2023

Lifecycle
Marketing
Guide EMAIL, MOBILE, AND ONSITE MARKETING: THE MVPS OF 1P DATA
ARE READY TO LEAD THE WAY IN THE PRIVACY-BY-DEFAULT FUTURE
Table of Contents
03 Introduction

04 Powering Data & Audience Strategies for the

Privacy-by-Default Future

05 The Importance of the Opt-In

05 No Personally Identifiable Information Required

05 Fully-Integrated Lifecycle Campaigns Are a Must

10 Creative Matters in Designing for Performance

1 1  Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

with

13 Expert Tips for Navigating Ongoing Issues and

Considerations

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Introduction
Lifecycle Marketing has long been a top priority channel for brands
and businesses across countless industries, with its importance and
value unto itself—and in cross-channel initiatives—being significantly
amplified in recent years by increasing privacy restrictions.

Adding further brightness to the spotlight on Lifecycle Marketing is

the growing importance of delivering personalized experiences and
messaging in all advertising—something that requires an elevated,
data-driven, future-oriented approach thanks to those privacy changes.

Simply put, Lifecycle Marketing has never been the wallflower at the
dance—but its time to shine has also never been more clear.

In 2023, Lifecycle Marketing isn’t only the star player on the team it’s
always been; it’s also crucially positioned to help every other player
on the field perform to the best of their capabilities by harnessing its
zero-party and first-party data insights in their advertising strategies.

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 The Data-Driven Journey
Powering Data & Audience Strategies for the Privacy-by-Default Future
For the past several years, navigating data privacy in campaign strategy
and development has been at the forefront of countless marketing
conversations. Advertisers are in a unique situation, with consumers
demanding a higher level of personalization than ever before, at the
same time the use of third-party cookies and other identifiers is steadily
declining.
In determining how to best provide those hyper-personalized messaging
experiences while respecting and adhering to privacy restrictions, many
have turned to the valuable zero-party (0P) and first-party (1P) data
insights lifecycle marketing offers.
Moving into 2023, the initial fears and uncertainties of the privacy-by-
default future have somewhat calmed. Marketers now better understand
the full impact of the changing landscape, and have been hard at work
making the necessary adjustments in their strategies. We have found
the benefits of being more collaborative, resourceful, considerate, and
deliberate in how all our teams can work together toward achieving the
same common goals we’ve always had. And while it has changed the
ways we accomplish those goals, it’s also making us better marketers in
the process.
Let’s explore how and why…
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 The Importance of the Opt-In
With lifecycle customers, brands and advertisers aren’t simply shooting
their shot; they already stated their desire for a long-term relationship,
and secured the contact information. These are customers who have
intentionally opted-in to receive personalized communication tailored to
their interests and shopping behavior. And that same information that
powers lifecycle marketing campaigns can also be leveraged across
other channels, including paid search and social.
No Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Required
Take your marketer hat off for a moment, and think of an email or SMS
list that you’ve subscribed to. What does that brand know about you—
beyond PII, like your name—that can help them in serving you the most
relevant messaging?
This might include:
• Your purchase and return history
• Your browsing history
• The categories that you’re most interested in
• How motivated you are by sales or new product launches
• If there are any out-of-stock products you want to be alerted about
returning
• If you abandoned your cart, and what you left in it
• If you’ve started shopping within a new product category that
indicates a change in your life (ie. shoppers who start buying gluten-
free food or baby-related items)
• …and more!
Now, think of how that same information your lifecycle team has already
gathered—and continues to gather—can help advertisers building
campaigns in other channels reach their desired target audiences in a
privacy-safe way.
Holistic-by-Default Advertising Campaigns
The benefits of holistic advertising campaigns extend far beyond the
meaningful sharing of privacy-compliant data. When executed properly,
not only does the right hand always know what the left hand is doing, but
the reaction of that right hand is informed by both advertiser actions and
customer actions.
The importance of breaking down advertising silos is not a new
conversation; but a topic doesn’t have to be new to be timely. The sheer
volume of ways in which we connect with potential customers is among
the primary reasons we must continue working to bulldoze all silos,
or run the risk of becoming irrelevant and repetitive, losing valuable
subscribers in the process.
Fully-Integrated Lifecycle Campaigns Are a Must
In addition to breaking down broader marketing silos, we also have to be
mindful that we aren’t working in silos within specific channels. In lifecycle
marketing, that means our messaging has to be cohesive across:
• Email Marketing
• Mobile Messaging (SMS/MMS; In-App & Push Notifications)
• Onsite Notifications and Messaging
For those of us who have worked in digital marketing for many years,
it may not seem that long ago that mobile messaging campaigns were
handled independently of email marketing campaigns. In fact, some of
you reading this may be thinking, “Wait, we handle them separately—is
that bad?” We think of it as outdated.
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Mobile messaging has historically been handled separately from email
marketing for a number of reasons, with a primary factor being that
email marketing predated mobile messaging by many years.
When mobile messaging first came onto the scene, many brands
and businesses already had a well-developed email strategy in place
that they’d been honing for years. With mobile messaging being
largely regarded as an ‘add-on’ or ‘bonus’ form of marketing, it wasn’t
uncommon for the messaging, and timing of the messaging, to work
completely independently of the email calendar.
But those days are behind us.
Today, there is an even greater synergistic relationship between email
and mobile messaging, to include SMS/MMS, and In-App and Push
notifications. Mobile messaging is no longer a nice-to-have complement
to email, or tack-on feature—it’s essential to meeting customers
expectations at every stage of the funnel.
Today’s lifecycle subscribers have clear expectations about the types of
messaging they’ll receive—and when, where, and how they receive them.
They aren’t living their life in a silo, and they aren’t experiencing your
brand in one, either.
By fully integrating your lifecycle marketing strategy, you’re making
an important decision to reach people based on how they want to be
communicated with. And the messaging that makes sense through each
funnel of the lifecycle journey varies.
Let’s get to know the lifecycle players, exploring how different spokes on
the lifecycle wheel function to help keep subscribers rolling forward on
their shopper journey…
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EMAIL MARKETING

