Effective Lifecycle Email and SMS Automation

Lifecycle marketing in b2b is wildly different than b2c or d2c, and yet, a lot of us are running the same playbooks from, like, 2017 😪 - welcome emails - re-engagement nudges - the same quarterly newsletter that goes to everyone and their uncle It’s really easy to get stuck in onboarding sequences, deliverability, etc etc. But this is where a lot of b2b lifecycle strategies fall flat 🥹 Because most teams are just recycling old plays or betting on d2c tactics to work. I do really, truly believe that lifecycle can be one of your highest-leverage growth channels—if you’re open to trying new stuff 🥰 So here are some underused, unsexy, but pretty neat lifecycle plays I wish more b2b teams were running 👀 ⚡️Dynamic segments that update in real time (cuz static segments are cute until your “power users” haven’t logged in for 3 weeks lol) You can use product + CRM data to build segments that evolve with your customer’s behavior. - customers shift journeys automatically - messaging gets sharper - you stop sounding like a robot 😌 ⚡️Use AI to suggest content distribution opps For example, test how AI can serve the right resource or content to your segments based on things like behavior, ICP, and funnel stage. - your smb leads could get a “how we saved 50 hours” story - your mid-market prospects get a technical integration guide - everyone else gets to stop ignoring your emails 😘 ⚡️Predictive churn modeling based on behavior shifts Tbh churn doesn’t start when someone ghosts you—it typically starts when their habits change. Set up segmentation and alerts that notify you of inactivity or disengagement, as well as usage pattern changes, so you can trigger programs like guided, proactive check-ins. ⚡️Test micro-journeys for overlooked segments We all know by now that not every user fits the same criteria, let alone follows the same “path” we think they do. Think: single-feature users, quiet champions, finance approvers who never log in…you get the picture 😅 - so, why not build tiny journeys for those people? - why not test multi-threading? ⚡️Implement expansion offers that are tied to real behavior Think about target account research, dedicated upmarket programs, or tracking when users hit a limit or show friction. - these are actually low hanging fruit opps in b2b that most people in d2c turn into 💰 with the classic “abandoned cart” play While most folks are treating lifecycle as a rinse-and-repeat activity for email, some in-app tours, and a deep (almost dangerously obsessive) focus on deliverability… The smart teams are focusing on segmentation, systems, enablement, expansion, and ops. And it’s way more powerful when you treat it like a growth function—which means you’ve gotta experiment 🥰 #lifecyclemarketing #b2bmarketing #growthmarketing #retention #demandgen #lifecyclemarketingtips #lifecycle #lifecyclestrategy

Lifecycle context is everything. When I opened this trial-ending email, my first thought was: “Wait, is this part of a sequence?” Because if this is the only reminder I’m getting, it’s underpowered. Lifecycle isn’t a one-shot deal—it’s a conversation. Here’s what’s missing—and what a high-performing lifecycle email should include: ❌ No customer success recap ✅ Show me what I’ve accomplished. "You created 4 boards, invited 3 teammates, and completed 12 tasks." → That’s how you show tangible progress. That’s value in motion. ❌ No soft downgrade or flexible options ✅ There should have been an “Extend your trial”,“Get personalized plan advice”, or “Need help choosing?” These options lower friction and keep me in the product. → Good bones, but where’s the retention strategy? Give me a reason to stay.. The subject line: “Your trial ends tomorrow.” ❌ A missed personalization opportunity. ✅Even a simple “Roshni, your trial ends tomorrow” hits harder. → In a world of goldfish attention spans, say my name so I flip my hair, turn around, and see what you got! Pro Tip: ❌No usage-driven plan recommendation was found in the email ✅ If I used automation and team collaboration, tell me. What exact features will I lose? What magic will vanish? Suggest the plan that fits. Don’t make me figure it out. → Add more conversion clarity. Be specific. Say something… Then I go, maybe they said something in the email before this, I scour open the email to expect asks and reminders like: 1. Your trial ends in two days… 2. Do you need more support? 3. Checking in - Do you have different requirements? But I found a “One more week to go! ⌛” email that was sent 6 days before this one. → If retention is the goal, this email needs to do more than inform—it needs to guide. This is the moment to reaffirm value, personalize the experience, and offer flexible next steps. Coming back…Here’s the CTA: ❌ “Choose a plan”. It’s a decision-heavy ask. Instead: ✅“Compare plans” ✅“Extend your trial” ✅“Book a 15-min call to find your fit” can open a path forward instead of slumping your free trial conversion rate. A high-performing trial-end email would ideally include: → A recap of key milestones: What the user has done during the trial, with palpable metrics and proof of progress. → Tailored plan suggestions based on usage data: “Since you used automation features and team collaboration tools, the Basic plan might be perfect for you.” → A low-friction CTA: not just “Choose a plan” but options like “Get personalized plan advice”, or “Chat with our product expert” can lower the decision barrier. This makes the value jump off the screen. Trial-ending emails shouldn’t be a door closing—they should be a path forward. Personalize it, prove value, and make the next step feel like a win, not a wall. I’m on the hunt for great lifecycle emails...got a favorite? Share it below. #saasemailmarketing #lifecyclemarketing #onboardingemails #productmarketing

