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

Summary

Podcast Title: B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt
Episode: Mastering Lifecycle Marketing: Real-World Tactics from Leading B2B Teams
Release Date: June 9, 2025

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Introduction to the Live Session

At the outset of the episode, Charlotte Hardin enthusiastically welcomes participants to the live session, highlighting the interactive nature of the webinar. She introduces the two esteemed guests:

• Charlotte Hardin, Marketing Operations and Lifecycle Manager at Rebuyengine
• Naomi West, Senior Product Manager at Customer.io

Timestamp: [00:00 - 03:20]

Defining Lifecycle Marketing

The discussion kicks off with both Charlotte and Naomi sharing their definitions and perspectives on lifecycle marketing.

• Brendan emphasizes the foundational role of email in lifecycle marketing, stating, “Lifecycle marketing is just this phenomenal way to build relationships with various audiences” (04:00).
• Naomi echoes this sentiment, adding, “Setting up the right touch points for your customers at the right time” (27:18).

Changing Perspectives on Lifecycle Marketing

Both marketers discuss beliefs they've re-evaluated over the past year regarding lifecycle marketing.

• Brendan shares his shift from valuing elaborate email designs to appreciating simpler, text-based approaches: “Let’s simplify the amount of hoops that this email or channel needs to go through in order to become live” (08:01).
• Charlotte adds her own experience with email design constraints, noting the necessity of sometimes opting for plain text for better engagement: “We go with text and plain font and this is what we’re doing” (08:24).
• Naomi highlights the effectiveness of plain text emails in fostering a more personal connection: “Plain text feels more personal and might drive more engagement” (08:55).

Experimentation and AB Testing

The panel delves into the importance of experimentation within lifecycle marketing.

• Naomi stresses the balance between speed and experimentation: “You have to strike a balance between launching quickly and optimizing through testing” (10:13).
• Brendan outlines his approach to AB testing, categorizing lifecycle marketing into three pillars: activation, monetization, and retention. He explains how testing within these silos can yield insights beneficial across the organization: “What gaps currently exist in the customer life cycle and what ways can I implement tests” (11:54).

Notable Quote:
“Benchmarks are not one size fits all. Lean on your own benchmarks” – Brendan (48:11)

Day in the Life of a Lifecycle Marketer

Responding to audience questions, the panel shares insights into their daily responsibilities.

• Naomi mentions that a significant portion of her time is dedicated to marketing operations and reporting on lifecycle campaigns: “Taking all of the data available and parsing it out for lifecycle campaigns takes up a ton of my time” (16:15).
• Brendan describes his day as varied, including brainstorming sessions, writing campaigns, and leveraging AI tools for tasks like HTML troubleshooting: “Some days I'm spent on calls just talking through new initiatives” (17:04).

Strategic Asset Creation for Lifecycle Marketing

The conversation shifts to creating and managing marketing assets, especially when resources are limited.

• Naomi emphasizes aligning lifecycle campaigns with company goals: “Understanding what data you have and what data you’re able to get is essential” (21:57).
• Brendan recommends templatizing processes to save time, such as having a well-oiled email design system and using project management tools for approvals: “Having a repository and documentation of what content can be used where is super beneficial” (43:07).

Engaging B2B Users

The panel discusses strategies to maintain engagement with B2B audiences post-welcome sequence.

• Brendan advocates for behavior-based touchpoints, such as congratulatory milestone emails: “Look at behavior and try to convince people that have monetized to refer and share with their network” (35:15).
• Naomi adds the importance of newsletters and reinforcing key messages to keep the audience engaged: “Reusing a lot of the same stuff in a different way is also going to be really helpful” (38:08).

Notable Example:
Charlotte shares a personal anecdote about receiving a delightful surprise from a B2C company, illustrating the impact of unexpected positive reinforcement: “They sent a cute little waffle dog toy. It was such a delightful moment” (39:10).

KPIs and Metrics for Lifecycle Marketing

Addressing newcomers, Julia asks about fundamental KPIs for lifecycle marketing.

• Naomi suggests starting with basic metrics like open rates and click-through rates, and developing a simple attribution model to understand the correlation between marketing campaigns and conversions: “Open rate and click-through rate are always going to be helpful” (21:57).
• Brendan emphasizes creating company-specific benchmarks instead of relying on broad industry standards: “Benchmarking yourself is essential” (48:11).

Keeping Users Engaged Over Long Sales Cycles

For companies with extended sales cycles, the panel offers tailored advice.

