Systematic marketing automation in the customer lifecycle

Starting point:
ifolor is the market leader for home and leisure photo development products in Switzerland. Other markets are in Germany, Scandinavia and France. According to “carpathia” (digital commerce Switzerland 2022), the online company generates annual sales of CHF 100 million. Within 20 years, ifolor has built up one of the largest e-mail address bases in Switzerland. The e-mail channel remains the most important “owned channel” for generating sales in eCommerce. Thanks to transactional, behavioral and campaign data, customers can be identified along the customer lifecycle, segmented and addressed in a highly personalized way.

Problem definition and technology:
Since 2017, a team has been built with the goal of moving away from the classic regular newsletter that dominated ifolor’s communication and identifying triggers along the customer lifecycle that can be used for effective customer communication. If the company succeeds in picking up the customer in a situationally relevant and personalized way, a significant increase in sales should be achieved overall.

Selligent is used as the engagement platform, data hub and technology for the customer selections. Mayoris has been involved since the beginning as consultant, data analyst, campaign manager, template developer.

To the individual triggers and mails:

1. Welcome mails: After the consistent double opt-in, the NL subscriber is supplied with a welcome relay, which is intended to inspire him or her about the ifolor world and thus bind him or her to the brand from the outset. Only then is the recipient transferred to the stock of regular newsletter recipients. Three mailings contain 1) Inspiration, 2) Apps for creating photo book, 3) with interactive e-mail Obtain date of birth if not already available. Duration: 2 weeks
2. Birthday Mail: Classic birthday mail includes gift certificate.
3. Saved Projects Mail: A special type of shopping cart abandonment mail. 6 days before the expiration of the project saving, the customer is informed about the finalization in the web editor and the automatic deletion of the data and asked to close the project.
4. Reorder Reminder Mail: Duplicate copies can be reordered. The customer is reminded again 5 days before the deadline for the second order; the ordered products are dynamically imported.
5. Anniversary Mail: A variation of the Birthday mail. The loyalty discount is sent on the anniversary of the first order.
6. Recruit a friend: Thanks to forwarding to Friends & Family, new customers are to be acquired. The sending customer receives vouchers in case of success.
7. Retention mails: The trigger starts with the average order frequency of the customer. He is incentivized via three mailings within one month 1) above average, 2) in case of non-reaction a satisfaction survey is carried out, 3) afterwards a reminder for voucher redemption.
8. Churn Mail: It was discontinued due to lack of relevance.
9. Inactive Mails or Sunset Campaign: To avoid so-called spam traps (inactive traps to reduce spam, provided by mail providers), inactive customers (no order for 24 months, no e-mail clicks for 6 months) are written to for the last time and excluded from regular communication. The recipient will be informed more and more specifically by means of 3 e-mails that he will no longer receive any further benefits by e-mail from ifolor if he neither clicks nor orders.

Results, added value, and limitations:

• The trigger-based automations were systematically identified, created, optimized or dropped in the lifecycle (cf. churn).
• Mail variants must be tested regularly.
• Birthday and anniversary mails performed best; understandable, since the customer is at the most loyal stage in the lifecycle and has already built up a strong bond with ifolor.
• In the last 4 years, the CRM department’s result with the automated lifecycle mails was 7% of total web-based sales (last click allocation). Each year, improvements in the single-digit percentage range have been achieved. After the initialization of the automations, hardly any internal resources are required. The reporting of the cycles was organized internally in a dashboard so that all important KPIs are available at a glance.
• Selections and personalization work better with increasing transaction and CRM data, but also with a broad range of the provider.
• Depending on the Cycle (e.g. Welcome, Inactive), the recipients must be excluded from the rule communication so that the triggers are shown to their best advantage.