#243: Mastering Lifecycle Marketing: Real-World Tactics from Leading B2B Teams

#253 Lifecycle Marketing | In this episode, we’re joined by two expert lifecycle marketers: Charlotte Hardin, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Rebuy Engine, and Naomi West, Senior Product Manager at Customer.io. Charlotte and Naomi bring years of hands-on experience running email, onboarding, and retention programs inside B2B SaaS companies.

They break down how B2B teams can use lifecycle marketing to drive more revenue, boost product engagement, and strengthen customer relationships, without needing a massive team.

Charlotte and Naomi cover:

• How top B2B teams build high-performing welcome sequences, and why they’re constantly worth revisiting
• The role of experimentation and how to prioritize AB tests that deliver learnings (even with small audiences)
• Strategic ways to keep users engaged post-onboarding, including behavior-based triggers and surprise-and-delight moments

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro
  
• (02:38) - – Meet Charlotte and Naomi
  
• (04:23) - – How they define lifecycle marketing
  
• (06:08) - – What they’ve changed their minds about recently
  
• (09:18) - – Plain text vs. designed emails
  
• (11:08) - – Their frameworks for experimentation
  
• (13:38) - – How to test in low-volume environments
  
• (15:58) - – Common mistakes in A/B testing
  
• (17:08) - – What a day in lifecycle marketing looks like
  
• (19:18) - – How they (actually) use AI in their workflows
  
• (23:08) - – Building a reporting foundation for lifecycle
  
• (27:19) - – Naomi’s example of measuring aha moments
  
• (29:19) - – Quick definitions of lifecycle marketing
  
• (30:49) - – Tips for writing lifecycle campaigns that actually matter
  
• (31:19) - – Favorite lifecycle campaigns they’ve run
  
• (33:19) - – Why revamping welcome flows is always worth it
  
• (35:19) - - Frameworks they use for building new flows
  
• (38:19) - – What to do *after* onboarding ends
  
• (39:49) - – Using behavior-based triggers and milestones
  
• (41:49) - – Surprise and delight moments in B2B
  
• (43:19) - – Creating assets with a lean team
  
• (46:19) - – Systems and templates that save time
  
• (48:19) - – Navigating multi-year sales cycles with lifecycle content
  
• (51:19) - – Why benchmarks are often misleading
  
• (53:19) - – Final advice: audit often, talk to your team, and keep learning
  
• (55:19) - – Wrap-up and where to find Naomi and Charlotte

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***

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E5_Customer.io Webinar
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[00:00:00] I see Moosh. I see Anna, Brendan. This is great. I love it. We have so many people on that. Oh, we're already blowing up. This is great. Um, I'm super excited today about our session 'cause we haven't done anything on lifecycle marketing yet, or at least since I've been here. So I think this is a really cool topic that covers a lot of things.

Yeah. Brendan's like finally lifecycle. Um, what are you excited to talk about today? Brendan? Let me know. I wanna know, what do you know about, wanna know about Lifecycle? That'll be super fun. Um, so run of the front of show, lay of the land. If you haven't done one of these live sessions with us yet, um, we have a super active chat.

Um, obviously you can see already people are sharing their ideas, their opinions. Um, we also have in that same place in the chat, we have this little q and a feature. Um, so we are gonna have an awesome q and a with our panelists. So I'm gonna introduce in just a. And make sure you add questions in there so that we can get to it during the q and a portion.

[00:01:00] Um, we'll also like talk to you guys while you're in the chat, um, and make sure it's super interactive. But yeah, just, just little housekeeping and yes, this is being recorded. Um, you'll get the recording in your email as soon as we end, actually, I think two hours after we end via email. Um, so don't worry being recorded.

You'll get all of the goods. So today we have two really awesome lifecycle marketers joining us. We have Charlotte Harden, who is, um, runs marketing ops and Lifecycle manager at Rebuy Engine. And then we have Naomi West fellow redhead, and she's the senior product manager at customer io who is also our partner for this webinar.

So I'm very excited. All right, we got Brendan's very excited. He's a lifecycle guy. He's like curious about other campaigns, so this is awesome. All right, cool. So I'm gonna bring these two ladies on stage. Gimme one second. Add stage, add to stage. Here we go. Hello. Hi. How's it going everyone? How are you guys?

This is so exciting.

Thank

you joining

us. [00:02:00] Thanks for having us. I love seeing where everyone is from in the chat and it's so rare to get a fellow be seer like myself. So cool to see some local presence.

Isn't that cool? There's someone from South Africa in here. We got Portland, we got Utah, Nevada, another from Boston.

Boston, yeah. Just north of you up in Salem in the which city? Yeah. It's really cool. It's crazy how many people from like around the world. Wow. I know. So cool. That's awesome. Um, all right, so before we dig into our little questions, um, I would love to just know like a little bit ar. About how you guys think about lifecycle and what your roles entail, and you know, just what you're really excited to talk about today.

So, Naomi, you wanna kick us off? Yeah.

Live and breathe email lifecycle. Uh, I, when I first entered, like my career doing email back in 2015, I thought I discovered marketing automation when I realized I could like trigger an [00:03:00] email and people would still reply thinking it was sent directly from me. And since then, my life has really been changed.