The OG of the Lifecycle Marketing crew, email marketing has been a

popular marketing channel for decades. Email marketing has practical
applications across nearly any business, brand, retailer, or organization
you can think of, with common ways it’s used in ecommerce including:

• Alerting customers about sales and promotions

• Keeping customers informed about the status of products they

viewed or purchased

• Helping customers discover new items that might interest them

MOBILE MESSAGING
SMS/MMS Messages, In-App Messages & Push Notifications

SMS messaging has fully-matured into a standalone force in its own

right, growing up and out from its early days as email marketing’s trusty
sidekick. But the two haven’t parted ways—their relationship has only
grown stronger in SMS messaging upping its game. And they picked
up some new mobile messaging friends along the way, including in-app
messaging and push notifications.

With mobile messaging, it’s even more important to be brief and action-
oriented in your communication. Not only do you have less ‘space to
work with’ than you do through email, but these messages are primarily
designed to elicit a speedy reaction, or serve as a nudge.

ONSITE NOTIFICATIONS

Pop-Up Promos: To help grow their SMS subscriber list, Brooks featured
an on-site promotional pop-up, offering 15% off apparel purchases
for new mobile subscribers. Their pop-up catches shoppers’ attention
with a bright lifestyle photo, but it also importantly includes all the
relevant information needed. Transparency is crucial in all advertising;

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 let customers know if there are any offer restrictions or expiration
dates right in your pop-up messaging. Also let them know exactly
what they’re signing up to receive, and how they can opt-out of
future SMS messages, if they choose to.

Want to continue building out your email subscriber list, but are
currently putting a greater focus on SMS subscription growth?
To provide all subscribers with encouragement to sign-up, while
keeping that objective in mind, consider a higher discount for
whichever action aligns with your goals.