I've been building CRM and lifecycle strategies for enterprise brands for 10+ years. These lessons cost me years to learn. You can absorb them in 4 minutes. 1. Welcome sequences make or break customer relationships: The first 14 days post-signup determine 70% of lifetime value. Most brands waste this window. 2. Lifecycle stages matter more than customer demographics: A new subscriber behaves differently than a repeat buyer, regardless of their age or location. 3. Win-back campaigns work better than acquisition: It's 5x cheaper to reactivate a lapsed customer than acquire a new one, yet most budgets favor acquisition. 4. Email fatigue comes from irrelevance, not frequency: Highly engaged subscribers will read daily emails if they're valuable. Irrelevant weekly emails get ignored. 5. Behavioral scoring beats demographic profiling: What customers do predicts what they'll buy next better than who they are. 6. Cross-channel consistency amplifies every touchpoint: When email, push notifications, and in-app messages align, conversion rates increase by 250%. I've realised that companies with the highest customer lifetime value don't send the prettiest emails. They send the most strategically timed, behaviorally relevant messages. What would you add to this list? ♻️ Repost if you believe lifecycle marketing drives real results. 👋 PS. I'm Anna. I'm the founder of SCHMACK and we help brands get more customers, that spend more and stay longer.

The client didn’t believe in email. 30 days later, 19% of revenue came from flows. Not campaigns. Not SMS. Just flows. They said: “People don’t really read emails anymore.” I said: “They don’t read boring ones.” So we did the boring work first: ✅ Fixed the Welcome flow (too slow, no personality) ✅ Built a real Post-Purchase experience (not just “Thanks for buying”) ✅ Set up Browse Abandon + Cart Abandon with actual reasons to return (not just discounts) No crazy segmentation. No AI-powered subject line nonsense. Just lifecycle marketing that respects the customer journey. And now? AOV is up. Refund rate is down. And they check Klaviyo every morning like it’s stocks. Lifecycle marketing isn’t flashy. But it compounds faster than most “viral” channels. Give it 30 days. Build it like you mean it.