So I look at Lifecycle as just this phenomenal. Way to build relationships with various audiences. My baby of all channels is definitely email marketing. I love the, the rich blend of imagery and text, um, and being able to kind of communicate with someone across multiple phases of their relationship with the brand and business.

So the moment that you kind of acquire an email address, being able to start to build a relationship there, moving through to monetizing off of them and then straight through to to them. Becoming an advocate of yours. So I just love it and I love that other people are starting to love it too. I know.

I'm

very

excited.

What about you, Charlotte? Um, I similarly was amazed by, uh, email automation when I first started using it. Um, but I have been in lifecycle slash marketing [00:04:00] operations for, um. About seven years, and I've been at a few different, um, tech companies doing email, um, and just all things automation. So I, I really love, um, getting to know, you know, like the company's.

Data infrastructure and just being able to use that in, um, in all of the marketing touch points. I think it's really exciting and there's always, always more we can do, um, as lifecycle marketers. So I think it's, it's always, you know, an exciting role to be in.

Yeah, it really is. I remember the first time I like set something up in HubSpot, I was so proud of myself to get that, like triggered and then get, like someone came back that was like, this is a really good sequence.

And I was like, what? I'm pretty, I did good. Thank you so much. So satisfying. Um, all right, cool. So we have some great little spicy questions to get into today. So the first one I wanna [00:05:00] ask both of you is, so like, what's one belief or thought about lifecycle marketing that you've changed your mind about in the last year?

Maybe it's like SMS isn't as hot as everyone's saying it is. Or like, you know, maybe email isn't king anymore. Don't, don't say that. I know I'm, I am an email lover, so don't worry about

that. I will agree. I do think sms. I went into it open-minded, and what I found is the industry when adopting SMS has just tried to mirror it against email and shout the same message that they're shouting over email.

And then they get shocked when SMS doesn't perform to their expectations. But that is actually not my like. Kind of biggest thing that I've changed my mind about in the last year. I changed my mind about SMS, maybe like a year and a half ago. So it's outta scope, but I think I've always looked at lifecycle marketing and specifically email marketing as this [00:06:00] channel and way of working that needs to be designed in order to perform really well, specifically when it comes to email design.

And as someone that does not have. Any creative background. As a graphic designer, I've always kind of had this imposter syndrome where I thought, oh, if this email isn't designed perfectly and if it doesn't have this beautiful gradient or imagery included, it's not going to perform to its expectation.

And recently through multiple testings and uh, just explorations of let's scale back the design and let's try out kind of more text-based approaches where we just communicate. What's happening and why? As clearly and succinctly as possible, my mind has completely been changed and I am now like remove the graphic designer from the process.

Like let's simplify the amount of hoops that this email or channel needs to go through in order to become live. And it's completely changed my. [00:07:00] Like entire workflow. Yeah.

So designed and something about email design and just like the, the like technical setup of email. I didn't realize this until I ran this huge project at one of my companies that was like putting together these new like really well designed email templates.

Mm-hmm. And half the time they're like, yeah, you can't do that in email. Mm-hmm. Like, you can't have this font in email 'cause like this email provider is gonna cut it off. And it was like, okay, we're going with text and mm-hmm. And this is what we're doing. Yeah.

Yeah,

works great.

I totally agree that, um, email design in email is, while I used to think it was top priority and very important to get people to click through an email, don't think it's, um, I don't think it's that way, especially because, you know, in plain text emails, it feels, definitely feels more personal.

So, you know, I. That might even drive more engagement sometimes, which feels weird to say, but um, yeah, I agree with that one. Naomi. [00:08:00]

Yeah, I've definitely found plain text. It like you have to use it in the correct context and not mm-hmm. Overdo it. But like, I use it for like, some of you who are on here right now, I use it as like an invite of like, Hey, I'm hosting this.

Like, do you wanna come? And we get like, it feels like a personal message and like it is our respond to people, you know? Mm-hmm. Come in. But, um, it just, I feel like it gets more eyeballs. All right. Sean is part of the plain text gang.

Yeah. Loves a lot of play text game. I love it. Which is funny 'cause I used to, I think we also like, took a lot of email from B2C, which is so mm-hmm. Highly designed and like beautiful. Um, but whole different ballgame. Yeah.

Like, I don't need. I don't need an email that has like a giant graphic, which is just like typography in a custom font with like a beautiful background.

Like I don't need that. Just tell it to be plain and I will probably perform better. Yeah. Time. Maybe that should [00:09:00] be another one of our t-shirts.

We've been testing out like t-shirt slogans 'cause we are eventually gonna open five swag shop. Oh that's awesome. Love it. I'll order one for sure. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, uh, experimentation.

Do you have like a framework for how you prioritize experiments and, you know, how do you just run your experiments throughout lifecycle and what does that mean for you?

Um, I can, I can jump in on this one. So I think, um, experimentation. Oh my gosh. It is, in an ideal world, we will always be prioritizing AB testing and experimentation and, um.

You know, I have been at companies where I literally couldn't launch a campaign unless it has been AB tested, um, to kind of prove the ROI of it. But I've also been at companies and I think probably a lot of us are [00:10:00] in a situation where speed is a huge priority for launching lifecycle campaigns. Um. So I think, you know, for lifecycle marketers there's a, there's a, you have to strike a balance between, you know, being able to, um, launch something quickly, but also, uh, experiment and continue to optimize it.

