content of your marketing messages.
Turning a lifecycle on or off has implications for which profiles are affected by connection goals that are included as marketing touchpoints in your lifecycles. See Turning lifecycles on or off for details.
Connection touchpoints excluded from threshold counts
Note that because of the way certain connections work, some connection export goals do not count toward the lifecycle stage threshold. These connection goals are marked with a blue infinity symbol in the lifecycle stage, for example, the HubSpot connection in this example:
Dialogues
Placing Dialogues in Lifecycles
Dialogues that are placed in a lifecycle stage are shown only to profiles in that stage of the lifecycle (and subject to threshold limits).
Dialogues used within lifecycles are shown to profiles that meet the lifecycle criteria, the lifecycle stage criteria, and all the criteria listed on the dialogue's Who tab.
When you add a dialogue to a lifecycle, it will only appear to profiles included within that lifecycle (even if the dialogue criteria might otherwise include profiles outside of the lifecycle). For this reason, reusing existing dialogues is not recommended.
A best practice is to create or reserve dialogues solely for use in the lifecycle, instead of reusing dialogues you expect to use outside of the lifecycle.
Turning a lifecycle on or off has implications for which profiles are exposed to dialogues included as marketing touchpoints. Turn the Lifecycle on first, and then turn related dialogues and connections on. See Turning lifecycles on or off for details.
Dialogues and Lifecycle Priority settings
The Priority setting for a BlueConic Lifecycle enables you to control the relative priority of dialogues competing for the same position on a mobile app or web page. BlueConic dialogues also have priority settings on each dialogue's When tab.
What happens when several dialogues are competing to appear in the same position? BlueConic evaluates the priority in two steps: first, the Lifecycle priority determines which dialogues progress to the second evaluation step, where the remaining dialogues are evaluated against their own dialogue priority.
Lifecycle priority settings
BlueConic lifecycles and dialogues both have priority settings that determine which dialogues to display first.
Lifecycle priorities are considered first, and then dialogue priority settings.
If after considering the relative priority settings, two or more dialogues have the same priority level, they will be shown to the customer in a round-robin fashion where each time the page is reloaded, a different dialogue appears.
Setting the priority level for a BlueConic customer Lifecycle
Open your BlueConic Lifecycle and click the Priorities drop-down menu.
Choose a relative priority level for this Lifecycle, in our example: highest, high, medium, or low.
Save your changes.