A breakdown of common marketing stacks for different business model types.
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1. Create an automated marketing workflow
You run a small DTC ecommerce company. You've been experimenting with marketing automation by using Customer IO to build email flows that sell on your behalf. At the same time, you've been testing PPC through Google Ads to drive traffic to your site.
Here's a look at a potential interaction with one of your customers:
Marketing action: You start by using Semrush to find a list of high-intent search keywords. Then you run Google Ads using those keywords.Customer action: A lead searches for a keyword, clicks on your ad, and arrives at your landing page.Marketing action: Your email-capture popup in Customer IO triggers when the lead scrolls halfway down your landing page.Customer action: The lead reads your content, scrolls, and signs up for your newsletter via the popup.Marketing action: You’ve set up a newsletter welcome email via Customer IO that goes out to all new subscribers. It's segmented by engagement, so when someone clicks on a link in the email, they get more content that’s relevant to that specific link two days later.Customer action: The lead gets the welcome email and clicks on a link in it. Two days later, they get an email about a blog post related to the link they clicked. They read the post.Marketing action: In parallel, you're running a retargeting campaign on Instagram (through FB Ads Manager) to people who've visited your site twice in the last seven days.Customer action: While scrolling on Instagram one night, the lead clicks the retargeting ad. They decide they are interested in buying. They add your product to their cart, but then fail to check out after getting distracted by a call from a friend.Marketing action: You’ve set up an abandoned-cart email in Customer IO. It emails people when they add items to their cart but don't complete their purchase.Customer action: Later that evening, the lead gets an email reminding them that your product is in their cart. They click through the email and buy the product.The best part about the above interaction? No one on your team has to lift a finger. The ads and emails are already built and can sell your product well into the future.
2. Optimize your onboarding flow
Imagine you run a startup that sells a Chrome extension. You acquire customers with ease, but a large percentage of users drop off during onboarding. Here's how you can solve the issue:
You set up Amplitude to determine the precise step where most users fall off. You discover that most drop off on an information-capture page.Next, you use Hotjar heatmaps and screen recordings to identify the reason for the drop-off. You notice that users start filling out the form, but they bounce before completing it.You hypothesize that you would have a higher onboarding rate if users did not have to fill out so many data fields, so you shorten the form.The bottleneck is fixed, but you decide that you can improve your onboarding conversion rate even further.You use Optimizely to test improvements at each step of your onboarding process. You run A/B tests to see if adjustments to copy, CTAs, and visuals improve completion rates.The result is a significant boost in onboarding completion, which translates to a lower acquisition cost.
3. Grow your top of funnel through a giveaway
You're the head of growth at a DTC brand. Product giveaways are a proven channel for you, so you run them frequently. For the first time, you're putting ad dollars behind the giveaway.
You create a custom "giveaway" landing page using Unbounce.You use Buffer to schedule an organic social media post that highlights your giveaway and link to the landing page in your Instagram bio.Once the post is live, you run Instagram ads (through your FB Ads Manager) using a lookalike audience of your existing customers. The CTA on the ad brings people to your giveaway landing page.The ads, combined with the giveaway, help you capture the emails of best-fit customers at a lower cost per email than you would have without the giveaway campaign.As you capture emails through Instagram, they are automatically added to a segmented flow in Iterable, which moves them down funnel toward a purchase.