Um, but I think in my experience, um, you know. It becomes really important to kind of educate your leaders of the importance of experimentation and testing and, um, yeah, I think the times that I have actually been able to test and really run some really good ab tests are, um, when testing was a broader priority for the marketing team and, you know, even the company in general.

Yeah. The way I look at [00:11:00] lifecycle marketing kind of as a foundation is split into three pillars, which is going to ladder up to how I'll talk about AB testing. I look at this first phase, which is activation, and my communication touchpoints that I'm sending, whether it be through email or in-app, or push or SMS or.

Whatever new channel is around the corner.

WhatsApp carrier

pigeon. Yeah, I have no idea anymore. Uh, my touch points that I'm trying to, to send during that activation stage is, uh. In purpose to try and encourage that individual to reach a certain aha moment with my business where they're like, I understand the value of this business, and oh, that's amazing.

Or they discover the competitive advantage that we have. And then the second silo that I look like or I, I look at is this monetization stage where I'm like, okay, they get the value. What is it gonna take for them to give us. Their money and then the retention stage, there could be [00:12:00] multiple other kind of like areas of focus, you know, uh, getting them to convert again, make another purchase, or renew their subscription or refer a friend or just become an advocate in some capacity.

And so when I look at AB testing. Within kind of the, the confines of lifecycle marketing. I'm like, what can I be learning from each of those silos? Is it what amount of touch points I need in the activation stage that gets them to that aha moment? What kind of verbiage are they looking for or additional resources?

And the great thing I find with. Testing and lifecycle is, the learnings that you get are not exclusive to just you. I find that there's so many learnings that the company can benefit from as well. So if you do discover, you know that a, a certain FAQ, uh, ends up being what? Discovers that aha moment.

Taking that back to like the product team or the sales team, um, there's so many ways in which those learnings can apply to others within the [00:13:00] organization. So I look at it as what gaps currently exist in, in the customer lifecycle, and what ways can I implement tests that will not only benefit me and, and my campaigns, but the rest of the organization, of course, like in accordance with company goals.

Yeah, we actually have a really good question in the q and a mm-hmm. That I'm just gonna throw to, it's from Marissa. Um, talking about AB testing, how do you ab test with, um, a small audience? Every time I've ever tried AB testing with emails, my results come back is inconclusive. Um, so how have you guys approached that in your, kind of your, your roles?

It depends on like the audience size in general. I try and not test with anything less than like a thousand individuals per, per variant, otherwise. Just the, the sample size is too small and you're gonna get just various measures that will not be scalable in any fashion. Um, I think it's also really important to have a clear hypothesis that you're [00:14:00] testing.

Sometimes I'll, you know, be past a, an idea like, let's just test the subject line. Like, does an emoji, a sunshine emoji lead to a higher click-through rate? And I'm like, what are you gonna do with that learning? I. If we do have one, come back with statistical significance, are you gonna put a sunshine emoji in every single email moving forward?

Um, that does not answer your question at all, but I think it does kind of boil down to make sure that you have a really strong hypothesis, whether it's with a small audience. And then just be realistic. If your audience is too small, if you only have, you know, 500 people, you're not gonna get the learnings that you are looking for.

Which is just the reality. Yeah.

That's, yeah, I, I've, um, definitely come across that in, in my own experience, especially not just with, um, with email, but also with AB testing like website pages. Um, but same kind of things. Sometimes your website [00:15:00] pages aren't getting enough traffic to actually. Have a conclusive result.

And in that case, I think I would agree. I would say, you know, just, um, maybe wait until you can get a bigger audience, because otherwise it might, you know, be kind of a time suck to set up this ab test with your smaller audience and um, yeah, maybe focus on other things.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think, and I've definitely fallen into this where I'm like.

Testing something just to test it. Because we're told as marketers, like, right, you need to be testing things, you need to have data to back this up. And like you said, Naomi, it's like, do I really need to know if like the sunshine emoji makes them click more on this link? And E is that even what made them click more on this link or, um, so I think that that's a really good point about having that super strong hypothesis of like, what do I actually wanna tech check?

Um. Oh, I like this question, um, from Anna in the chat. Um, what is the number one thing, [00:16:00] like a task you spend your day on as a lifecycle marketer? So like a little day in the life, like what do you, where does most of your time go? Oof.

Um, okay. I would say most of my time my, so my role also includes marketing operations, but so much of my time I would put under the category of operations, but really it's just kind of.

Taking all of the data that is available and being able to kind of parse it out for lifecycle campaigns, I think, um, takes up a ton of my time. Um, and then also something that is always, always takes longer than I think it's going to is reporting on lifecycle campaigns. Um, and I know there's so much to talk about there, but, um, yeah, interested to see what you say, Naomi.

Like totally depends. Yeah. And that's like a horrible answer. It's the answer no one wants. I'm [00:17:00] like, it depends. Um, it's a marketer's favorite answer though. It always depends because it does. I hate it. Um, honestly, like a lot of my day as a lifecycle marketer, it depends. Some days I'm spent on calls just talking through like the new upcoming initiatives.

