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Mastering Lifecycle Marketing: Personalization, Momentum, and Customer Loyalty

• Taylor Shanklin

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About the Guest(s):

Lisa Wendland is the Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Blue Wheel Media, boasting over 15 years of experience in digital marketing. Her background spans various sectors including e-commerce, non-profits, and higher education. With a unique blend of skills gathered from ten years in the agency field and five years on the brand side, Lisa brings a comprehensive perspective to life cycle marketing. She's also a professor, contributing her expertise to university-level curriculums.

Episode Summary:

In this power-packed episode of Talking Shizzle, host Taylor Wilson talks with Lisa Wendland, an expert in lifecycle marketing, and they cover the intricacies of this specialized marketing approach. Taylor and Lisa explore crucial elements of lifecycle marketing, dissecting how brands can effectively engage with consumers throughout their journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. They address personalization and maintaining engagement across different marketing channels like email and SMS.

Listeners will benefit from SEO-optimized insights as Lisa explains how lifecycle marketing focuses on the consumer's journey, from research to purchase, and how to harness tools like email, SMS, and chatbots to nurture these relationships. They touch on the differences in approach between B2B and B2C markets, emphasizing the importance of data-driven personalization for heightened user experience. Strategic discussions on balancing personalization and efficiency reveal how tailored communication can distinguish a brand. Lisa's key highlights include the effectiveness of timely segmentation and behavioral triggers for sustained consumer loyalty.

Key Takeaways:

  • Lifecycle Marketing Essentials: Understanding customer journey touchpoints and leveraging channels like email and SMS for personalized communication.
  • Personalization Strategy: Importance of balancing efficiency and personalized experiences to boost customer retention and satisfaction.
  • B2B vs. B2C Dynamics: Tailoring lifecycle marketing strategies to suit the nuanced needs of B2B and B2C sectors.
  • Sustaining Momentum: Strategies to maintain brand engagement and interest across different consumer seasons and stages.
  • Effective Campaigns: Insight into successful lifecycle campaigns with examples from Lisa’s professional experiences.

Resources:

Listen to the full episode for an in-depth look at lifecycle marketing strategies and more insightful discussions with industry experts. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of Talking Shizzle as we continue to bring you valuable content for business growth and innovation.

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Transcript 

0:00:00 Taylor Wilson: Foreign. Hey, hey, hey, all you lovely people out there. I know you’ve got a lot going on in your day and you have big dreams for your brand. Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and overall interesting people who like to shake things up? I’m your host, Taylor Wilson, founder of Creative Shizzle, and I’m stoked to bring you a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle today. 

0:00:33 Taylor Wilson: This show is all about helping you think differently so that you could grow your business or your cause. Check us out on the web at CreativeShizzle.com now let’s get into it and talk some shizzle. All right, what’s up? We are here with a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle. And today I’m really excited to meet my new friend, Lisa Wendland. She is a Life Cycle marketer. And this is a topic we haven’t gotten into yet. 

0:01:03 Lisa Wendland: Yet. 

0:01:04 Taylor Wilson: So I’m really excited today to like, really break down what Life Cycle marketing is, how to do it well, what mistakes, you know, people often make, and all that good stuff. So welcome, Lisa, to the show. It’s good to have you. 

0:01:15 Lisa Wendland: Thanks so much, Taylor. Super excited to be here. 

0:01:17 Taylor Wilson: Tell us a little bit about you first before we get into the meat of the discussion today. Who’s Lisa? And tell us a little bit about Blue Wheel, where you lead Lifecycle Marketing. 

0:01:27 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, you bet. So I am the director of Life Cycle here at Bluewheel Media. I’ve actually been at Blue Wheel for a little over three years. My experience includes about 15 years of digital, looking at the e commerce space and working with nonprofits higher ed and just across the number of different industries. So my experience is about 10 years on the agency side and about five years on the brand side. 

0:01:51 Taylor Wilson: Okay, cool. And what was it like switching from brand to agency for you? I’ve like, bounced back and forth over my career, so I’m curious kind of what that transition was like for you. 