Some say email tree, but I prefer customer experience blueprints. 😊 No matter what you call them, data-driven email nurturing workflows that are based on lifecycle stage, buyer intent signals, and content engagement are a sales enablement engine—and more so, they act as a strategic lever for aligning marketing and sales to accelerate revenue outcomes. So why don't more teams prioritize them? While workflows are less visible and not as flashy, viewing workflows as living GTM assets offers a framework for operationalizing personalization at scale—something most marketers want but few actually execute well. Here are some hard truths about nurture workflows: - Most marketers know they should personalize—but execution is the tricky part. Start by auditing your user journey and mapping your segmentations, trigger logic, and dynamic content. I like the whiteboard feature in Canva or a tool like Miro for this.  - Integration is everything. Marketing can build the journey, but Sales still drives the close. Full CRM sync powers pipeline velocity, accountability, and better conversion. Sales can’t act on signals they can’t see. - Quarterly performance reviews and workflow audits are non-negotiable. Treat nurture like any other campaign: optimize regularly based on buyer behavior shifts, sales feedback, and funnel performance. What worked last quarter won’t always work next. - And let's face it, personalization at scale is HARD to do. Even the best intentions won't go far without clean data, sharp segmentation, integrated systems, and—the most overlooked—time. Are you feeling guilty because you haven't optimized your workflows yet in 2025? At least you have them. Over 65% of B2B marketers don't even have established lead-nurturing programs, which supports why 80% of marketing leads don't actually convert to sales. (gulp) But fret not, B2B marketers that implement marketing automation have reported increased sales pipelines by as much as 10%! (phew) Whether you're just getting started or ready to review, use this as your call to action to optimize opportunities you may be overlooking. Even the best-run teams can benefit from quarterly workflow audits, behavioral trigger improvements, or segmentation refreshes. If you want more, these topics were featured in Brianna Miller's article for MarTech, "How data-driven email nurturing transforms the B2B sales funnel". I really like this article because it bridges theory to execution and reminds us that nurturing your customers isn't a one-and-done, it's a mindset. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gGqn2j8v #B2BMarketing #LIPostingDayApril #EmailMarketing

Clay use-case no one is talking about... AI Lifecycle Marketing So currently lifecycle marketing works as followed: - Users reach certain product milestones. - Those trigger sequences in software like ActiveCampaign or Customer.io. Great. This is always going to be around. But AI opens up a new way of doing this. What if you could use: - Every in-app action a user takes. - Answers from onboarding surveys. - Conversations from support chats. - Deep research done on the person + company. - Content consumption history before signing up. To create 1:1 personalized lifecycle emails. Which gives users product assistance, based on what they actually want/need. We just made it happen. Here's how: 1️⃣ Create CRM list for relevant user segments. 2️⃣ Auto-import that list into Clay. 3️⃣ Map all relevant properties as columns (e.g. Mixpanel/Amplitude data, Intercom history) 4️⃣ Enrich missing gaps in data. 5️⃣ Conduct AI research with Perplexity. 6️⃣ Feed all of this into a mega-prompt that contextualizes each input and has product docs uploaded into memory. 7️⃣ Send outputs to marketing automation tool, or to n8n/Zapier to send directly through Gmail. The hardest part of this was the prompt; One of the most difficult I've ever created. Claude Opus best handled the complexity - the outputs are seriously impressive. PHASE 1: These are going through Slack for an approval process. PHASE 2: Once everything is 100% refined they will be sent automatically. Game-changer.

lifecycle marketers are sitting on ai goldmines you have more data than any other marketer. you're barely using it. what most lifecycle teams do with ai: 📩 generate welcome email copy 🔔 write push notification variants 🖋️ create "personalized" subject lines what you should be doing: 📊 predictive scoring: ai analyzes user behavior to predict who's about to churn, upgrade, or go dormant before it happens ↪️ dynamic journey optimization: ai adjusts email timing, channel mix, and messaging based on individual engagement patterns 🕸️ behavioral trigger automation: ai identifies micro-moments that indicate intent and fires campaigns instantly 💭 cohort intelligence: ai finds patterns in your retention data you'd never spot manually - like users who upgrade after getting exactly 3 onboarding emails content fatigue detection: ai knows when someone's getting too many emails before they hit unsubscribe the workflow changes: instead of building static drip campaigns, you're building adaptive journeys that evolve. instead of batch-and-blast scheduling, you're sending at optimal individual moments. instead of guessing why people churned, you're preventing churn before it starts. the lifecycle marketers crushing it aren't just automating tasks. they're automating insights. while you're manually analyzing cohorts, they're getting predictive health scores. while you're a/b testing subject lines, they're testing entire journey architectures. your data advantage only matters if you use it. what's one lifecycle decision you're making with gut instead of data? if you want to know more about how you can automate your segmentation + strategy + execution, drop a comment and i'll reach out! Santhosh T Pavan M Gowda can help you set up Hooly!

