How do you feel when you acquire a new customer? Excited? Of course.
But before sealing the deal with the lead, you went through many stages. Perhaps you called, texted, and emailed the customer. These are tough, considering that you need to repeat the process to acquire more customers. And you’re not alone!
Customer acquisition isn’t easy for many marketers. Why? Because it requires many touchpoints which come under a lifecycle marketing strategy.
These strategies vary across every business, however, the goals remain the same – increase revenue, have more brand evangelists, and convert new leads.
While turning a lead to a customer is good, something is better – customer retention.
According to KPMG:
Customer retention drives 52% of a brand’s total revenue compared to 45% from customer acquisition.
Source: Superoffice.com
But despite the benefits of customer retention, statistics show it’s still a significant challenge for many businesses. Here are some:
- 61% of retail companies say their primary challenge is customer retention.
- 9% of businesses lose customers to the competition when they don’t take customer retention seriously.
- Customer retention loss has risen by 37% due to poor customer service since 2016.
- The customer retention challenge is a 75 billion dollar problem for industries around the U.S.
These are enormous challenges. But there’s a solution, which is, engaging your customers through lifecycle marketing software continually. Do you need to try all the customer lifecycle marketing software? No. We’ve reviewed the best.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- What lifecycle marketing software is
- The benefits of using a lifecycle marketing software
- How to choose the right customer lifecycle marketing software
- The features, pros and cons, and pricing of the 5 best customer lifecycle marketing software
Ready to dive in? Let’s explore the basics quickly.
What is Lifecycle Marketing Software?
Lifecycle marketing software is a tool that allows you to understand how customers interact with your business at different stages of the customer journey. This tool provides data-driven insights for reducing your churn rate and increasing your customer lifetime value.
What are the Benefits of Lifecycle Marketing Software?
Customer lifecycle marketing software tracks buyers’ habits, purchase history, post-purchase experience, and general engagement across multiple channels. Actionable measurement and reporting of these metrics guide you in creating detailed customer profiles.
These profiles help you segment and create targeted messaging for buyers.
By analyzing the attributes of customer segments, your CLM software drives your brand to execute marketing messages that:
- Attract leads
- Assist leads in the decision stage of the customer journey with personalized recommendations
- Convert leads to active customers through highly relevant engagement
- Retain customers for repeat business through post-sale support
- Retarget and win inactive customers
- Turn customers into brand advocates.
Also, CLM software integrates with other marketing tools and grants access to multiple users of customer-facing teams. This allows team members to deliver a consistent message irrespective of the customer’s communication channel (social media and customer service hotlines, and more).
How to Choose the Right Lifecycle Marketing Software
The best customer lifecycle software is one that addresses your business needs. When selecting a lifecycle marketing software, you need to consider:
- The nature and size of your business
- Specific integration, automation, or analytics features you need
- Ease of using the customer lifecycle software
- The reputation of the software provider
- Affordability of the marketing software
- Robustness of customer and sales process data you want to track
- Integration with SAP ERP systems, and so on.
But regardless of your business type, your preferred customer lifecycle software should provide these basic functionalities:
- Email automation and SMS marketing
- Easy of data gathering
- Customer segmentation
- Customer retention and reactivation tools
- In-depth analytics and split testing capabilities
- Quick and efficient customer support
Now you know how to select a customer lifecycle marketing software. So, let’s examine the best CLM software.
#1 Lifecycle marketing software: Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers you a suite of marketing automation, analytics, and segmentation tools. These tools help you create personalized buyer interactions across various channels — chat, socials, email, SMS, and ads.
Source: Salesforce.com
Marketing Cloud also allows businesses to integrate with several CRMs. This enables sales reps to see where their messages went in their sales pipeline quickly. Additionally, you can use this customer lifecycle software to upload offline data, automate Facebook ads, and manage content creation.
Key features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Customer 360
The core CRM platform — Customer 360 — integrates with Slack. It allows one-on-one engagement with a customer across multiple touchpoints of the business. This helps marketing, sales, and service teams to view and effectively manage customer journeys throughout the customer lifecycle.