0:02:03 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, so there’s definitely a different dynamic when you’re working on the brand side. And I think having worked on both and being able to see both perspectives has helped because I can understand a little bit more on how to scale and work through processes and automate some things that are kind of repetitive. There’s definitely when you’re on the brand side, you can be nimble in a different way than you can on the agency side. So on the agency side, you have information across all the different brands and you can see the high level trends to. So for example, blue wheel is 60% beauty brands that we work with. And so if you are working on any particular brand at any given time, you can see the way that metrics are going. You can see where there’s fatigue after a heavy sale period across the board, you can see deliverability issues. 

0:02:50 Lisa Wendland: A number of clients having issues with maybe deliverability in Gmail due to some rule change. Whereas when you’re on the client side or brand side, you don’t necessarily have that information unless you’re working with a network, working with an agency, or really friendly with a number of other brands to understand, you know, what are some of the challenges that we’re all facing together. 

0:03:09 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I think that’s probably one of my favorite things about being an agency and being in the agency is like, you do get a different vantage point in a way where you’re like, you’re looking at a larger scale and like big picture. So let’s approach this conversation today kind of from that perspective and let’s really break down lifecycle marketing. There’s been talking about different asset like areas of marketing on the show a lot, breaking things down. Recently we had an episode on abm. 

0:03:38 Taylor Wilson: You know, we’ve talked about go to market and there’s all these different areas of marketing. So let’s first like define for people listening, what do you think life cycle marketing is? 

0:03:50 Lisa Wendland: So life cycle marketing is really focused on the pieces that go into the lifecycle of the customer, right. So you have someone that’s identified a problem and so now they’re on the Internet and they’re looking for a solution, or they’re asking their friends or, you know, they’re trying to figure this thing out. Then you have the people that are like, yep, this is the thing I need. So they’ve gone to the site, they’ve checked out the site, now they’ve put it in the cart, now they’re hopefully purchasing. 

0:04:18 Lisa Wendland: And then maybe it’s a replenishable product, a product that would add on a product with a new version, like maintaining a relationship there on how they might use it again in the future. Or again, like there’s replenishable aspect where you have to add to it. So in life cycle terms, we’re looking at all the points that go along with that. So if they’re doing their research, we’re really looking for opportunities to get them to the site so that we can understand them better and collect their first party data where it’s email address, phone number, those sorts of things to just say, okay, they’ve came to the site and tagged them on where they came from. Maybe it was Facebook, maybe it was a Google Ad. 

0:04:57 Lisa Wendland: And then nurture that relationship from there right through the full lifecycle. So sending them information that would educate them better or give them more brand awareness, like pick us because of this. And then if they haven’t purchased yet, what is the missing information you need? Is it a discount? Is it, you know, what is that? Point of resistance. And then following up, you could expect to use all this up by this time or hey, people who liked this also liked this other product. 

0:05:26 Lisa Wendland: Learn more about us. So really that one to one communication in channels like email and SMS and then also that next level of loyalty, add on products, subscription, those sorts of things all fall within life cycle. 

0:05:41 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I love that. I love breaking it down like that. It’s really interesting because yesterday I was, we were talking before we started recording about brand and then we were also talking about just like we kind of do different things than you do and yesterday I was giving a presentation on brand but also then talking with people afterwards about the difference between brand and marketing. And it’s like a lot of what you just said, it’s like that regular ongoing conversation, you know, when it comes to like someone decided to stop scrolling when they saw your brand, now they’re interacting and now it’s like that regular conversation. 

0:06:19 Taylor Wilson: And so you mentioned SMS and email are like kind of what you would call the core platforms you think for life cycle marketing. Are there any others that people are exploring these days that you think are interesting or like, you know, popping out? 

0:06:33 Lisa Wendland: Yes, absolutely. I’m glad you asked that because it really depends on the brand and what their appetite is for a number like to manage so many platforms and this is where, you know, it helps to have support. But there is a space where chatbots are growing where so now, you know, if you’re looking for information, the little bot pops up and there’s mixed reactions from consumers. But I think the main takeaway is if it’s conversational and it gives them the answer they’re looking for and it doesn’t feel cold. 