• Naomi recommends collaborating closely with sales teams to understand client needs over time: “Talk to your salespeople and make sure you are understanding what’s happening and what are people needing” (43:55).
• Brendan suggests maintaining consistent communication through resources like monthly newsletters to stay top-of-mind: “With a sales cycle that long, it’s all about being a good resource and partner” (44:42).

Best Practices and Key Takeaways

Wrapping up, the speakers share final thoughts on optimizing lifecycle marketing efforts.

• Brendan urges marketers to develop their own benchmarks and focus on data specific to their organizations: “Lean on your own benchmarks” (48:11).
• Charlotte emphasizes the continuous need to audit and optimize lifecycle campaigns: “Always be optimizing the things that you already have” (49:54).

Final Remark:
Naomi encourages marketers to maintain a fresh perspective on lifecycle marketing, regardless of experience level: “It’s never too late to map out the data and take a new lens to your touch points” (49:54).

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Conclusion

This episode of B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt provides a comprehensive exploration of lifecycle marketing from seasoned professionals. Key insights include the pivotal role of email, the necessity of personalized and behavior-based communication, the importance of aligning marketing efforts with company goals, and the value of continuous optimization and benchmarking. Whether you're new to lifecycle marketing or looking to refine your strategies, Charlotte Hardin and Naomi West offer actionable tactics and thoughtful perspectives to elevate your B2B marketing initiatives.

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Notable Quotes:

• Brendan at [08:01]: “Let’s simplify the amount of hoops that this email or channel needs to go through in order to become live.”
• Naomi at [27:18]: “Setting up the right touch points for your customers at the right time.”
• Brendan at [48:11]: “Benchmarking yourself is essential.”

Note: Timestamps are approximate and correspond to the provided transcript sections.

Transcript

[Dave Gerhardt]

Email, in my humble opinion, is still the greatest marketing channel of all time. It's the only way you can truly own your audience today. But when it comes to building those emails, well, if you've ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know just how painful that can be. I won't name names, but templates get too rigid. Editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever when it shouldn't. That's why we love knack here at exit 5. Knack is a no code email platform that makes it easy to create on brand high performance forming emails without the bottlenecks. If you're frustrated by clunky email builders, you need nac. If you're tired of hoping the email you sent looks good across all devices, just test it in NAC first. And if you're a big team that's making it hard to collaborate and get approvals on your email, you definitely need nac. The best part, everything takes a fraction of the time. You can see Knack in [e-mail] exit5. That's knock.com exit5. Or just let them know you heard about Knack from exit5. That's us. You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

[Brendan]

Exit5.

[Dave Gerhardt]

1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Exit. Hello, everyone. We are live today. Yay. All right, who's here already? Let me know in the chat. I see Rosie, I see Moshe, 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. 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, Life Cycle. What are you excited to talk about today, Brendan? Let me know. I want to know. What do you know about? Want to know about Life Cycle? That'll be super fun. So run of the front of show, lay of the land. If you haven't done one of these live sessions with us yet, we have a super active chat. Obviously you can see already people are sharing their ideas, their opinions. We also have in that same place in the chat, we have this little Q and A feature. So we are going to have an awesome Q and A with our panelists who I'm going to introduce in just a second and make sure you add questions in there so that we can get to it during the Q and A Portion. We'll also, like, talk to you guys while you're in the chat and make sure it's super interactive. But, yeah, just a little housekeeping. And yes, this is being recorded. You will get the recording in your email as soon as we end. Actually, I think two hours after we end via email. 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 Hardin, who runs marketing ops and Lifecycle manager at Rebuyengine. 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.

[Brendan]

All right, we got.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Brennan'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 going to bring these two ladies on stage. One second. Add to stage. Add to stage. There we go. Hello.

[Naomi West]

How's it going?

[Charlotte Hardin]

Hey, everyone.

[Naomi West]

This is.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Thank you for joining us.

[Brendan]

Thanks for having us. I love seeing where everyone is from in the chat, and it's so rare to get a fellow BCer like myself. So cool to see some local presence.

[Charlotte Hardin]

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

[Naomi West]

Boston, yeah.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Just north of you, up in Salem in the witch city. Yeah, it's really cool. It's crazy how many people from, like, around the.

[Naomi West]

Wow.

[Brendan]

I know.

[Naomi West]

Awesome.