Spin to Win Offers: Always dreamed of being called to “Come

on down!” on The Price is Right, but never got your chance? With
gamification on the rise in marketing, shoppers can skip the trip to
LA and spin the wheel from the comfort of their couch. Rather than
offering a standard percentage off for every customer, Spin to Win
features encourage engagement, and add an element of fun and
luck.

Banner Messaging: Banner messages are commonly used on

websites of all types, serving as the virtual signage that might
hang from the rafters in a brick-and-mortar shop. Often found
near the header or footer of the site, banners are designed to be
ever-present on the page, and don’t require that users interact with
them in some way, like a pop-up. Note that promotional offers
are optional in site banners, though an offer may encourage more
subscriptions.

Thinking of all these elements of lifecycle marketing as a team,

consider how each can help propel customers forward on their
individual journey. The path won’t be the same for every subscriber,
but here’s one example of how it might work…

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Scenario: A shopper who has never visited your site before clicks on a product page listing through organic search. After a few seconds viewing
the product, they receive an onsite pop-up message letting them know they can Save 15% if they subscribe to your email list, or to receive SMS
notifications. The shopper provides information for both. They receive their coupon code, and make a purchase—let’s assume it’s a charm bracelet.

You add the subscriber to your segment of shoppers who have made jewelry purchases. Three days later, your site is offering 30% off all charms, which
you communicate through an email message. The shopper who purchased the bracelet opens the email, and clicks through to one of the product pages
linked within. They add the charm to their cart, but don’t complete the purchase.

Later that night, an email is automatically sent reminding them of what they left in their cart, and encouraging them to act before the sale is over, including
a countdown timer. The next day, they are sent an SMS reminder that the charm sale will be ending soon. They click through the link in the SMS message,
and complete their purchase.

Want to see what the benefits of fully-integrated Lifecycle Marketing Campaigns look like in action?

These Tinuiti Case Studies are a great place to start.

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 Creative Matters in Designing for Performance

It’s all-too-easy to get lost in the data, working to ensure we’re hitting the right audiences
at the ideal time in the right stage of the funnel while they’re wearing their favorite shirt.
OK, we made that last one up, but you get the idea! And as for why we get so lost in the
data, it’s because it matters a whole lot. But it’s far from the only thing that matters.
BEFORE AFTER
Serving the most relevant messaging to the right folks is part of the equation, but
marketing is a verb from start to finish.

The goal isn’t simply to convey information to your subscribers, but to literally sell them
on it. And the good news is, that’s exactly what they want.

• People are busy, and people are also inundated with advertisements. Your
messaging must be constructed with both of those things in mind

• Help potential customers learn the most important takeaways about your
message as quickly as possible, being mindful of excess copy. No one wants
to open a wall of text in their inbox or mobile messages

• Use eye-catching, descriptive imagery, and consider animation to show

breadth

• Provide review highlights, or other snippets of user-generated content for

social proof

• Have clear calls to action, and/or send interactive emails designed to elicit an
action, such as completing a purchase or survey, or reviewing a product, right
from the email

• Make it as easy as possible for subscribers to decide they want to buy your
product

Our eyes are instantly drawn to images and videos, and captivating content, but they
just as quickly move away if a quick scan has determined there’s nothing to see here—
or there’s too much to see here. Is the creative you’re using piquing customer interest,
leaving them wanting, reading, and clicking for more? If not, all the subscribers in the
world aren’t going to be a benefit if they just click delete.

