BlueConic Lifecycles give you the means to organize, coordinate, and visualize all of the marketing touchpoints you use to connect with customers throughout their journey. Lifecycles use stages to sequence each potential interaction across channels, and employ the power of BlueConic dialogues and connections to orchestrate integrated, cross-channel marketing programs.
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See the Introduction to Lifecycles video in BlueConic University.
With BlueConic Lifecycles, you can activate the customer data in your unified customer profiles using lifecycle orchestration. For example, you might identify the stages a customer passes through before they make an initial purchase and become a customer. Using Lifecycles, you can apply these milestones to target your messages, manage offers, minimize excess campaign pressure, and ultimately encourage customers to advance toward the desired outcome.
Orchestrating customer lifecycles with BlueConic
Lifecycles offer marketing teams the flexibility to define a marketing lifecycle suited to their key business and marketing goals. Marketers determine their marketing goals and define which stages the profiles move through. The marketer has full control over the marketing touchpoints that define each stage.
For example, you can define a subscriber retention lifecycle that drives existing subscribers to upgrade their subscription plans. Depending on the customer's unique journey, each stage of the lifecycle can flow to the next, with targeted marketing touchpoints or events. You define the criteria for which profiles enter the lifecycle, what qualified a profile to move into a stage, and what defines a successful completion of the journey.
Each stage can have marketing interventions called touchpoints. These touchpoints align behind the common objective of advancing a customer or prospect through their journey while optimizing the different types and channels of interaction.
Key components of BlueConic Lifecycles
Marketers can define an overarching customer lifecycle consisting of sequential, mutually exclusive stages and the criteria that determine if or when a profile advances from one stage to another.
Lifecycle criteria for selecting profiles
Lifecycle marketing criteria might be an event (“signed up to receive emails”), a behavior score (“recency score hits 80+”), a state (anonymous web visitor), or a combination of them all. There is no limit to the number of criteria you can use to define a stage or lifecycle. For each Lifecycle in BlueConic, you define the following criteria:
- Lifecycle criteria: Which customer profiles should be part of this lifecycle?
- Lifecycle stage criteria: What properties or characteristics qualify profiles for each stage of the lifecycle?
- Lifecycle completion criteria: What constitutes a successful or final outcome -- when has a particular customer profile completed this lifecycle?
Lifecycle stages for sequencing marketing touchpoints
Each lifecycle is broken out into a series of stages. You can define the audience for each stage using stage criteria based on profile properties, group properties, segments, and consent objectives. Stages are meant to be sequential, but customers can skip stages or jump to another lifecycle based on their actions or behaviors.
Stages are mutually exclusive, so a profile cannot belong to two stages at the same time within the same lifecycle. If a profile meets the criteria for more than one stage, it will be placed in the stage that is further along in the lifecycle.
Profiles that fit the lifecycle criteria but don't meet any stage criteria stay in "Profiles not assigned" at the start of the lifecycle until they quality for a lifecycle stage.
Lifecycle touchpoints for each stage of your lifecycle
Touchpoints in BlueConic are the set of marketing interactions assigned to each stage of a lifecycle. Touchpoints can span multiple marketing channels, too. They support each individual customer journey by presenting only relevant information. You might want to deliver personalized interactions on a website or mobile app using BlueConic dialogues. At the same time, you can coordinate that by using a BlueConic connection goal to send emails from an ESP, or do digital advertising via Facebook or Google to all the profiles in the current stage.
Using connection goals as touchpoints, you can also export lifecycle information – such stage information or the set of profiles associated with a lifecycle – to business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools for further analysis.
Stage thresholds to reduce campaign pressure
By setting thresholds that cap the frequency of touchpoints in each stage, you can reduce campaign pressure in each stage. See tips for setting stage thresholds in BlueConic lifecycles.
Lifecycle performance and reporting
The Lifecycle reporting feature offers valuable insights to help you assess the performance of your customer journeys. Use these performance metrics to analyze how customers move through the BlueConic Lifecycles and stages you've created. You'll see at a glance how profiles move through a customer lifecycle and which stages have the biggest impact on getting profiles to successfully complete the lifecycle.
The metrics displayed are unique to the specific mode you're in. The two modes are represented by specific icons at the top of the Lifecycle page:
- Edit mode: Shows in real time the potential number of profiles in a lifecycle (stage) based on the current (unsaved) configuration.
- Report mode: Shows the historical profile movements between lifecycle stages for the given time period, as well as the number of profiles in a lifecycle (stage) at the end date.
To toggle between the edit and report modes, click its respective icon. (The icon for the currently active mode will be blue.) For more information, review the article Lifecycle reporting.
Lifecycle examples
Each lifecycle will have specific business goals that marketers are looking to achieve as an outcome of a customer going through the lifecycle.
Examples of common lifecycle use cases
- Customer acquisition with a goal of getting customers from anonymous to known individuals.
- Customer acquisition with a goal of getting a customer to make their first purchase.
- Upsell with a goal of getting a previous customer to continue buying products.
- Cross-sell with a goal of increasing customer lifetime value.
- Customer onboarding with a goal of completing “experiences” within a set time period.
- Upcoming subscription renewal with a goal of renewing a customer before the end of the trial.
- First-time customer with a goal of providing a new customer experience for a limited time period and increase loyalty.
- Repeat customers with a goal of increasing purchase, lifetime value, or consistent up-sell or cross-sell tactics.
- Lapsed customers won-back with a goal of differentiating their experience from a repeat or first-time customer to increase loyalty.
Generally, with Lifecycles, marketers design a specific experience for a subset of customers. BlueConic uses customers' unified profiles to place them in the right lifecycles.
For tips on designing a customer lifecycle, see Designing a customer lifecycle.