Customer profiling
The Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) takes the guesswork out of personalization. It gives you access to the customer data you need to segment clients into common groups. This helps you engage better, nurture, and convert prospects at different stages of the buyer journey.
Automated CRM and Optimization
You can use Journey Builder on the Marketing Cloud to automate personalized event-triggered customer engagement, like exit-intent pop-ups. This customer lifecycle software also has an email and ad studio with many easy-to-personalize emails and ad templates.
Analytics and Reporting
Salesforce Marketing Cloud monitors business channels like social media. You get actionable reports on your campaign results, brand health, and customer experience through AI and machine learning analytics. It also tracks your KPIs, investments, and decisions on the same platform.
Supports Multiple Deployment Methods
You can deploy Marketing Cloud as a cloud-based SaaS solution or desktop software. This means you can access the Marketing Cloud from multiple platforms like smartphones, Linux, Windows, and macOS systems.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pricing
Marketing Cloud pricing is pretty high. Pricing starts at $400 for lifecycle marketing-related plans.
G2 average rating: 3.9/5.0 (3,665 Reviews)
Pros and Cons of Salesforce Marketing Cloud
| Pros | Cons |
| A suite of products to manage your entire customers’ lifecycle. | Has tricky UX issues and sometimes duplicates data. |
| Supports an extensive client database | Too pricey for a small business. |
| Easy onboarding, use, and training. | Not the best customer support, according to Trustpilot reviews |
Who is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Best Suited for?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is suitable for a wide range of B2B and B2C product and services companies, as well as nonprofits.
#2 Lifecycle marketing software: HubSpot
HubSpot is a complete marketing automation suite like Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It is a cloud-based CRM platform with sales, service, marketing, and content management software tools — called hubs.
Source: HubSpot.com
Although HubSpot focuses on inbound marketing, it qualifies as a lifecycle marketing software. Why? Because it collects, stores, and analyzes large amounts of client data on its CRM software. This customer lifecycle software also tracks and reports many performance metrics for marketing, sales, and customer relationship interactions.
Key features of HubSpot
Integrations
HubSpot has lots of popularity because it can seamlessly integrate with several third-party tools on the App Market. Some of its most popular integrations include Shopify, Stripe, Gmail, Outlook, Zoom, etc.
Customizable CRM
HubSpot provides a customized database for collecting and storing contacts, companies, deals, and tasks. You need this to achieve better segmentation. You can also automate this process on the database platform to enable profiling, merging contacts, and eliminating duplicate leads.
Dashboard and reporting
HubSpot allows you to build custom dashboards and reports. This allows your team to access all the analytics and reporting they need in a single canvas.
Email Marketing Automation
HubSpot’s email marketing automation allows you to deliver relevant messaging to your audience and boost your pipeline. This customer lifecycle software has lots of email templates that you can modify. Also, HubSpot uses a lead’s history and activity to configure the timing for distributing emails.
HubSpot Pricing
HubSpot subscription is in tiers for its entire suite and each hub. Regardless of the tier you need — free, starter, or enterprise — HubSpot isn’t as pricey as Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Paid plans start at $45/month. However, the price rises steeply to $800 and $3200 for 1,000 and 10,000 contacts, respectively.
G2 average rating: 4.3/5.0 (7,239 Reviews)
Pros and Cons of HubSpot CRM
| Pros | Cons |
| A large user community, excellent support, lots of training materials | Confusing pricing system with paid tiers |
| It has a user-friendly interface | Limited access to tools and features with a free account |
| Flexible pricing | The price for premium features hits the roof once your business starts growing |
| Access to a free plan | No customer support on the free plan |
Who is HubSpot Best Suited for?
HubSpot is suitable for sales, marketing, and customer support professionals across multiple levels — small and medium scale, corporate and large enterprises.
Related Blog: HubSpot Pros And Cons: A Candid Assessment In 2021
#3 Lifecycle marketing software: EngageBay
EngageBay is a cloud-based customer lifecycle software with great functionalities like HubSpot. The difference? It is the most affordable of all lifecycle marketing software.