0:07:00 Lisa Wendland: There’s an opportunity to automate messaging in there. I mean that’s really what Lifecycle and SMS or sorry, email and SMS covers as well. Right. They’re based on behaviors. We are following up with you with that sort of information. So you can apply that to a chatbot. There’s a number of brands I’ve worked with where we’ve completely revamped all of their app communication. So think like smart devices Health, gizmos, you know, those sorts of things. 

0:07:24 Lisa Wendland: So if you are on your journey and you’ve hit this milestone, then the app will send a notification. So that’s another channel that we absolutely dive into. 

0:07:32 Taylor Wilson: Do you have a favorite channel like, you personally? You’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m curious if you’ve got a favorite channel. 

0:07:39 Lisa Wendland: That’s tough. I think it depends on what’s the best fit for the brand. There are some brands that absolutely crush it with an app and they have that immersive experience. And you, with your background in branding, it’s like, you could probably feel that, right? Like, it’s like, nope, this is home. This is where, you know, you can really dive in and feel like you’re part of this. That’s only for some brands. 

0:07:58 Lisa Wendland: I’ve seen some brands that do really well with sms, but I would say email. Between email and app, it’s tough because I feel like with app, there’s a different level of data than there is with email. Email, you still have some things you have to rely on custom UTM tags or, you know, you’re at the mercy of Gmail. Right. And whether or not you get to the inbox, there’s obviously a lot of, like, triage that we do to help brands stay in the inbox. 

0:08:25 Lisa Wendland: But yeah, I would say there, there are pros and cons between email and apps. And I, I think at the end of the day, more brands are using email where I could see it go to the next level and we could really make an impact. 

0:08:36 Taylor Wilson: Okay. What you’re talking about when it comes to apps made me think a little bit about communities. Would you put. Because the emergence of online communities is. Seems to really be growing as well. Would you put those in the lifecycle marketing bucket? Do you think those are a little bit different? 

0:08:54 Lisa Wendland: Good question. As a professor. So I’m, I’m also a professor. I didn’t mention that in my intro. I am actually working on specific courses at the university level, like in curriculum where we’re examining how brands are using social. And I would say that while the. So, like, there’s two pieces. So for life cycle, getting people to that community, that would be, you know, I feel like there’s a couple of facets. It’s like I’m trying to think of a nice folded dessert, right, where, where you have, you know, like we have. 

0:09:26 Taylor Wilson: A cake, a crepe or a layer cake. 

0:09:30 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, yeah. I’m trying to think of the name of it. We worked with this fantastic Global hair care brand and they have a huge community and they’re really leaning into that, like on Facebook. Right. They have this great community. So within the welcome series, we have an email that sends people, like, there’s actually multiple touches that are, get into the community, be part of that. You will find what you need and you’ll love it. And then, you know, they have that affinity. 

0:09:54 Lisa Wendland: But once you’re in the community, I would almost fall like, that would fall under social for me, because it’s a different dashboard, it’s a different set of metrics. You don’t have that same. I don’t feel like you have the same level of granular data. If somebody clicked a specific link within an email, I have that. To be fair, there’s a ton of data from those groups and I’ve seen some brands use it really well. 

0:10:17 Lisa Wendland: But yeah, I would put that more under social. It definitely falls into the lifecycle of a customer, but I just don’t see the data executed on where, you know, I can’t tie that back to like a Klaviyo or a Marsys, where it says, oh, this person is super active in the group. Right. You probably have to more manually think about, here’s our VIPs, and then tag them and then watch the data that way. 

0:10:37 Taylor Wilson: I think that makes a lot of sense. So, like, as we think about Lifecycle, think about it a little bit more of like, what are these specific touch points where you’re trying to push someone like to do a thing maybe to the next level versus communities. Whether you’re doing something on Circle or Mighty networks or Facebook groups or whatever it is, that’s more of a social engagement space versus, hey, you left this in your cart. 

