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Email Marketing Guide 3: Targeting

2. Understanding customer life cycles

Whether you are already in the midst of email marketing for your business or are considering adding it into your marketing mix, you need to be clear about what you expect to accomplish with your email marketing. Often businesses simply begin sending without thinking about the results or they have unrealistic expectations. Your product and customer life cycles will affect the content, frequency and timing of your email marketing. Here are three examples of 'life cycles' of typical products and services.

• It has a beginning and an end - Examples of this would include events and recruitment. With events the cycle is: Build interest. Get exhibitors. Get speakers. Get attendees. Hold event. Information about the event is no longer relevant the day after the event - though you might move attendees into the cycle to hear about the next event. In recruitment, job seekers are on a focused mission and keen for frequent communications with relevant information. Once they have a new job they generally don't want to receive any further information. It is now not relevant.

• It is part of an ongoing cycle - This can be the long cycle of your relationship with a customer. Monthly email newsletters are excellent at taking subscribers through the entire cycle of their relationship with a company: e.g. prospect/customer/repeat customer.

• It moves from one cycle to another - A potential customer may be searching the internet for information about a product or service they are interested in purchasing. The intensity of the interest and time frame in which they need to make a purchase will vary. By capturing them in an email newsletter sign up facility on your website you can aim to move them from possible customer to customer.

Use cycle insights to better target your communications. Now that you've reviewed the cycles you can determine how frequently you should be sending your email marketing. Perhaps there are some recipients who should currently hear from you more frequently and some who should not receive all of your email marketing communications. This is where segmentation can help. Segmenting your lists - even on a very basic level - means you can split out and pick (target) the content you're sending.

Related article: Understanding purchase patterns of your customers products and services.

Areas covered in this guide

• Introduction
• > Understanding customer life cycles
• Should you build or rent your email lists?
• Building an email database
• Renting an email list
• How frequently should you email?