This software has an army of product features that makes email marketing, CRM, help desk, lead generation, landing page creation, social media marketing, and marketing automation seem easy. That’s why one digital marketing manager said, “EngageBay – An Impossible dream – Realized…” Another called it – “Best Unknown Marketing Automation Platform.”
EngageBay allows you to collect and manage all of your customers’ data from one single dashboard. EngageBay also integrates with several marketing apps like BulkSMS, Zapier, WooCommerce, QuickBooks, Twilio, Exotel, Mandrill, Xero, Shopify, etc.
Key features of EngageBay
360 Degree Customer View
Engagebay gets you a complete view of your potential customers and their relationship with your brand at every touchpoint. This helps you to hand over the best quality leads to your sales team for maximum conversion.
Sales Automation Tools
Engagebay has lots of valuable sales automation tools you can use to track won and lost deals, add contacts, book appointments, score leads, and so on. The sales intelligence tool helps you track customer behavior like link clicks, opened emails, and more. The tools help you to build a complete sales funnel.
Streamlined Lists for Better Lead Close Rate
EngageBay has a “static list and smart list” feature. These lists separate your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities and common data points. Lists help you stay organized and target customers better.
The smart lists continuously refresh themselves with new contacts that match the list’s filter criteria and remove the contacts that no longer meet the criteria.
On the other hand, static lists are snapshots of contacts that meet specific filter criteria when the list was created. They do not refresh themselves.
Analytics and Reporting
Engagebay’s reporting module helps you customize and generate reports and analytics on sales figures in a meaningful way. You can also get reports on your best-performing marketing content. With this, you become aware of what’s working, improve it, and increase your revenue.
EngageBay Pricing
EngageBay is the most affordable customer lifecycle software without complex pricing. Pricing starts at $8.99 per user.
G2 average rating: 4.6/5.0 (113 Reviews)
Pros and Cons of EngageBay
| Pros | Cons |
| The free plan has almost all premium features | Limited email design templates |
| The most affordable customer lifecycle software | It requires a learning curve like every lifecycle software. But quick and patient online support makes this less of a chore |
| Free customer onboarding and $0 extra for additional technical support | The manual guides aren’t yet detailed |
| Highly-responsive support team | API integrations need some work |
Who is EngageBay Best Suited for?
EngageBay is suitable for small business owners and companies of all sizes – B2B, B2C, e-commerce, and enterprise brands.
#4 Lifecycle marketing software: Pega 7
Pega 7 is quite different from other CLM software on this list. It is a web-based automation platform that optimizes complex customer lifecycle journeys for enterprise-level users.
Data and project management apps powered by the Pegasystems software achieve BPM (business process management), CRM, Case-based Management (CBM), AI, and robotic process automation functionalities across multiple channels. Together, these features integrate to help you personalize customer experiences and deliver targeted messaging to your users.
Key features of Pega 7
Cross-team CRM
Apps designed for automating, segmenting, and personalizing customer relationships can integrate with the Pega Pulse solution to enable users to share client and business data across different locations and teams.
Low-code App-building Environment
Reusable models on Pega 7’s layered architecture allow you to build custom apps without in-depth coding knowledge.
Real-time Business Intelligence
You can access real-time data of current client interactions, last actions, and recommended activities to provide an engaging client experience. This is possible with the Pega 7 real-time intelligence platform. This platform uses adaptive analysis, predictive analysis, and many business rules to decide on the next best engagement strategy for every user.
CLM Optimization
Pega’s BPM and case-based management platforms help you automate tasks and workflow using RPA solutions to optimize customer lifecycle management. Automated access to data and customizable desktops improve business process implementation and customer interaction.
The software achieves this by visualizing customer data, establishing their position on the client lifecycle, and delivering targeted marketing messages.
Automated Engagement
The Pega 7 platform has chatbots and AI virtual assistants that manage your conversations on Facebook, email, SMS, and Alexa. These digital assistants improve the customer experience by providing what a customer wants, making client suggestions, and completing tasks.