0:11:02 Taylor Wilson: Do you want to finish that order Type stuff. So when we’re thinking about life cycle, it’s more the hey, you left this in your cart type communication. 

0:11:10 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, I think that’s a good separation sort of because it does require more community engagement. Now people could reply to SMS and emails and then that goes over the customer service team. So it’s like another group again. 

0:11:24 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. So I love this podcast because I learn a lot from other marketers, like in areas of marketing where I’m like, yeah, I don’t actually do that much of that. Like, that’s not my thing. So I love these types of conversations because it pulls out so much of the, you know, but what does that really mean? Type stuff. So let’s get into. So let’s get into. There’s a couple of Topics I want to go into next, one in particular is how do you balance personalization and efficiency? 

0:11:54 Taylor Wilson: And then after that, I want to talk about how do you keep the momentum going, particularly in, like, off seasons or like, we just had a really weird. I was. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The, the end of 2024, with the political cycle, with the. Just the holidays. Like, it felt, I think, for a lot of brands, like, a really weird Q4. So I want to talk about sort of like keeping momentum up. But let’s, let’s first go with like, okay, everyone says personalized segment, segment, segment, personalized, personalized, personalized. And then that can feel all of a sudden like I want to pull all of my hair out. 

0:12:33 Taylor Wilson: How do you do it? 

0:12:34 Lisa Wendland: No, I mean, and that’s why, you know, that’s why I work with brands, right? Because we all know. Maybe not we all know, but I would say a good example of bad personalization or bad use of data. Let’s say you go to the same grocery store every week. It’s the same people working. It’s the same stuff on the shelves. You have a routine, but no one’s acknowledging that you’ve been there before, that they’ve checked out with you. 

0:12:59 Lisa Wendland: You know, I mean, like, it’s just like, if it’s completely cut off and you feel like you’re just going through the motions, it’s very easy on the virtual side to feel like that, right? Like, okay, like, I’m just going through the motions. What wows people are the brands that recognize and acknowledge, oh, you’ve been here before. Oh, did we help you solve your problem? Like, you remember above and beyond customer service. 

0:13:19 Lisa Wendland: And so with email, it’s very easy to do that. And, you know, you mentioned pulling out your hair. Like, it is definitely easier than it is offline, I have to say, because you, you have all this machine learning where the data is there within the profile to say, you know, Taylor’s been to this site three times, and obviously she’s not finding what she’s looking for. She hasn’t checked out yet. So we can send targeted messages that, like, just follow up, just ask the question, right? 

0:13:46 Lisa Wendland: And, you know, we have an opportunity where people are very used to, you know, automated messages, but they’re not used to personalized automated messages that make sense with the timing. You know, that’s where there’s really an opportunity to say, okay, if I follow it up within 15 minutes of them leaving the site, that’s probably too soon. I need to Be, you know, more cognizant of, you know, the time of day, what time zone they’re in. Like there’s a number of different things. Is this a long term purchase? Like do you have to think about this for a number of weeks, days, months and what’s going to be relevant? So with personalization, again, like all of the profile data is there, it’s really important to focus on getting permission to email or SMS and then you can really act on that and do that one on one conversation where you help them solve their problem or have them remember you for next time if it’s not the best right now. 

0:14:38 Taylor Wilson: Okay. And I bet this varies a little bit when it comes to B2B versus B2C. And I think you guys work with a lot of B2C brands. But let’s talk about. And it might be an, it depends sort of an answer that you give me. But let’s talk about. You’re thinking about personalization and the core things you should be looking at for a B2C brand in terms of personalization, what does that look like? And then the core or things for a B2B brand in terms of personalization, what does that look like? 

0:15:10 Lisa Wendland: Good question. 

0:15:11 Taylor Wilson: No, it’s a big one. And this was not on our prep sheet. I’m sorry for. 

0:15:14 Lisa Wendland: No, no. Okay. No, I love this. I don’t mind on the flag questions. 

0:15:18 Taylor Wilson: I figured it’ll be fine. 