[Charlotte Hardin]

All right, so before we dig into our little questions, I'd love to just know, like, a little bit 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 want to kick us.

[Brendan]

Off and breathe email life cycle? 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 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 rich blend of imagery and text 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 them, becoming an advocate of Yours. So I just love it and I love that other people are starting to love it too.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I know, I'm very excited. What about you, Charlotte?

[Naomi West]

I similarly was amazed by email automation when I first started using it. But I have been in lifecycle slash marketing operations for about seven years and I've been at a few different tech companies doing email and just all things automation. So I, I really love getting to know like the company's data infrastructure and just being able to use that in all of the marketing touch points. I think it's really exciting and there's always, always more we can do as lifecycle marketers. So I think it's, it's always, you know, an exciting world to be in.

[Charlotte Hardin]

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? Pretty. I did good. Thanks so much. Satisfying. All right, cool. So we have some great little spicy questions to get into today. So the first one I want to 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 maybe email isn't kings anymore.

[Brendan]

Don't say that.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I know I am an email lover, so don't worry about that.

[Brendan]

I will agree. I do think sms. I went into it open minded and what I've 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 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 out of scope. But I think I've always looked at lifecycle marketing and specifically email marketing as this 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 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 entire workflow. So.

[Charlotte Hardin]

And something about email design and just like the 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. And half the time they're like, yeah, you can't do that in email. Like, you can't have this font and email because like this email provider is going to cut it off. And it was like, okay, we're going with text and plain font and this is what we're doing.

[Brendan]

Yeah, yeah, works great.

[Naomi West]

I totally agree that 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. 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 think that might even drive more engagement sometimes, which feels weird to say, but yeah, I agree with that one. Naomi.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah, I've definitely found plain text. Like, you have to use it in the correct context and not 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 want to come? And we get like, it feels like a personal message. And like, it is. I respond to people that, you know, come in, but it just, I feel like it gets more eyeballs. All right. Sean is part of the plain text gang.

[Brendan]

So is Anna.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah.

[Brendan]

Which is funny.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Cause I used to. I think we also, like took a lot of email from B2C, which is so highly designed and like beautiful, but whole different.

[Brendan]

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 me plain and I will probably perform better.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah, Plaintown. Maybe that should be another one of our T shirts. We've been testing out, like T shirt slogans. We are eventually going to open Exit 5 swag shop.

[Naomi West]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Brendan]

Love it.

[Naomi West]

I will order one for sure.

[Charlotte Hardin]

So let's talk a little bit about experimentation. Do you have like a framework for how you prioritize experiments and, you know, how do you just run your experiments throughout life cycle and what does that mean for you?

[Naomi West]

I can jump in on this one. So I think experimentation, oh my gosh, it is. In an ideal world, we will always be prioritizing a B testing and experimentation. And you know, I have been at companies where I literally couldn't launch a campaign unless it has been AB tested to prove the ROI of it. But I've also been at companies and I think probably a lot of us are in a situation where speed is a huge priority for launching lifecycle campaigns. 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 launch something quickly but also experiment and continue to optimize it. But I think in my experience it becomes really important to kind of educate your leaders of the importance of experimentation and testing. And yeah, I think the times that I have actually been able to test and really run some really good AB tests are when testing was a broader priority for the marketing team and, you know, even the company in general.

[Brendan]

Yeah. The way I look at 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 touch points that I'm sending, whether it be through email or in app or push or SMS or whatever new channel is around the corner.

[Charlotte Hardin]

WhatsApp, carrier pigeon.

[Brendan]

Yeah, I have no idea anymore. My touch points that I'm trying to send during that activation stage is 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 look at is this monetization stage where I'm like, okay, they get the value. What is it going to take for them to give us their money? And then the retention stage, there could be multiple other kind of like areas of focus, you know, 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 a B testing within kind of 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 certain FAQ ends up being what discovers that aha moment, taking that back to like the product team or the sales team, there's so many ways in which those learnings can apply to others within the organization. So I look at it as what gaps currently exist in the customer life cycle and what ways can I implement tests that will not only benefit me and my campaigns, but the rest of the organization? Of course, like in accordance with company goals.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah, we actually have a really good question in the Q and A that I'm just going to throw to you. It's from Marissa talking about AB testing. How do you AB test with a small audience? Every time I've ever tried AB testing with emails, my results come back as inconclusive. So how have you guys approached that in your roles?