Pega 7 Pricing
Pega 7 offers different editions of its platforms and bundles for specific solution areas. Editions have varying costs depending on the size of your business or solution areas you need to manage.
The Enterprise Starter pricing starts at $90 per feature. However, there’s a 30 day free trial period with minimal features, including the lack of access to premium features.
G2 average rating: 4.2/5.0 (216 Reviews)
Pros and Cons of Pega 7
| Pros | Cons |
| Mobile-friendly deployment and implementation | Poor integration with non-Pega-built apps |
| Customizable platform | No-code development is limited by how many pre-built models you can use in your project |
| Time-saving with no-code app development | Requires extra spending to deploy custom developments |
| Omnichannel client data collection | There’s a steep learning curve for non-developers |
Who is Pega 7 Best Suited for?
Enterprise CRM end-users and BPM app developers in IT, banking and Fintech, marketing, service, nonprofits, and more will find this as a helpful tool.
#5 Lifecycle marketing software: ChurnZero
ChurnZero is a cloud-based customer lifecycle software for boosting the customer fulfillment rate of subscription businesses. The software features valuable tools for reducing the rate of customer churn.
Also, it manages onboarding, reactivation, customer engagement, product usage tracking/analytics, segmentation, and more. Plus, it integrates with other tech tools like Salesforce, NetSuite, Intercom, HubSpot, and more.
Key features of ChurnZero
Customized Dashboard View
ChurnZero allows you to customize your dashboard and visualize the KPIs most relevant to you. This allows you to optimize your strategies after identifying what’s working and what’s not. Additionally, you can share the dashboard access with members of your customer-facing team. Hence, team members and executives can safely access and share valuable insights concerning your customer lifecycle marketing strategy.
Mobile Support
ChurnZero supports on-the-go access on mobile platforms via Android and iOS apps to manage customer service cases instantly as they appear on the customer profile. Plus, real-time alerts help you to view and attend to customer support needs.
Reporting
You can use ChurnZero to monitor customer health scores, get account insights and track other success metrics. Doing this allows you to stay on top of your churn rate reduction strategy. ChurnZero’s analytics engine collects and analyzes customer success indicators through interactions, uploaded data, and surveys. These actionable insights from these data ensure the personalization and automation of content and recommendations.
Customer Segmentation
ChurnZero breaks down your extensive client list into related segments based on customer journeys, preferences, and behavior. This feature allows you to effectively communicate important information to entire segments — instead of individual accounts — at once, without sacrificing personalization.
ChurnZero Pricing
ChurnZero has not provided a set price for this product, typical for some software service brands. They set up your business’s customer engagement and retention software based on what you need.
G2 average rating: 4.7/5.0 (509 Reviews)
Pros and Cons of ChurnZero
| Pros | Cons |
| Dedicated platform with a simplified user experience. | Email template builder is unavailable |
| Easy onboarding and training | There are no real-time Churnscore updates. Thus, you have limited ability to make immediate decisions on an account’s status |
| Excellent customer service and training support. | Notes and tasks must be account-specific. |
| Scalable product development to include updates based on user recommendations. | Limited user autonomy in managing custom fields. |
Who is ChurnZero Best Suited for?
ChurnZero is more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses running a subscription-based B2B model.
Wrapping Up
It is crucial to choose a suitable lifecycle marketing software because switching CLMs could be tiring. For instance, HubSpot doesn’t allow you to cancel your subscription early. Once you’re in a contract, you’re locked in. No cancellations. No refunds.
This is why you need to take your time to decide on a suitable lifecycle marketing software. However, you can’t examine any of the software on the sidelines. You have to purchase the product, use a free trial (if available) and decide on the one that works for you.
But again, some of the software has significant limitations with free trials. And sometimes, you get zero support on the free trial plans.
If you need an all-in-one marketing suite that doesn’t have these bottlenecks, then you should try EngageBay.
EngageBay allows you access to numerous premium features, even on a free trial. Plus, it is insanely affordable, and you have unlimited access to a quick and responsive support team.
30,000+ EngageBay customers couldn’t be wrong.