Like why? Why are we encouraging someone to like achieve this aha moment? Like what is this conversion goal? What do we think the communication touchpoint need to be that ladder up to that like aha conversion moment? And I love a brainstorm, so I really enjoy that. I do think. In-person, aka on Zoom.

Meetings take up a lot of time. The second, like largest probably task on my to-do list is writing out the campaigns I have leaned into ai. I. Quite a lot [00:18:00] over the past year and there are so many use cases that streamline my work. Copywriting is never gonna be one of them. I do not trust ChatGPT to write copy for me.

I will not loosen that grip at all. So writing copy in the brand voice and tone, knowing who the audience is, that's something I take seriously and something that I will spend a lot of time on. So. So what do you use AI for? I'm

interested. Um, we got a little question about that too. Yeah. Charlotte, have you been using it?

I have, yeah. I, um, I am not on the, never using AI for copy train, which I hate to say, but, um, but I think. You know, it really, really depends on your prompt. And, um, if you're going to use AI for copy, your prompt has to be really, um, thorough and you have to really be explaining, or you have to be really understanding what the [00:19:00] goal of your email, whatever it is, um, that you're writing is.

And so, so yeah. So I do use AI for copy, but with qualifiers, um. And I've also started to use AI for like designing workflows, which I think can be really, really helpful. Um, which I think is also kind of another time suck as a lifecycle marketer. But, um, kinda mapping out workflows has been really helpful with, um, some AI tools.

That's awesome. What about you, Naomi? We use, so I use notion AI for kind of mapping out any page structures, which is so helpful. I can be like, you know, create, uh, an email format with a placeholder subject line hero body, CTA, insert like placeholder links. Um. And in itself, like just writing out page formats.

I could also create a template and just use that, but why make my life easier? [00:20:00] Um, so page formatting I use quite a bit. I will use chat, GPT for, uh, any kind of like liquid troubleshooting. If I'm having difficulty with dynamic languages, uh, I'll go to it and I'll be like, why does this syntax not work? So.

Any kind of troubleshooting. I'm obsessed with HTML. Troubleshooting. It helps me. Liquid syntax helps me. Mm-hmm. And then I am a big fan of Claude. Lately I've been like testing out chat GPT versus Claude or Cloud. I have no idea. I, yeah, I'm not good at pronunciation. I, I call him Claude. Claude. Yeah. Yeah.

Claude. Claude. That's what, it's my friend Claude. Um, I will use, uh, Claude actually for kind of taking my copy and asking it to simplify it or make it more succinct. I'm like a novella writer. I could write for days and no one will care. Uh, so I will always go and be like, how can I simplify this or make my arguments stronger?

So editing [00:21:00] is a good one.

Mm-hmm. Editing for sure. Something else I've recently started to use, um, AI for is like formulas. Um, and this isn't really directly applicable to lifecycle marketing, but um, formulas for Excel or. Um, you know, if I need to add a formula to a Salesforce report, um, because I am not, you know, quite sure how to do that, I'm not that, um, that well versed in Salesforce to, to create one.

I think that has been super helpful and surprisingly has worked so well for me too. Yeah, I use it all the time

for that kind of stuff, for formulas to try and find something because like even if I know it, I'm just like, Ugh, this is just a lot of work and it'll help me get it right. Um, I do use it for copy, but I have like a custom GPT setup that has about 20 pages of my writing as like [00:22:00] a.

An example to go off of. And then it has all this stuff about like exit five and our brand, and then the prompting. Um, I edit it, don't worry, I edit it. The m dashes are all mine. Um, but it does help speed up a lot of things. Um, I'm gonna head over to the QA because I think we have a lot of. Good questions in there already.

And if you haven't put one in yet and it's something you want us to cover, make sure you add it in there. Um, this one is really good from Julia. Um, pin it on screen into live lifecycle Marketing is brand new at our company. What are some fundamental KPIs or metrics that you would suggest building our ROI reporting on?

I think this is a good one.

That is, that's a great question. Um, I think there are so many different things you can start with, um, if Lifecycle is new to you, but I would start really, really basic. Um, and I guess first of all, it probably depends what data you have and what data you know, you're able to get, which [00:23:00] is always, I think a, a struggle to map out what's available and make sure it is accurate too.

But, um. You know, I think putting together a very, it's gonna sound complicated when I say it, but a very simple attribution model to start with is gonna be really, really helpful just to understand what, um, you know, if there's a correlation between the marketing campaigns you're putting out and, um, and.

Really helpful to just kind of show the influence of your marketing campaigns. Um, but other than that, you know, there are some specific, uh, metrics that I think are always gonna be helpful, like click through rate and, you know, open rate and stuff like that. But. Yeah, if you are able to really take a step back before you dive into the specifics of, you know, all of your lifecycle campaign, [00:24:00] um, and just kind of map out what you're looking for and your goals and um, try to set some data infrastructure up to, to get to that point, I think it's gonna be really helpful for you down the line.

Yeah.

What about you,

Naomi? Definitely echoing that. Um. The way I would start if I was approaching kind of lifecycle marketing net new at an organization, um, is with a, a few different ways. I would, one, find an engineer as a best friend because they can help you down the line, bring in new like custom attributes and events, which will not only help you personalize your emails, but.