0:15:20 Lisa Wendland: Yeah. So for B2C. So to, to your one question or sort of like alluding to like yes, we do work with B2C and B2B for personalization. I think there’s a different perception of the automated messages I mentioned. Right. So as a consumer in the B2C space, you expect a cart abandonment email or you expect this or that. And I think there is a gap where you can absolutely do those same things in a B2B space because we’re all regular consumers but we aren’t necessarily seeing that same level of customization and engagement from a B2B. 

0:15:58 Lisa Wendland: For B2B in order to be scalable, you have to have some level of automation. Right. When you’re reaching a wider audience. But you need to take it that next level and again understand where they are in the buying process and digging into some of those things. So on a profile level, you kind of called it. It will depend for a B2B business on what is it you’re selling. Do you only have customer service Monday through Friday 9 to 5, you don’t want to send an email eight hours later and no one’s there to help and engage in that. One to one. I would say there are a lot of tools now that are helpful in decision making for B2B, like demo, where there’s an opportunity where people can see it on their own time. Especially if it’s like a software, right? 

0:16:44 Lisa Wendland: So they can see everything on their own time. So if you have an automated message that says, hey, like just go check out this room, you can find all the resources you need. You can kind of peruse on your own and then follow up. Like there are gaps that can be filled with automation. And again, looking at the profile on where they’re at in the buying space and what you know about them, what size company. Like there are so many, so many facets to a B2B deal. 

0:17:07 Lisa Wendland: I was going to say there’s a couple brands we work with that are both D2C and B2B. I’ve seen a lot of success in mirroring some of those images and concepts and campaigns. So, you know, if we’re launching a new product and you also have wholesalers, they absolutely want to know about that. They want to make sure it’s on their shelf and they have the right tags and they have that sort of education for them. 

0:17:29 Lisa Wendland: Clearly you’d want to get that information to them ahead of the launch to consumers. But a brand that I worked with, absolutely fabulous brand, they were sending a message every week with those sorts of highlights and talking cards and just resources for their wholesalers. And they were ridiculously successful because they automated, they just planned ahead. They said, okay, we know what’s coming out. Let’s get the messages to our teams and go from there. 

0:17:53 Taylor Wilson: Cool. I like that. There was something in particular that came to mind today that I think I don’t know. This one, this one is interesting when you think about like touch points and B2B. So like let’s say you’ve got a B2B subscription. So you’re taking something that maybe you think normally as like a B2C type thing, like subscriptions, like my Netflix or my Amazon prime, what are my subscribe and save, whatever it is. But you’re putting that into like a Software solution that’s B2B. 

0:18:25 Taylor Wilson: And this one was just top of mind. But like I personally think that sending people an email about your subscriptions about to renew is a really good practice. But so many people don’t do that. But you see that in like, I think my Amazon subscribe and save. I don’t, I might be making this up, but I’m saying I get notifications that like my next order is coming soon. Do you still want it? Like, do you need it yet? You know, that sort of a thing. 

0:18:55 Taylor Wilson: For me, I think a lot of B2B brands probably look at like touch points like that and think we want, we don’t want them to know. We just want the subscription to keep going. I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but personally I think from a brand loyalty and customer loyalty and satisfaction perspective, you should give people a heads up on those types of things. What are your thoughts on stuff like that? I know that like went way out. 

0:19:17 Lisa Wendland: In the left field. No, you are, no, you are on it. I absolutely agree that there is a divide on this decision. And I’ve worked with a number of brands. There’s actually so Yahpo offered subscription services and they are sunsetting that. And so now a lot of brands are looking at like moving to recharge. And I think some brands are looking at, you know, just getting into this space for 2025. And so this is a critical decision to make and it is made brand by brand. 

0:19:45 Lisa Wendland: Do we tell people? Do we not tell people? Are we overwhelming our consumers with all these subscription related messages? And you do have the luxury of deciding as a brand. Yeah, we’re going to send a seven day reminder, a five day reminder, like you know that you have to make those strategic decisions. The gosh. So the decision is made by the brand. I would say there is a balancing act. If you don’t send it and the consumer is not happy about it, you have to have your customer service team ready and you need to understand the data associated with that on how many people have done that and how many people are going to get publicly upset about this. 