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 Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
How to use transactional and behavioral data to
power highly-targeted customer and prospect
communications
You can’t think about the lifecycle of a customer without also considering
the messages they’re going to receive throughout it—it’s inevitable. That’s
because those communications, whether in the form of an email or a text
message, are the very things that are going to help usher shoppers from one
stage of their journey to the next.
So there’s a lot riding on a brand’s email and SMS messages. With the
modern consumer wanting and, more often than not, expecting brand
communications to feel 1:1, a one-size-fits-all approach to these essential
messages isn’t going to cut it.
That’s where AI and machine learning come in to do the heavy lifting.
Marketing automation platforms, like Klaviyo, that have machine learning
capabilities stitched into their technological fabric can ingest hundreds of
thousands of data points—and transform that information into experiences
that are directly mapped to someone’s interests and habits.
How does this happen? First, you have to collect that data from individuals
who’ve consented to share it with your brand—through signup forms on your
site, behavioral browsing insights, social media interactions, purchasing
patterns, or feedback prospects and customers have shared directly with
your business.
Then, once it’s aggregated together and sorted into unique customer profiles
within a single platform, you can start to manipulate that data and create
various segments of your audience—each with their own distinct set of
characteristics.
Segmentation is a way for brands to manually group their audience into
different categories. AI can enrich those processes and trigger the right
message to send at exactly the right time to thousands of people at once.
For example, an AI tool like predictive analytics can help you determine
when a customer is most likely to place their next order or calculate their
potential lifetime value with your brand. You can then use that data to
create hyper-relevant messaging to a wide array of customers.
Let’s see what that might look like:
You can group people by their average order value (AOV), their level of
engagement, or their likelihood of churning.
You can create segments of customers who would be a good fit for a
cross-sell opportunity—meaning folks who’ve purchased one item but
haven’t yet bought one or more related items.
If you sell consumer packaged goods, you can group people who live in the
same geographical area and are nearing the time for a product restock.
You can create a segment of subscribers who solely prefer SMS
communications or even a group of people who only tend to purchase
from your brand around the holidays.
Once you identify the criteria for your segments, you can essentially tell
your marketing automation platform to send specific messages to these
individuals when they take a certain action—like making a purchase,
abandoning their cart, or subscribing to your email list.
Their action acts as a trigger, alerting the platform that this specific
customer or prospect has qualified to receive a particular message. The
platform then sends it to them—automatically. Outside of minor tweaks,
adjustments, and optimizations, these automations can basically run on
their own and generate ongoing revenue. Plus, they can scale with you as
your business grows.
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As you feed more data into the system, the AI tools in marketing platforms, like
Klaviyo, become smarter and more efficient over time.

Long story short, if you’re collecting data from your audience, let your marketing
automation platform put it to work. However you choose to slice and dice your
data, segmentation and automation should become the backbone of your email
and text message strategies.

Together, they allow you to send highly-personalized and hyper-relevant

communications to your audience, encouraging repeat purchases and long-term
loyalty—at scale.

LOYALTY ROYALTY: DON’T COLLECT IT AND FORGET IT

Your subscribers should be regarded as the monarchs of your lifecycle marketing

campaigns; your job is to serve them well. And a big part of serving them well is
serving them messaging that shows you did your homework.

As the importance of first-party data grows in targeting across all channels, brands
and advertisers might feel the impulse to collect everything they possibly can from
subscribers. Think instead about what your goals are as an advertiser, and what
types of information you need to best accomplish those goals.

Users can easily be put off by the request for too much information; for example,
sign-up forms that ask users to select from a long list of preferences tend to get
skipped over. Collect the useful data you need, and be prepared to leverage that
information for your subscribers’ benefit. For the data to have any real value, you
actually have to use it.

The data itself should not be viewed as currency; it is simply the means to a
personalized messaging end.

Your subscribers expect that if they voluntarily provide you with information about
them, you will leverage that information to serve them the most relevant messaging.

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 “We need to be targeting subscribers to the degree they want and expect; otherwise, they’re going to
pass over your messages. You not only have the information they provided when they signed up, but
also behavior learnings along their customer journey. You know what they’re interested in, what they’ve
been browsing and clicking on, and what they’ve ordered—all of that ties into the data that we’re
collecting for our audience communication strategy. With that valuable information at our fingertips,
we have to be utilizing it in every communication we send.”