Track the, the conversion and the behavior from receiving them. Same within app and SMS and push. But, uh, find an engineer as your best friend buddy up with a product manager as well. Uh, and then yeah, do a mapping exercise. So, for example, one of my past roles, uh, I worked as a lifecycle marketer at a company [00:25:00] called Invoice to Go.

They were an invoicing solution on the go. And, uh, some of the aha moments kind of in the initial. Activation silo before they, someone would ever subscribe to the product itself, where we wanted someone to sign up and add their like direct deposit details or their banking information so that once a client paid the invoice, they could get paid for it.

We also wanted them to add their own company logo and fill out kind of like logistical account information. And by being able to, you know, have those certain events in our marketing automation platform and assign them as conversion goals, I was able to. Go back to my team and say, Hey, look, when someone receives this email, they have a 20% conversion rate and let's test.

How do we wanna kind of think to improve this metric? And so over time, over, like the first quarter of us running this initiative, I was able to introduce various tests that we implemented and make that argument internally for the impact of the channels that we were [00:26:00] leveraging. And by being able to tell that story and.

Build a brand for myself internally as a lifecycle marketer that was running all of these initiatives. Like you get visibility and then people, people want you on their team to help them with their own goals. So yeah, make an argument, find some friends, document it basic,

all in a day's work. We can end there.

Yeah. Webinar over.

Um, this is a good one. Maybe a little basic for Barb, but I think it's, it's. It's good. Um, what is your quick definition of lifecycle marketing? Just like, how would you define it to someone? I feel like that's good for like internal marketing too, of like, you know, making friends with that engineer or product marketing manager who probably knows a little bit more about lifecycle marketing than the engineer.

But what's your, like elevator pitch for lifecycle?

Mm-hmm. Owned channel marketing such as email, in [00:27:00] app, push, SMS, that is consent based. For the most part, people are aware that they're going to hear from you and you're using those own channels to, to build relationships versus like social media or paid

ads.

Mm-hmm.

I would say, I would say setting up the right touch points for your. Customers, um, or for your audience, uh, at the right time. End of statement. I love that. Again, done. Webinar, over, done, webinar over. Um, but I also. Something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of, um, lifecycle campaigns, and especially with emails too, is, and this sounds so simple, but really making sure what you are saying is meaningful for your audience and not just, um, to, you know, check a box for your own team or [00:28:00] trying to, um.

Be a part of a larger agenda, but actually making sure, you know, this email is offering something that is actually gonna help the audience I'm sending it to. Um, which I think makes, you know, your job so much more interesting and powerful and meaningful too. So, um, so I think that is also, you know, what kind of drives me to, to enjoy lifecycle marketing.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And something sometimes we forget in all the like busyness of like, you gotta hit this goal and get this out right. And do this. And it's like, okay. Take a step back. Um, I wanna hear some examples from you guys, and Amanda had this question, which I think is really great, is like, what, um, lifecycle, initiative, or Journey has have you found most impactful or been most proud of?

So I'd love to hear from each of you, like one, one thing you guys have done in Lifecycle that you're like. On the, this goes in my portfolio, if you will.[00:29:00]

I love mirroring, uh, B2C and e-commerce strategies to B2B because I feel like sometimes B2B you feel boxed in and yeah, the sales cycles are longer and the content might be a little bit more boring, but there are ways to take in B2C strategies into your B2B world. And a couple years ago, uh, myself and my team created an abandoned cart.

B2B campaign and the copy was so fun. It was like, it was a push notification when someone got into like the, the payment portal or whatever on, on their app and they got in there and they didn't convert. They got a push notification that was like, don't put this off like a software update. Finish upgrading now.

And I love it. I love it. I still love it. It's so simple. Even though email is my baby, I look at that push notification and I'm like, that was fun. And that was so e-commerce of me in like a [00:30:00] boring B2B world respectfully. Yeah.

I love that. That was so e-commerce of me. I love it. Another t-shirt candidate.

Yeah. Right. Um, I think I. Have at every single company I've worked at a Lifecycle as a lifecycle marketer, I have revamped the welcome nurture slash post signup slash free trial nurture. I think it's probably something everyone does. Um. As a lifecycle market, especially if you're working on, you know, a smaller team, and maybe this is a new nurture or maybe you're revamping it, but this is always something that, um.

That has so many different moving parts because a lot of times you're also having other teams like sales reach out to this people, um, who have just signed up the same time that you are. [00:31:00] Um, so I think, you know, revamping what we call our welcome series. Um. Is always, always surprising to me in how complex it is.

And I think it has elements of, um, you know, creating kind of a more complex workflow and having some really concise but powerful language. Um, and also working really closely with other teams, which I love to do to make sure our messaging is matching their messaging in a really nice way. Um. So I think that project at, you know, everywhere I've worked has always been, um, kind of fun, I would almost say, but definitely exciting and definitely something I'll always, you know, put on my portfolio.

Um, because it's just kind of, those tend to be the projects that are more complex.

I feel like with revamping welcome series and flows too, like you're gonna [00:32:00] see the most impact from doing that. Like it's the most visible yes uptake you'll see in terms of engagement and conversion. It's always worth it because totally by the time you get around to revamping it, it's probably been at least a year, if not mm-hmm.