0:20:30 Lisa Wendland: Because like you said, as a brand loyal, like brand loyalty and customer service experience. Personally I would send the reminder. You are much better off having open communication and transparency. The brands that have decided, no, we don’t want to do that. Like I said, you really have an influx of negative customer experience which is difficult to come back from, frankly. So when you are sending, you know, messages about the subscription, there are a number of brands that do this really well. I couldn’t possibly name them all today. 

0:21:00 Lisa Wendland: I will say Chewy is a great example of how they send out their messages related to orders and it goes a long way, I would say. And you mentioned like the crime, of course. Yes, they do a fantastic job with their transactional messages and that’s what that falls under. Right? It’s a transaction. It’s not, you know, you’re not necessarily trying to get an upsell. You’re not trying to like you. You are just communicating that this is coming up. 

0:21:27 Lisa Wendland: And it’s so funny because I think they do a really good job where depending on your situation, you may not need another order of dog food yet and you can push it out a week and you get that chance. Right. Versus another 50 pound bag showing up at your door. 

0:21:43 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Other than, like, it’s like I as a consumer so appreciate the chance versus the. Oh, I completely forgot a year ago that I signed up for an annual plan. And then all of a sudden I open up my credit card bill one day and I’m like, what’s that? You know, oh, I don’t need that anymore. Or I want to downgrade or something like that. I think giving people the chance. And, you know, I just see more and more that this happens in the software space where, like, a lot of softwares are trying to. 

0:22:18 Taylor Wilson: Rightfully so I think it’s a good strategy and we do it too. Like, hey, did you know you could save money on an annual place? Great. Pay up front, save money. But then you forget because a year is a long time. And so when you don’t. And this just happened to me recently with a software I’ve been using for a while, years and. But actually had moved away from it over the course of the year and didn’t need anymore and forgot that I was on that annual renewal. 

0:22:44 Lisa Wendland: Yeah. 

0:22:44 Taylor Wilson: And now I’m trying to be like, hey, guys, I used y’all for like five years. Really? Like, you’re not gonna help me out here on this thing. 

0:22:52 Lisa Wendland: Oh, yeah. 

0:22:53 Taylor Wilson: So. And clearly, like, I haven’t been using it. So, like, you can look at the data that, like, I’m not. 

0:22:57 Lisa Wendland: Thank you. Yes. 

0:22:58 Taylor Wilson: You know, exactly. 

0:23:00 Lisa Wendland: You, you know, this isn’t working out. I feel like you took advantage. What can we do here? If it falls on deaf ears, it’s a really negative experience for sure. And I will say that’s sort of. Then again, if you’re not sending the communication, you have to mitigate that relationship, like, situation. 

0:23:17 Taylor Wilson: Right. 

0:23:18 Lisa Wendland: And you don’t always have a customer service team that has access to that level of data candidly. Like, I’ve seen that where it’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about this person’s profile. And so I work with teams on that too, where it’s like, why? Why not, you know, like, hand that list over, Think about it. Ahead of the, you know, there are some brands where it’s like always on a specific day, they charge everybody. 

0:23:40 Lisa Wendland: It’s like a monthly club. And so you can, you can handle the customer service even. Even with that renewal email where you have an influx of cancellations. 

0:23:50 Taylor Wilson: Right. 

0:23:50 Lisa Wendland: You could reach out to all those people. And we’ve done great research with those people. I’m like, why are you canceling? Oh, well, I didn’t like what was in the last box. I think it cost much money. I, you know, just don’t even live there anymore. Like, oh, oh, no. Like, if they’re shipping to who knows where. I agree with you on the B2B space where these things are on autopilot and it’s just not as personal. And that’s, like I said before, an opportunity for sure. We can do more as businesses to other businesses. 