[Brendan]

It depends on like the audience size in general. I try and not test with anything less than like a thousand individuals per variant. Otherwise just the sample size is too small and you're going to get just various measures that will not be scalable in any fashion. I think it's also really important to have a clear hypothesis that you're testing. Sometimes I'll be past an idea like let's just test the subject line. Does an emoji, a sunshine emoji lead to a higher click through rate? And I'm like, what are you going to do with that learning if we do have one, come back with statistical significance. Are you going to put a sunshine emoji in every single email moving forward? 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 going to get the learnings that you are looking for, which is just the reality.

[Naomi West]

Yeah, I definitely come across that in my own experience, especially not just with email, but also with AB testing like website pages, but same kind of thing. Sometimes your website 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 maybe wait until you can get a bigger audience because otherwise it might, you know, be kind of a time sucked to set up this a B test with your smaller audience and yeah, maybe focus on other things.

[Charlotte Hardin]

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, 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 is that even what made them click more on this link or so I think that that's a really good point about having that super strong hypothesis of, like, what do I actually want to tech check? Oh, I like this question from Anna in the chat. What is the number one thing, like a task you spend your day on as a life cycle marketer? So, like a little day in the life. Like, what do you. Where does most of your time go?

[Brendan]

Oh.

[Naomi West]

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

[Brendan]

It, like, totally depends. That's like, horrible answer. It's the answer no one wants. I'm like, it depends.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Marketer's favorite answer, though. It always depends.

[Brendan]

I hate it. Honestly, like, a lot of my day as a life cycle marketer, it depends. Some days I'm spent on calls just talking through, like, the new upcoming initiatives, like, why are we encouraging someone to, like, achieve this aha moment? Like, what is this conversion goal? What do we think the communication touch points 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 quite a lot over the past year. And there are so many use cases that streamline my work. Copywriting is never going to 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.

[Charlotte Hardin]

So what do you use AI for? I'm interested. We got a little question about that too, Charlotte, have you been using it?

[Naomi West]

I have, yeah. I am not on the never using AI for copy train, which I hate to say, but I think it really, really depends on your prompt. And if you're going to use AI for copy, your prompt has to be really fast, thorough and you have to really be explaining or you have to be really understanding what the goal of your email, whatever it is that you're writing is. So yeah, so I do use AI for copy, but with qualifiers. And I've also started to use AI for designing workflows, which I think can be really, really helpful, which I think is also kind of another time suck as a lifecycle marketer. But kind of mapping out workflows has been really helpful with some AI tools.

[Brendan]

So I use notion AI for kind of mapping out any page structures, which is so helpful. I can be like, you know, create an email format with a placeholder subject line, hero, body, CTA insert, like placeholder links 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? So page formatting I use quite a bit. I will use ChatGPT for any kind of like liquid troubleshooting. If I'm having difficulty with dynamic languages, 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. And then I am a big fan of Claude. Lately I've been like testing out ChatGPT versus Claude or Cloud. I have no idea. I, yeah, I'm not good at pronouncing.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I call him Claude.

[Brendan]

Yeah, yeah, that's what it is, my friend Claude. I will use 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. So I will always go and be like, how can I simplify this? Or make my arguments stronger. So editing is a good one.

[Naomi West]

Editing for sure. Something else I've recently started to use AI for is formulas. And this isn't really directly applicable to lifecycle marketing, but formulas for Excel or if I need to add a formula to a Salesforce report because I not quite sure how to do that. I'm not that well versed in Salesforce to create one. I think that has been super helpful and surprisingly has worked so well for me too.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I use it all the time for that kind of stuff, for formulas to try and find something. Like, even if I know it, I'm just like, this is just a lot of work and it'll help me get it right. I do use it for copy, but I have like a custom GPT setup that has about 20 pages of my writing as like a. An example to go off of. And then it has all the stuff about like Exit 5 and our brand and then the prompting. I edit it. Don't worry, I edit it. EM dashes are all mine, but it does help speed up a lot of things. I'm gonna head over to the Q and A 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. This one is really good from Julia. Pin it on screen. And so 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.