Way longer. So yes, it's fun. I really love fun a a welcome flow audit and

update. Yeah. And I think it's best to lean into it because you're always gonna be doing it. And you know, it's better to not get frustrated that I revamped this six months ago and now, you know, we're having pricing changes or, um, you know, whatever that is.

I think it's good to just lean into it and say, you know, okay, how can I make this even better than the last one?

I love that on welcome, welcome sequences. I think they're so important. And how do you approach updating them or even like building out a new one? Do you have any like frameworks you use or things that you're like, okay, I'm doing this every time.

It's a great best practice. [00:33:00]

I. Um, I am, I'm always like, if I have a welcome series that I am revamping or starting, I guess the two things that come to mind are one, connecting with any other stakeholders. And you're gonna probably have a lot who have something to say about what we're sending people right after they sign up.

Um, so from the. From the beginning, connecting with any stakeholders and making sure, you know, they have, um, they have a hand in what we're sending. And then to, um, I'm a very visual learner, so mapping out the flow and, you know, the audiences which audiences are gonna get, which emails and which messaging from which teams I think is, is really, really important for me.

Or else I will just get completely lost in it. Um, like I need to see, you know, which touch points are going towards people

they still can't believe that there is [00:34:00] not like a solution in the market for lifecycle automation mapping. Yes. Other than, obviously my go-tos are Fig Jam or Miro. Right. And there used to be this tool called Plot with Plot, and then they.

They shut it down, which I, that's crazy for

months. But that is, uh, that I totally agree. I've run into that too, and I've just started to map it out in HubSpot, but just have like placeholders for, um, for emails and stuff, but I

agree. Mm, yeah. Yeah. I, I take the exact same approach. I love to map it out. It's helpful to see whenever I'm approaching an audit, I have to go in with like.

Even if it's been repeated the year prior, two years prior, what are our goals? Who's receiving this? How are they receiving it? Because sometimes websites they change and I don't get informed and that's okay. But we potentially change the way in which someone has [00:35:00] entered this flow. Like what verbiage and context do they have, uh, and does their experience in the flow today match with the context that they.

Have been provided. So foundationally what's happening with these people? Who are these people? And then I look at the existing flow content. Is it accurate? Where is dropoff occurring? Are people meeting their goals, uh, kind of in different stages of, of the journey versus others? Are they meeting them like on day four or are a majority meeting them on day seven?

And then from there, like. With audits, if there's no clear major updates to make, it's just what do I wanna learn or what's my hypothesis? Again, all boils down to testing. Uh, what do I wanna learn from changes that I might make to this, uh, again, and how can the rest of the organization benefit from my learning?

And that's how I approach audits.

I like that. So post welcome flow. Um, I'm gonna ask a question now that Brendan actually had. Um, what do you do to keep [00:36:00] B2B users engaged? Obviously we've talked a little bit about B2C. Um, you get those really pretty emails. They want you to buy more if you already is practically breaking down the doors to my inbox right now.

Um, do you do more automations like newsletters? What, what's your approach to that? After, after the welcome sequence.

I love, uh, like a behavior based touchpoint. So again, um, for example, at one of my past organizations, which was the, this invoicing solution for businesses to use to, to collect money from their invoices, we had all of these, uh, kind of like post.

Conversion or post monetization moments when someone was super active. It was after they had sent their 10th invoice. And at that moment we not only had an opportunity to potentially congratulate them on being a super active, you know, invoice, to go user, but also gather feedback for like. Who they were and collect more first party data that could then [00:37:00] enrich our initial stage, like our initial welcome emails, but also their experience moving forward.

So like, what type of business are you? Who's your active or who's your average client that, that you're invoicing? What are the most beneficial features that you're using? Uh, and based on activity too, try and get them to self discover, discover other aspects of your business. So. Yeah, there's a a million different ways that you can kind of try and, and encourage engagement after the welcome flow, but my favorite one is just looking at behavior and trying to convince people that have monetized to refer and share with their network so that it becomes just a wider net.

What

about you, Charlotte?

Um, I, I totally agree there. I think, um, behavior based, um, behavior based flows are gonna be really, really, really helpful, especially those congratulatory milestone [00:38:00] emails. Um. I, before I was in marketing, I worked in a BA therapy, which is all about positive reinforcement. So the more you can reinforce someone positively, I think the more engaged they are.

Um, but other than that, you know, we, at Rebi we have a newsletter that is really helpful for, um, engaging the audience that, you know, might be less, um. Inclined to learn about the product, but really just kind of, um, showing, talking about what's going on in the industry and keeping them engaged in that way where they're thinking of your company kind of more as a thought leader.

And then I think, you know, the, the product usage will kind of come after that, or at least that's the hope. Um, but you know, there are, there are so many different ways to continue to engage people after the that welcome series. But I think also one thing that I always try to keep in mind [00:39:00] is. Not everyone reads the welcome series.

So we, you know, I think as lifecycle marketers we always assume that people are reading everything that we send. And if we send this next, then that will compliment this first thing perfectly, you know, because, um, we already said that. Stuff. So I think a lot of like reinforcement of some of the same information is, um, is also gonna be really helpful because not everyone, um, read it.