Your email & SMS are giving each other the SILENT TREATMENT… And it’s costing you PILES of money. Just audited a brand that should have been crushing it with email & SMS. 📩 Email list? Growing. 📲 SMS list? Decent size. 💸 Revenue? Flat. Something wasn’t adding up… So we took a closer look… and what did we find? Email & SMS were completely ignoring each other! No coordination. No synergy. No strategy. (Like two coworkers who refuse to make eye contact at the office Christmas party.) Customers would get an email… and then an SMS saying something completely different. Worse? They were firing off texts and emails at random, sometimes hitting customers with both at the same time. (No wonder engagement was tanking.) Meanwhile, the brands actually winning with email & SMS? They run both channels like a well-oiled machine. Here’s how they do it: 1️⃣ Email & SMS work together, not separately. SMS teases upcoming emails. Email grows the SMS list. Both work together to drive conversions without spamming people to death. 2️⃣ One customer = One journey. Shared data profiles. Behavior-based triggers. Messages personalized to customer actions, not guesswork. 3️⃣ SMS = Speed. Email = Depth. SMS → Quick action (flash sales, abandoned carts, reminders). Email → Storytelling, education, and repeat purchases. BOTH → A consistent brand experience. 4️⃣ Right message. Right time. Right channel. Staggered sends (because bombarding customers = 🚫). SMS hits urgency & impulse buys. Email warms them up and nurtures long-term relationships. 5️⃣ Track, test, tweak. If you’re not tracking engagement in one place, you’re flying blind. Cross-channel tracking = more data, smarter decisions, better results. Smart brands optimize based on real customer behavior. Right now you have two choices… You can keep running email & SMS separately. 📩 Sending random emails. 📲 Firing off disconnected texts. 💸 Watching revenue slip through the cracks. Or… you can fix it. ✅ Make email & SMS work as one, like they should. ✅ Use each for what it does best (urgency vs. depth). ✅ Use both strategically, without overwhelming your customers. ❌ No more disconnected messages. ❌ No more lazy mass blasts that confuse (or annoy) customers. ❌ No more easy money slipping through the cracks. When done right? 🚀 You recover more abandoned carts. 🚀 Customers come back and keep buying. 🚀 Better engagement (without annoying your list). Look, this isn’t rocket science. If your email & SMS aren’t in sync, you’re leaving serious money on the table. Get your email & SMS talking… and watch the magic happen.

Want to do more with less effort? Harness the power of email automation to streamline your marketing efforts and drive results. From welcoming new subscribers to nurturing leads, email automation allows you to: ✅ Save time by setting up workflows that run on autopilot. ✅ Boost engagement with personalized, timely content. ✅ Convert more leads with consistent, relevant messaging. My 3-step process for making your life easier with automation. 1️⃣ Identify the Right Workflows for Your Business Think about the repetitive tasks you perform manually and how automation can take them off your plate. Start with the essentials: • Welcome Emails: Greet new subscribers with a warm, branded message that sets the tone. • Lead Nurturing: Send tailored content that moves leads closer to conversion. • Abandoned Cart Reminders: Recover potential revenue with timely follow-ups. • Re-engagement Campaigns: Revive dormant contacts with enticing offers or updates. • Choosing the right workflows ensures your automation strategy aligns with your goals and audience needs. 2️⃣ Segment Your Audience for Laser-Focused Targeting Not all subscribers are the same, so why treat them that way? By segmenting your audience, you can deliver content that feels personalized and relevant. • Segment by behavior (e.g., website visits, email clicks). • Segment by demographics (e.g., location, job role). • Segment by stage in the buyer’s journey (e.g., new leads vs. loyal customers). When you speak directly to each group’s interests and pain points, you’ll see better engagement and conversions. 3️⃣ Track and Optimize Your Automation Efforts for Maximum ROI Automation isn’t “set it and forget it” - it’s an evolving process that requires constant fine-tuning. • Monitor key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. • Run A/B tests on subject lines, content, and timing to find what resonates most. • Use data to identify gaps and opportunities, then refine your workflows to deliver even better results. • Tracking and optimizing ensures you’re not just automating but automating effectively to drive measurable impact. Don’t let manual tasks slow you down. Automation is your key to scaling smarter, not harder. How are you using email automation to grow your business?