[Naomi West]

That's a great question. I think there are so many different things you can start with if Lifecycle is new to you, but I would start really, really basic. And I guess first of all, it probably depends what data you have and what data you're able to get, which is always, I think, a struggle to map out what's available and make sure it is accurate too. But you know, I think putting together a very. It's going to sound complicated when I say it, but a very simple attribution model to start with is going to be really, really helpful just to understand what if there's a correlation between the marketing campaigns you're putting out and conversion, I think that's going to be really helpful to just kind of show the influence of your marketing campaigns. But other than that, you know, there are some specific metrics that I think are always going to 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 and just kind of map out what you're looking for and your goals and try to set some data infrastructure up to, to get to that point. I think it's going to be really helpful for you down the line.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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[Naomi West]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Hardin]

What about you, Naomi?

[Brendan]

Definitely echoing that. The way I would start if I was approaching kind of lifecycle marketing net new at an organization is with 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 conversion and the behavior from receiving them. Same with in app and SMS and push. But find an engineer as your best friend, buddy up with a product manager as well and then yeah, do a mapping exercise. So for example, one of my past roles I worked as a lifecycle marketer at a company called Invoice to Go. They were an invoicing solution on the go and 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 want to 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 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 sucks. All in a day's work.

[Naomi West]

We can end there.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah. Webinar over. This is a good one. Maybe a little basic from Barb, but I think it's, it's, it's good. What is your quick definition of life cycle marketing? Just like how would you define it to someone? I feel like that's good for like internal marketing too of like 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.

[Brendan]

Lifecycle owned channel marketing such as email in 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 build relationships versus like social media or paid ads.

[Naomi West]

I would say setting up the right touch points for your customers or for your audience at the right time. End of statement. I love that webinar over done webinar. But I also something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of 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 to check a box for your own team or trying to be a part of a larger agenda, but actually making sure you know, this email is offering something that is actually going to help the audience I'm sending it to which I think makes your job so much more interesting and powerful and meaningful too. So I think that is also, you know, what kind of drives me to enjoy lifecycle marketing.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And sometimes we forget and all the, like, busyness of, like, you got to hit this goal and get this out and do this. And it's like, okay, take a step back. I want to hear some examples from you guys. And Amanda had this question, which I think is really great, is like, what life cycle initiative or journey have you found most impactful or been most proud of? So I'd love to hear from each of you, like, one thing you guys have done in life cycle that you're like, this goes in my portfolio, if you will.

[Brendan]

I love mirroring 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, 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 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 boring B2B world.

[Naomi West]

Respectfully, I love that. That was so e commerce with me. I love it.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Another T shirt candidate.

[Naomi West]

Yeah, right. I think I have at every single company I've worked 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 as a lifecycle marketer, especially if you're working on a smaller team. And maybe this is a new nurture or maybe you're revamping it, but this is always something that. 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 who have just signed up the same time that you are. So I think revamping what we call our welcome series is always surprising to me and how complex it is. And I think it has elements of creating kind of a more complex workflow and having some really concise but powerful language 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. So I Think that project at everywhere I've worked has always been kind of fun, I would almost say, but definitely exciting and definitely something I'll always put on my portfolio because it's just kind of. Those tend to be the projects that are more complex.

[Brendan]

I feel like with revamping welcome series and flows too, you're gonna see the most impact from doing that. Like it's the most visible uptake you'll. In terms of engagement and conversion. It's always worth it because by the time you get around to revamping it, it's probably been at least a year, if not way longer. So it's fun. I really love a welcome flow audit and update.

[Naomi West]

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

[Charlotte Hardin]

I love that on 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.

[Naomi West]

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. So from the beginning, connecting with any stakeholders and making sure they have a hand in what we're sending. And then two, I'm a very visual learner. So mapping out the flow and the audiences, which audiences are going to get which emails and which messaging from which teams I think is really, really important for me or else I will just get completely lost in it. Like I need to see which touch points are going to which people.

[Brendan]

I still can't believe that there is not like a solution in the market for life cycle automation mapping other than obviously my go tos are figjam or Miro and they're used to be this tool called plot with plot and then they shut it down which I months.

[Naomi West]

But that is 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, for emails and stuff. But I agree.

[Brendan]

Yeah, yeah, 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. We potentially changed the way in which someone has entered this flow. Like what verbiage and context do they have 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 drop off occurring? Are people meeting their goals kind of in different stages 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 want to learn or what's my hypothesis? Again, all boils down to testing what do I want to learn from changes that I might make to this again? And how can the rest of the organization benefit from my learnings? And that's how I approach audits.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I like that. So post welcome Flow, I'm going to ask a question now that Brendan actually had, what do you do to keep B2B users engaged? Obviously we've talked a little bit about B2C. You get those really pretty emails, they want you to buy more. VUE is practically breaking down the doors to my inbox right now. Do you do more automations like newsletters? What's your approach to that after the welcome sequence?