Emily Clarkson Senior Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti

DON’T FORGET THE REWARDS Expert Tips for Navigating Ongoing

In addition to leveraging available insights to provide
subscribers with hyper-relevant messaging, it’s also important
to regularly reward them for their loyalty. This is especially
important in today’s economic climate, with customers
increasingly looking for the best value on items for which they
might have historically shopped for a specific brand.
Some popular loyalty rewards for email and SMS
subscribers include:
• Early access to sales
• Earning points for purchases that can be redeemed
for future discounts
• Subscriber-only offers and coupons
• Birthday or subscription anniversary rewards
Issues and Considerations
We’re all aware the world is constantly changing, and that those changes require
near-constant adaptation in myriad ways. That said, not all of the ways in which
we evolve center around entirely new issues or concerns. Many of the changes
we must make—in marketing and life—are refinements and evolutions born from
circumstances we’ve been navigating for years.
Focusing on lifecycle marketing specifically, it’s always important to keep up with
the latest and greatest innovations, but to not lose sight of core concerns and
considerations in creating your campaign strategies.
We asked Tinuiti’s Lifecycle Marketing experts how they recommend
approaching some of those issues and priorities that won’t be “new” in 2023,
but are still very much important. Here’s what they had to say…

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“When we look to 2023, all of the nice-to-have components of
programs become need-to-have components. These include using
SMS alongside email, implementing on-site pop ups and banners,
hyper-personalization and key data collection and usage strategies
within lifecycle as well as to fuel cross-channel marketing efforts.”
Emily Clarkson Senior Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
“Your customers will continue to expect more and more personalized
experiences. Marketers need to become an advocate for their own
customers while looking at their own marketing goals by finding the
balance between their customer’s need for privacy and ensuring there
is value in the communications they receive. Don’t be invasive. Don’t be
one-sided in your goals. Respecting these needs will drive loyalty.”
Leah Lloyd Group Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
“Multichannel awareness in your martech stack is no longer a nice-to-
have, it is quickly becoming a need-to-have. We’re seeing more and
more technologies leaning toward multi-channel capabilities in their
features and releases. Having this allows the marketer to adapt to trends
in real-time, utilizing metrics and insights from their platforms to target
the right audience members at the right time.”
Diana Mitchell Associate Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
“Consider quality over quantity when planning your
email strategy. Now is not the time to send just for
the sake of sending. Inboxes are flooded with emails
and you can stand out by targeting your audience
with thoughtful segmentation and by using
sophisticated personalization. Send relevant emails
and increase the value of your content by altering
it to fit subscriber’s interests with the utilization of
data; consider purchases, location, browsing history,
and even past email engagement.”
Kristin Feliciano
Associate Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
“In the growing world of digital marketing, it’s more
important than ever to make sure you have your
basics covered. It’s amazing how many companies
let the basics slide. Do you have (and honor)
permission? Are you sending relevant and timely
messaging? Are you planning cross-channel to
ensure your customers are receiving the same,
cohesive message across all channels? Are you
considering the context of the subscriber with each
message you send? If you answer each of those
questions with “yes”, then you will have a leg up on
many companies out there.“
Eric Miller Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
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 Lifecycle Marketing Strategy, Innovation & Execution

CORE FOCUSES
– Acquisition & Audience
– Content & Messaging
– Data & Personalization
– Testing & Measurement EXPERTISE
Marketing Automation Technical Team –
Strategic Guidance –
Deliverability Analyst –
Production & Coding Team –
Design Team & Professional Copywriting –

READY TO SCALE YOUR LIFECYCLE

MARKETING PROGRAM?
We are Brand Performance Accelerators.
Our comprehensive, results-driven, full-funnel approach
Tinuiti is the largest independent performance marketing
goes beyond what in-house teams are capable of, utilizing
firm across Streaming TV and the Triopoly of Google,
a blend of strategy, testing, deployment, and creative to
Facebook, Amazon, with nearly $3 billion in digital media
help brands scale their lifecycle marketing program.
under management and over 1000 employees. With
industry-leading expertise in search, social, Amazon and
marketplaces, addressable TV and mobile apps, CRM
and email marketing and more, Tinuiti understands that
L E T ’ S TA L K!

success requires both strategy and channel expertise.