Gone But Not Forgotten

Often when a customer doesn’t return to a website for a substantial amount of time they are long forgotten. But former customers who return to spend money offer an economical potential verysimilar to that of a first time customer and therefore should be treated as such. Special treatment typically reserved for first time customers, such as special offers and bonuses, should be extended to these former customers as well. And, why not? They are currently an untapped but very valuable customer segment.

Tracking customer behavior over time is one of the best ways to determine how to market to them, and one of the core types of behavior-based segmentation is customer lifestyle segmentation, which allows marketers to relate to their customers on the basis of the timing and intensity of customer interactions with their brand. According to MarketingProfs some of the different lifecycle stage segmentations include the following

 

• Registered – potential customers who have registered on the site but have not yet made a purchase or deposit
• New – customers who made a single purchase/deposit during the past period
• Active – customers who have made multiple purchases/deposits over a number of past periods
• VIP – customers who made the most purchases and/or spent the most money over a number of past periods
• Churn – customers who had been in the New, Active, or VIP stages but have not made any purchases/deposits during the past number of periods
• Back from Churn (or FromChurn) – customers who have abandoned the business and later returned

According to data from Optimove, the future lifetime value predictions for new customers and FromChurn customers were almost identical. Therefore, customers who return to the website after a period of inactivity offer the company an economic potential similar to that of a recently converted first-customer.

Bullets

• 3 in 4 marketers believe that marketing assets are somewhat (67%) or very (9%) effective, but only 46% of salespeople concur, finds a new study released by Demand Metric. The survey – fielded mostly among B2B respondents – focuses on the causes and impacts of “bad” sales interactions, finding numerous instances of disagreement between sales and marketing teams, with each seeing problems with the other. (marketingcharts.com)

• 3 in 4 American adults claim to be very or somewhat concerned about having too much personal information about them online. The majority of respondents have little to no trust in social media sites, and 6 in 10 believe it likely than social networks sell their contact information. (marketingcharts.com)

• Roughly 186.9 million Americans watched online content videos in June, per comScore figures, and almost half of them (91.5 million) viewed content on Facebook, the second-largest video content property by unique viewers. The top property was Google Sites – dominated by YouTube – which boasted 153.3 million unique viewers in June. (marketingcharts.com)

• IDATE projects 80 billion internet-connected things in 2020, up from 15 billion in 2012. This figure does include PCs, TVs and smart devices, but the vast majority (85%) will be objects like car tires or shipping pallets that may communicate with the web via an intermediate device. Devices that communicate directly, such as PCs, TVs and mobile phones, will make up 11% of the total in 2020. (emarketer.com)

• Q4 2013 data from Experian Marketing Services suggests that perhaps when faced with fewer emails, consumers may be more likely to engage and shop. The marketing services firm found Saturday had the highest open rates and average order sizes compared with all other days. Sunday had the highest click rate and revenue per email averages, but the lowest order amount. (emarketer.com)