[Brendan]

Love like a behavior based touch point. So again, for example, at one of my past organizations, which was the this invoicing solution for businesses to use to collect money from their invoices, we had all of these posts 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 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 you're invoicing what are the most beneficial features that you're using and based on activity to try and get them to self discover other aspects of your business. So there's a million different ways that you can kind of try 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.

[Naomi West]

I totally agree there. I think behavior based flows are going to be really, really, really helpful. Especially those congratulatory milestone emails. Before I was in marketing, I worked in ABA therapy, which is all about positive reinforcement. So the more you can reinforce someone positively, I think the more engaged they are. But other than that, you know, we at rebuy, we have a newsletter that is really helpful for engaging the audience that might be less inclined to learn about the product, but really just kind of 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 the product usage will kind of come after that, or at least that's the hope. But there are so many different ways to continue to engage people after that welcome series. But I think also one thing that I always try to keep in mind 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 because we already said that stuff. So I think a lot of like reinforcement of some of the same information is, is also going to be really helpful because not everyone read it and even if they did, they probably skimmed over it. You know how we are when we read email. So. So you know, I think like reusing a lot of the same stuff and in a different way is, is also.

[Brendan]

Going to be helpful.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah, I, when I was a freelancer a couple of 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 submitted a couple of invoices and it was like this really celebratory email that was like, hey, like you've made ten grand so far since joining. And as like a new freelancer I was like, I have huge. Yeah, like congratulations, yeah, milestone. And that like it does 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.

[Brendan]

Sometimes it's so beneficial to remove yourself from. 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. And it's such a nice. It's nice for you business.

[Naomi West]

Yeah.

[Brendan]

Feels good.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah. B to C is so good at this too. I think of, and I'll always remember this one is we ordered because 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 so excited because he was 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 going to love that. So it was such a good, like, delightful moment that I love too. But B2C world.

[Brendan]

Yes. Right.

[Naomi West]

So different. But that's a great example of it, though. They do it well.

[Charlotte Hardin]

They do it really well. All right, what other questions we got in here? I think. Oh, this one's a good one. So how do you strategically create assets to 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? Love to know a little bit more about that.

[Naomi West]

I can start. So in terms of the emails themselves, I do copywriting. I also have on my team, we also have a lot of people working in content. So for those kinds of assets, I have someone creating those, which is great. But I do the email copywriting myself. 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 how to create a lifecycle campaign that is working towards those goals is gonna be very helpful, especially because those might not align with what you had in mind for your life cycle campaigns. But I think making sure your lifecycle campaigns are meant to be working towards those same goals of your company is going to be really important. And then creating assets from there will kind of fall into place.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah.

[Brendan]

I think when your team is spread thin, categorizing where the most time is taken up is an important first step, but could be copywriting sure you have templates or you have GPTs. For me, I know someone in the chat kind of lost their mind when I said I didn't use ChatGPT for copy and I write it out myself and accused me of being behind. But it doesn't take a lot of my time and it's not something the team loses resources over. What's been really beneficial for my team is specifically having like a well oiled email design system where I can go in and look at like my templated copy and then I can use those templates to decide, all right, we're going to plug and play copy into this format or here's 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 kind of layout for push notifications as well where 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 loop in stakeholders and get approval quicker. 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.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I love that.

[Naomi West]

That's so true. And I think templatizing things does take time and it takes time and forces you to stop and take a moment and look at what you can templatize and what is taking up so much of your time. But it's so worth it. And I wholeheartedly agree.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I do too. Especially finding unique ways to use tools like AI or ChatGPT or anything else that's gonna help you do that. This one from Carolyn, Caroline. Sorry if I pronounce that wrong. I think is a good one because B2B we have long sales cycles, long nurture cycles. So what advice do you have for B2B marketers, Caroline? Carolyn has a typical sales cycle of three to five years. And like how do you gauge success over that amount of time?

[Naomi West]

That's a really Great question.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I mean have a meaty one.

[Brendan]

That's a meaty one. I know it's a meaty question.

[Naomi West]

I haven't been on a marketing team when the sales cycle has been that long. But I would say talk to your salespeople and make sure you are understanding 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 support in any other way? Are they needing avenues to talk to someone? I think really just talking with the rest of your team and I guess understanding exactly what's going through your audience's head throughout those three to five years, which could be a lot of things but yeah, that's how I think I would approach that.