And even if they did, they probably skimmed over it, you know, how we are when we read emails. So, um, so, you know, I think like reusing a lot of the same stuff and in a different way is, is also gonna be helpful.

Yeah. I, when I was a freelancer a couple years ago, I remember I signed up for one of those. Like invoicing, payment services, and I got like so much joy out of one of the first one emails they sent me after I had like, you know, submitted a couple of invoices and it was like this really celebratory email that was like, Hey, like.

You've made [00:40:00] like 10 grand so far since joining and as like a new freelancer, I was like, I have like huge, so amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. Huge milestone. And that like, it does like create that little feeling of positivity where I was like, wait, I love this. I'm so proud of myself and now I'm relating that to your product.

Yeah, exactly. Sometimes

it's, it's so beneficial to remove yourself from like the. Money, money, money goals and be like, what can I do as a marketer to surprise and delight my audience? And it's those touch points that might be more of like a surprise and delight moment that will have kind of a ripple or halo effect.

Uh, and it's such a nice, it's nice for you. It's nice for business. Yeah, it feels good. Great.

Yeah. A to C is so good at this too. I, I think of, and I'll always remember this one, is we ordered, um, 'cause our dog is ridiculous. We ordered him a Casper dog bed, which he loves. He's obsessed with it. And I remember we got it and I was [00:41:00] so excited 'cause he was.

He, like, we hadn't gotten him a really good bed since he was a puppy, and they also sent this cute little like waffle dog toy. Just little moment, like wasn't expecting it. And it was so great to open it up and be like, oh, like, and like, you know, a dog owner is gonna love that. So it was such a good, like, delightful moment, um, that I love too.

But B2C world. Yes. Right. So different. But that's a, that's a great example of it though.

They

do it well. Yeah. You do it really well. Um, all right, what other questions we got in here? I think, oh, this one's a good one. So how do you strategically take, or how do you strategically create assets to sus support each step in your funnel when your marketing team is spread thin?

So how are you guys actually like creating these assets? Is it you guys writing emails? Do you work with anyone? Um, love to know a little bit more about that.

Um, I, I can, I can start. Um, so in terms of the [00:42:00] emails themselves, I do copywriting, um. I also have on my team, we also have a lot of people working in content. So for those kinds of assets, I, I have, um, someone creating those, which is great. Um, but I do a lot of, I do the email copywriting myself. Um. In terms of how to strategically create assets, I think really understanding what the goals on your team are and the company goals are, and then kind of figuring out, um.

How to create a lifecycle campaign that is, you know, working towards those goals is gonna be very helpful. Um, especially because, you know, those might not align with what you had in mind for, uh, for your lifecycle [00:43:00] campaigns. But I think, you know, making sure your lifecycle campaigns are meant to be. You know, working towards those same goals of your company is gonna be really important.

And then, you know, creating, um, creating assets from there will kind of fall into place.

Yeah. Yeah. I think when your team is spread thin, kind of categorizing where the most time is, is taken up as an important first step. Um, you know, it could be. Copywriting. Sure. You have templates or you have GPTs. For me, I know someone in in the chat kinda lost their mind when I said I didn't use chat GPT for copy, and I write it out myself and kind of accused me of being behind.

But it doesn't take a lot of my time and it's not something the, the team, I. Um, you know, loses resources over. What's been really beneficial for, for my team is specifically having like a well-oiled email design system where I can go [00:44:00] in and look at like my templated copy, and then I can use those templates to decide, all right, we're gonna plug and play copy into this format.

Or here's the, this in-app message and we use it for kind of these different use cases. And we have a very opinionated email design system and in-app system and uh, kind of layout for push notifications as well where, um, building that has taken off loads of work off of people's shoulders and having kind of repository and documentation of what content can be used, where is super beneficial.

So. I would look at like how to templatize things that are taking up a lot of your time. If it's copywriting, come up with a GPT that works for you. If it's email design builds, look at an email design system. If it's an approval process, implement something like Asana or Jira or Monday or any of those project management tools that will help you [00:45:00] loop in stakeholders and get approval quicker.

Um. It's kind of like audit what you have going on right now with, with your small team. Even if it's just you as an IC and someone above you. I'm sure there's ways that you might be dragging your feet that a new system could help streamline.

Yeah, I love that. That's, that's so true. And, um, and I think, you know, templatizing things does take time and it takes time and, you know, kind of forces you to stop and, um, take a moment and look at what, um, what you can templatize and what is taking up so much of your time.

But, um, it's, it's so worth it and I, I wholeheartedly agree.

Yeah, I do too, especially. Finding unique ways to use tools like AI or chatt, bt, or, you know, anything else that's gonna help you do that. Um, this one from [00:46:00] Carolyn, Caroline, sorry if I pronounce that wrong, I think is a good one because I. B2B, we have long sale cycles, long nurture cycles.

So what advice do you have for B2B marketers? Um, Caroline, Carolyn has a typical sales cycle of three to five years. And like how do you gauge success over that amount of time?

That's a, that's a really great question. I, I haven't been meaty one, that's a meaty one question. Um, I haven't been on a, um, I haven't been on a marketing team when, you know, the sales cycle has been that long. But I would say, um. I would say talk to your salespeople and make sure you are understanding, um, in that three to five years, what is happening?