0:24:21 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, Well, I think it’s a missed opportunity from a brand perspective. I think it’s a miss. But I also think that you could potentially end up spending more money on having a large customer service team that like a larger customer service team than you really need if you just like. Because I imagine a lot of these companies actually devote a lot of time and man hours to, like, customer service around refunds and stuff when they’re doing it this way especially. And I’m talking about the ones that are like, let’s call them like two or three hundred a year renewals. Like, not these huge things, but like, you know, so anyhow, I digress, but I think that that’s something that’s really interesting to think about when you’re thinking about Lifecycle and touch points with customers, whether it’s B2B or B2C. Like, have the conversation about this is your thank you for being customer heads up. Here’s what’s coming. 

0:25:19 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, it’s the right thing to do. So let’s kind of wrap it up. We got a few more minutes. I want to talk really quickly with you about just like building momentum, how to sustain momentum throughout the year, and then I want to finish it off with your favorite life cycle campaign that you’ve ever implemented in life. 

0:25:39 Lisa Wendland: Oh, my goodness. Okay, that’s a good one. I’ll think about that while I answer your question about momentum. So you had started to ask about how did Q4 go? And I think that’s a really good sort of setup for how to keep momentum going in Q4. So we really dug into the data from 2023, and it was interesting because we could see a clear and I Should give some context. So we looked at all of the beauty brands with email data that we had available and we were looking for trends in the way that purchase behind like buying behavior was going in 2023 for Q4. 

0:26:20 Lisa Wendland: And we definitely were able to back up the hypothesis that the week after Christmas are definitely different. So you truly have that shopper fatigue. Things do kind of come back up when you see the holidays have wrapped up. Now people are kind of buying for themselves again. But leading up to Christmas it kind of slows down. We found all the data to back these things up. I will say that this year there was definitely sentiment about everything was more expensive in the ads side of the house. Right. Because of, you know, current events and things that were going on. So the noise level was definitely elevated. Right. You had to cut through that with your budget in order to get into the space. 

0:27:05 Lisa Wendland: Thankfully for email and sms, you know, things were pretty, pretty level I would say, you know, it’s not like pricing changes for email and sms. I do know that there it is a very competitive period in the inbox or on the phone. And we do see higher unsubscribe and like opt out rates in Q4 generally like everyone is getting everything from everyone, especially this, this past year. So keeping the momentum going, we do have solid data for every brand coming out of Q4, whether, whether it’s from 2024 or 2023 non election year, there’s information that you can understand. 

0:27:44 Lisa Wendland: If they’re shopping for other people or if they’re shopping for themselves. You can see the difference in the buying behavior. And that gives you sort of a launch pad to look at other gifting holidays and think through, okay, what kind of messaging would I put in front of this person? Is this person a heavy spender? Is it in, like I said, that realm of like, okay, I’m buying this for someone else versus a regular user. Right. 

0:28:09 Lisa Wendland: And so it takes time to build out the segments. But usually what I do when I work with a new brand is audit all their data and look for some of those key things like high LTV and so high lifetime value, how many purchases have they made, how much time goes on between purchases. So if you have, like I said, if you have those people that are regularly buying versus those people that are like stacking up once, twice, three times a year when it comes to the campaigns for that, like I said, you can look at the gifting seasons, but for products that aren’t super giftable now you can kind of understand who are your discount shoppers like yep, they buy Black Friday, that’s it. 

0:28:48 Lisa Wendland: And then if you have a semi annual sale or if you have your own birthday sale, like it’s the birthday of the company, you can dig into those sorts of things. It doesn’t have to always be a discount either. It could be free shipping over a certain amount. It could be extra loyalty points during this period. It could be early access to something new. Like there’s, there’s plenty of opportunities to keep things exciting and new during the year without making up a holiday. 

0:29:17 Taylor Wilson: And I would think even like B2B brands can do similar things. You know, it’s not quite the same with like you know, always but I do think that there are ways to say sort of like hey, like to the annual pricing. Did you know that if you renewed at an annual you could save? So like I think there’s discounting moves and things that people can make particularly around kind of that, that sort of a play for, for B2B. 

0:29:42 Taylor Wilson: And I love your examples for B2C. More oriented. 

