5 email lifecycle programs you need — and one to drop

Email is the backbone of lifecycle marketing. Learn the five programs that build trust and retention, plus one that doesn’t make the cut.

Email is often the first channel lifecycle marketers jump headfirst into when nurturing and retaining customers. It makes perfect sense. Through well-thought-out, perfectly timed and relevant emails, you can quickly build trust and nurture a relationship with your customers. 

Where do you start? There are so many moments in a customer’s lifecycle that seem to demand a touchpoint. But trying to cover every single moment is not a smart move, especially if you’re starting from zero. 

Below are five email lifecycle programs you need and should be in your starter list — followed by one you should say a fond farewell to. 

1. Welcome and onboarding emails

The most crucial email lifecycle program is welcome and onboarding. Something motivates the customer to sign up, but once they do, you need them to remember you after they close the browser window. 

Ecommerce welcome emails average a 58.26% click-to-conversion rate, with one in two clickers making a purchase — the highest among automated emails, per Omnisend.

A good welcome email should:

• Keep it brief: Avoid a long backstory of the brand or business — save that for another email. Instead, give a quick reminder of who you are, what you do and why the customer signed up, then let them be on their way.
• Ensure your brand is front and center: It can be tempting to send a more personal-feeling email to lean into human-style marketing. But this early in the relationship, it’s more important to make your brand stick in the customer’s mind. They should be able to connect the web or app sign-up back to the email in their inbox.
• Give the customer an action: Capitalize on the interest and high engagement of a welcome email by prompting them to take the next step — whether that’s reading or watching content, following your brand on social media, or moving forward with a trial. Whatever action you choose, it should align with your overarching KPIs.

Consider following up the welcome email with an onboarding series that paints a fuller picture of your brand. The best onboarding programs focus on education, not sales. Think of it like meeting someone new. If, an hour after introductions, they immediately tried to sell you something, you’d walk away. The same goes for onboarding new customers.

Onboarding series can vary in length and cadence. In many SaaS products, for example, customers often start with a seven-day trial. In that case, aim to send your onboarding emails within the first five or six days so they can get the most out of the trial.

One warning: Avoid callbacks — don’t assume customers saw earlier emails. Each email should stand alone.

2. Abandoned cart emails

You won’t capture every sign-up. That means your welcome and onboarding series won’t even reach customers who get halfway through the process and then bail — usually because they’re distracted by one of the million other tabs they have open.

For those customers, use an abandoned cart email to remind them of your brand in their inbox.

A strong cart-abandon email should:

• Get timing right — and test it. In some cases, an immediately triggered cart-abandon email works best. In others, sending a few hours or even a day later is more effective. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask when the nudge would feel most natural. But don’t wait too long — they may not remember the action they almost took.
• Give them one clear call to action: Too many abandoned cart emails overwhelm customers with options. Your goal is simple: get the customer to complete their purchase or sign up. Don’t distract them with social channels or unrelated offers.
• Share what was abandoned: Remind the customer of the items they left behind. Were they partway through signing up for your service or purchasing a product? Include it in the email.
• Be clear on why the email was sent: Abandoned cart emails are legal in the U.S. and Europe, provided they comply with regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and the GDPR in Europe. This means clearly stating the email is an advertisement, including an unsubscribe link and a physical mailing address. 

You may have seen abandoned cart programs that use multiple emails. This tactic can work, but the risk is sending to people who are not interested, which can damage your sender reputation and your ability to use the email channel at all.

3. Re-engagement programs

If you run a newsletter or rely on email to communicate and regularly promote to your customers, eventually some of your list will be unengaged. This isn’t because you’ve done something wrong. It’s just the circle of life that is email marketing.

However, having inactive contacts on your list is the start of an unfortunate story for your email program’s overall health. They won’t engage with your emails, dragging down overall performance. 

Inbox service providers often rely on engagement to determine whether a brand is sending high-quality email. As your engagement plummets, so does your reputation with inbox providers, which could lead them to decide to deliver your emails to the spam folder instead. 

A re-engagement program is crucial for maintaining a healthy email program, allowing you to continue relying on your most effective marketing channel — email. 

An effective re-engagement program should:

• Send smartly: Take stock of your cadence. If you send a weekly newsletter, 30 days of inactivity may be a good signal to re-engage. Ninety days is the cutoff I suggest. 
• Give people one action: These contacts are already unengaged. Avoid overcomplicating the email with multiple options. Offer a simple, one-click option for those who want to stay on your list. 
• Automate it: Re-engagement should not be sent manually. Automate the program and review its performance quarterly.

Be prepared for people to disappear from your list. While volume may decrease, email engagement — and email list health — will improve. 

4. Win-back programs

A winback program differs from a re-engagement program in one crucial way: winback programs are designed for customers who’ve gone quiet or not made a purchase. They’re your lapsed customers. 

Retaining and winning back existing customers is often easier and less expensive than trying to acquire new ones. They already know who you are, the products/services you offer, and trusted you enough in the first place to engage with you. 

Lean into FOMO and share what’s new or changed with your app, products or services since they last engaged with you. Then, provide them with a next step in the email. That could be restarting their plan or purchasing with a discount. 

5. Newsletters

This isn’t your quarterly or monthly newsletter sent to talk about your brand or business. This is a value-packed, informational, educational, thoughtful and engaging email program designed to keep your brand top of mind with your audience.

When you truly understand your audience — their pain points, challenges and how to connect with them on an emotional level — you can create newsletter content that builds trust and helps your brand be remembered. This is especially important in B2B, where buying cycles are long and involve many people. You can’t simply hammer your audience with promotional emails.

Another clear benefit of a newsletter is building an owned audience you can rely on. With the unpredictability of social media algorithms and SEO, a newsletter is a far more foolproof way to ensure you can speak directly to your audience.

One program to drop: Lead nurture programs

It’s a mistake to assume that a series of emails sent at a set cadence will move someone toward a purchase — especially in B2B, where sales cycles are long, complex and anything but linear.

Lead nurtures often focus on what the business wants to say rather than what the customer actually needs. And even if you set one up, how long should it run? Months? Years?

There’s a better tool for the job: your newsletter. Instead of forcing prospects through a rigid nurture flow, use a newsletter to build an ongoing relationship with people who have already raised their hand to hear from you. Done well, it delivers more value — and more trust — over the long term.

Just the start

These lifecycle programs are just the starting point and you may not need all of them. As you develop your lifecycle programs, document them thoroughly and test them continuously. In lifecycle marketing, it’s about the customers — and what’s in it for them. 

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