What are people needing? What kind of content are they needing? Are they needing education on your product? Are they needing, [00:47:00] um. You know, support in, in any other way? Are they needing avenues to talk to someone? I think really just, um, talking with the rest of your team and I guess understanding exactly what's going through your audience's head, um, you know, throughout those, throughout those three to five years, which could be a lot of things.

But, um, yeah, that's how I, I think I would approach that.

I. I send you so many good vibes, a three to five. Your long sales cycle is so long. Um, what things that have I done previously for really long sales cycles? I've never touched such a long sales cycle, so I'm kind of answering this blind. I've had.

Probably the longest has been maybe a year and a half or two years at max. Um, some things I've implemented have been like manager mode emails [00:48:00] that will be like, how, how can you get buy-in quicker using this like templated approach? Uh, things like prebuilt RFPs, building those out at scale for your audience to be able to be like.

Here's the legal side of it and here's how to convince, you know, your finance team and convince marketing and, um. Any kind of like scalable resources that you can potentially communicate with over that, that long span. And I think the other thing with these longer sales cycles, having a well-oiled content marketing arm is really important.

Um, something like a monthly newsletter where you can continue to stay top of mind as this like really important resource and knowledge hub, uh, is going to have. I think a far greater halo effect than any kind of like activation email or potential monetization piece. I think with a sales cycle that long, it's all about, um, just being a good resource and, and partner to them as [00:49:00] they're working through this with you.

Yeah, I, I would agree with that. I've worked, uh, one of my previous roles we had, I mean, our sales cycle was all over the place. It was, it could either be like four days or. Two to three years, um, depending on the needs. So it was really staying top of mind through like thought leadership and being helpful and providing resources and then being top of mind when they actually like did need our product, which it wasn't SaaS, it was a little bit different.

Um, but yeah, podcasts was a great one. Like having these like monthly, like webinars to get everyone together. Um, and just stay top of mind is, you know, depending on the audience. All right, cool. I think we have time for one more question, so let me go through and make sure I'm picking a good one. Anything we haven't touched on that you guys wanna talk about that is, you know, just top of mind in lifecycle for you?

Um,[00:50:00]

the only thing that I will like often. Preach is, I think for the first five years of my career in Lifecycle, I felt so pressured to hit certain benchmarks. Rates, open rates, primary click through rate on an in net message, secondary click through rate on an in net message. And the reality of what I really learned is benchmarks are not one size fits all.

And what I should have done in those kind of newer roles is gone in and developed like a benchmark matrix of my own on a per company basis to really understand, you know what? What data do we currently have? Where are we currently sitting? And of course if your marketing automation platform has like very niche industry benchmarks, lean on those.

But I find that sometimes blog articles, and I'm guilty of these 'cause I often write blog, blog articles myself, but blog articles are so broad and comparison is. [00:51:00] On a personal level, a, a thief of joy or whatever the saying is, but on a business level, it can really detract focus. So lean on your own benchmarks.

That would be like my one thing that I always try and preach when I'm talking about lifecycle marketing.

Yeah. About you, Charlotte. Yeah. Um, benchmark yourself. That's what Brennan said. Um, another t-shirt. I know we're getting a ton of, uh, swag today. Um, I, I love that idea. I love the idea of kind of like auditing, um, at any stage in your lifecycle, uh, in your lifecycle career.

Um. And I would say, you know, it's never too late to kind of map out the data, map out all of your touch points, and um, kind of take a look at all of your touch points with a, with a new lens and a clear [00:52:00] head. I think, you know, it's, um, it's always kind of exciting to. Take on a new lifecycle role and say like, okay, what can I do here?

What, um, what's, what are the gaps here? What's missing? But even if you've been somewhere for years, um, you know, it's, it's important to kind of, um, just. Just take a new fresh look at what you're already sending out and see how you can make it better. Um, 'cause I think, you know, a lot of the things that we do are like, quote unquote set it and forget it, but nothing ever is really, and um, it's just kind of a reminder to always be, um, optimizing, you know, the things that you already have and, um, finding new avenues, um, uh, you know, to fill gaps.

I think too, we've mentioned a lot today. Talk to your coworkers, understand what they are hearing from customers, understand what they are thinking, um, you know, the gaps are, [00:53:00] and um, you know, just kind of figure out if there are new things that you can do that maybe you haven't thought of. Because, um, I've definitely.

Um, I've definitely, you know, had the experience where I've worked somewhere for a few years and, and then, and I've thought, oh, I, I've thought of all of the, you know, lifecycle things I possibly can, but no, that is not true. It's never true.

This was. Great. I think we're just gonna end it there 'cause that was the perfect way to, to wrap up.

But we really appreciate all of your insights, Charlotte and Naomi, um, and you guys for showing up. We really appreciate all of your questions. Um, and yes, you'll get the recording of this in just a bit. Um, and yeah, go find Charlotte and Naomi on LinkedIn and follow them. Thanks for having us. This is so fun.

The audience

so engaged. I love it. I know, I know.

It feels like we're all just hanging out. I wish we could do that. Just [00:54:00] live. I know. Mm-hmm. Bye everyone. Thank you.

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