[Brendan]

I send you so many good vibes. A three to five year long sales cycle is so long. 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. Some things I've implemented have been like manager mode emails that will be like how can you get buy in quicker using this templated approach. Things like pre built 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 your finance team and convince marketing and yeah, 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. Something like a monthly newsletter where you can continue to stay top of mind as this like really important resource and knowledge hub is going to have I think a far greater halo effect. Any kind of like activation email or potential monetization piece. I think with a sales cycle that long it's all about just being a good resource and partner to them as they're working through this with you.

[Naomi West]

I would agree with that.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I've worked 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 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. But yeah, podcast was a great one. Like having these like Monthly like webinars, to get everyone together and just stay top of mind, 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 want to talk about, that is just top of mind in life cycle for you.

[Brendan]

The only thing that I will like often preach is I think for the first five years of my career and life cycle, I felt so pressured to hit certain benchmarks. The clear rates, open rates, primary click through rate on an Internet message, secondary click through rate on an Internet 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 because I often write blog articles myself, but blog articles are so broad and comparison is, you know, on a personal level, 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 life cycle marketing.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah. What about you, Cheryl?

[Naomi West]

Yeah, benchmark yourself. That's what Brennan said.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Another T shirt.

[Naomi West]

I know we're getting a ton of swag today. I love that idea. I love the idea of kind of like auditing any stage in your life cycle, in your life cycle career. 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 take a look at all of your touch points with a new lens and a clear head. I think it's always kind of exciting to take on a new life cycle role and say, like, okay, what can I do here? What are the gaps here? What's missing? But even if you've been somewhere for years, it's important to kind of just take a new, fresh look at what you're already sending out and see how you can make it better. Because I think a lot of the things that we do are like, quote, unquote, set it and forget it, but nothing ever is really. And it's just kind of a reminder to always be optimizing the things that you already have. And finding new avenues 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 the gaps are, and just kind of figure out if there are new things that you can do that maybe you haven't thought of. Because I've definitely, you know, had the experience where I've worked somewhere for a few years and I've thought of all of the life cycle things I possibly can. But no, that is not true. It's never true.

[Charlotte Hardin]

This was great. I think we're just gonna end it there because that was the perfect way to. To wrap up. But we really appreciate all of your insights, Charlotte and Naomi and you guys for showing up. We really appreciate all of your questions. And yes, you'll get the recording of this in just a bit. And yeah, go find Charlotte and Naomi on LinkedIn and follow them. Great.

[Brendan]

Thanks for having us. This is so fun. Thank you, audience.

[Charlotte Hardin]

Yeah.

[Brendan]

So engaged. I love it.

[Charlotte Hardin]

I know. Feels like we're all just hanging out. I wish we could do that.

[Brendan]

Just live.

[Naomi West]

I know, right?

[Charlotte Hardin]

Hi, everyone.

[Naomi West]

Thank you.

[Charlotte Hardin]

You.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, Exit 5. Our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days. So you can go and check it out risk free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community. This episode is brought to you by Ztle. We're halfway through 2025 already, somehow. And one thing's clear. Events are back, baby. I'm all in on events. Here I am. Big events guy. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking, you name it. Everyone's leaning in. I felt this with our business at Exit 5. I talked to a lot of CMOs and marketing people and marketing leaders through Exit 5. Everyone wants something to do with events right now. And that's because events are human. We want to get out there and connect with real people. Events are a core part of our playbook. This year at Exit 5, we've hosted two virtual sessions each. There's in person stuff, but there's also virtual. We do these virtual sessions each month. One large virtual event, one in person meetup. And right now, already we're deep in the weeds planning our drive conference drive 2025, coming back to Vermont this September. And to do it all, we use Zuttle. Zuttle helps us run a smarter event strategy from driving registrations, managing invites, automating communications, reminders, analytics tracking. Their salesforce integration also makes it simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without pulling in ops. On top of that, the differentiator with ZTTL is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. It's all about the people. They always go above and beyond for us and that's how we've been able to keep the momentum going with 12 plus events already this year and more to come. If events are part of your marketing strategy like they are ours, check out Check out Zuttle Z U D D L. You can look at Zttle to see how companies like Zillow, Motive, Iterable and US Exit 5 are using Zttle, the top event platform for business events in 2025. Go to zuttle.com exit5 that's z u.com exit5 to learn more.