0:29:45 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, I was going to say for B2B like and B2C the behavioral triggers, like your audience will tell you where their sweet spot is, how often they want to hear from you. Just based on the data you will see, you know, the ebbs and flows of, of reactions of opens, clicks, purchases. And in B2B. Yeah, I like your call out about the renewal or the savings. You could certainly set that up. And again more behavioral based like okay, six months from renewal or based on their usage. Right. 

0:30:13 Lisa Wendland: You know, if I notice Taylor’s never logging in, then what can we do about that? And what I’ve really wanted to drive home with internal and external teams when working on a brand is whether it’s B2B or B2C. I would say even more so with B2B is to have dashboards and data available to look at that sort of information. Right. If you see a significant drop off and you’re hearing about a competitor taking over the space, you have to, you have to jump on that and look at what are some opportunities to re engage people. 

0:30:48 Lisa Wendland: Definitely have done a lot of work with surveys and you’d be surprised what kind of survey things come out of that. And I would say I get some pushback where what if nobody answers? Incentivize it. It doesn’t take much to get a reaction from people and, and find out more about them. Again being in the digital space, you don’t have to like go knock on their door. It’s not a huge lift to Send something out, you know, virtually and get them to give you their feedback. Especially. 

0:31:15 Lisa Wendland: Especially in B2B. 

0:31:16 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Rapid fire. Favorite life cycle campaign. 

0:31:22 Lisa Wendland: Okay, let’s see. So I worked with Pura Beada bracelets for five years and there were so many campaigns, just absolutely fabulous campaigns. The designs were beautiful. There’s actually two that came to mind. So the first one was worth the scroll and so there was this sort of like long like they make these beautiful string bracelets and so it was just this long email where all of these bracelets had been laid out and you scroll down it and it was just beautiful. Just a beautiful email. Super fun. They have so many products and is a cool trend that I just don’t see as often anymore where it’s this long scroll sort of email. And it is super fun. Totally worth it. 

0:32:00 Lisa Wendland: One of my favorite campaigns was also a bee focused like pollinator awareness campaign that we did. And they’re just beautiful little bracelets and it was about supporting pollinators. I actually took a pollinator certification course through msu Michigan State University and I just loved that campaign. It did really well, like in terms of revenue and it was just super fun to think about the concept and the creative that went along with it because it wasn’t a, you know, it’s not like a top selling bracelet but it’s just adorable with a little B. And it was fun to work on. 

0:32:34 Taylor Wilson: That’s awesome. I love it. Like just good creative ideas, you know, sometimes are the things that to get the attention, stop the scroll and make people have a little, you know, smile a little fun with it. Well, Lisa, it’s been really fun. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. I’ve learned a lot from you. If people want to get in touch and learn more about working with Blue Wheel media or find you online, what’s the best way to do that? 

0:32:59 Lisa Wendland: Yeah, great question. So I would say Blue wheel me like bluewheelmedia.com is the best place to learn more about Blue Wheel. And you can find me on LinkedIn just LinkedIn.com lisawen wenlan oh, sorry. LinkedIn.com in I’ll say that again. 

0:33:17 Taylor Wilson: That slash in thing, it’s, you know, It’s a lot. 

0:33:21 Lisa Wendland: LinkedIn.com in Lisa Wendland I. I miss it every time. 

0:33:27 Taylor Wilson: Well, Lisa, it’s really been a pleasure and I’ve had a great time. I hope this was helpful for you marketers out there. If you are thinking about how to just, you know, think about life cycle marketing approach it. What are some different things you can do in it, and we’ll see you next time on another episode of Talking Shizzle. Well, hey there, that was fun. I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every single episode. 

0:34:01 Taylor Wilson: We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast players so that you don’t miss a beat of the Talking Shizzle podcast. And if you’re listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from our listeners so that we can bring you all the good, juicy business growth shizzle that you’d like to hear about. 

0:34:27 Taylor Wilson: Be sure to get in touch with us and follow along at creativeshizzle.com, now until next time, we hope you go get your big Shizzle done.