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How did you get into lifecycle marketing?
My entire career up until this point has been on the data side of Martech around the data warehousing and analytics ecosystem. I joined Hightouch 4 years ago as the founding marketer. Prior to that, I was working for a small SI focused on data warehouse migrations. Anyway… I ran an experiment a while back where I unsubscribed from Netflix to analyze their CRM strategy for winning back lapsed users and shared it on LinkedIn, and it kind of took off in the lifecycle community. So I turned it into a newsletter where I do bi-weekly deep dives on lifecycle programs and share insights from experts in the community. Here’s a link to the newsletter if you’re curious. Andy actually contributed a while back 😀
What could SaaS and B2B brands do to instantly improve their lifecycle marketing program?
The biggest mistakes I see SaaS/B2B companies making is trying to drive conversions (demos, signups, etc.) with every touchpoint. Some of the best advice I ever got in my career was this: “Focus on delivering as much value as you can to the customer every day.” Everyone wants an easy button, but more often than not, great outputs come from great inputs and sweating over the details that nobody notices.
Who do you think has an amazing lifecycle marketing program? Why?
This one is going to be pretty random, but recently I bought a chainsaw from Ace Hardware, and I was really impressed with how sophisticated and advanced their journeys felt. The messages felt like value-adds rather than sales pitches.
What’s in your toolbox?
Hardware:
- Macbook Pro
- Logitech G305 wireless mouse
- Redragon mini keyboard
- 27-in monitor
- Logitech camera
Software:
- GPT
- Loveable
- Figma
- Hubspot
- Hightouch
- Descript
What are some interesting ways to use data to enhance your lifecycle program?
Get really good at critical thinking and problem-solving, in a world where AI is commoditizing everything, tooling isn’t really a competitive advantage. How you use the tool is though.
What’s your favorite email campaign of all time? Why?
I’m really coming up empty here… The best campaigns to me are the ones that I don’t notice. If I’m not thinking about being marketed to, it probably means the company did a great job marketing to me.
What’s your advice for new marketers entering the industry in the next few years?
Get really good at critical thinking and problem-solving, in a world where AI commoditizes everything, tooling isn’t really a competitive advantage. Everyone wants an easy button, but more often than not, great marketing isn’t scalable, so be ready to go deep and get in the weeds. The better you understand something, the better you can use AI to supercharge your capabilities.
Much love,
Andy
Andy has spent two decades building email programs for brands and agencies, and now co-runs Email Love: the inspiration gallery of 481,000+ emails and the Figma plugin that lets teams design, build, and export production-ready email without leaving their design file. He writes about email design systems, production workflow, and where the industry is heading.
Customer.io delivers more impact from every message–unifying data, messaging, and AI into one platform so every customer interaction gets smarter over time. We help teams build personalized campaigns across email, SMS, push, in-app, and webhooks, using their own first-party data to reach the right people with the right message at the right moment. AI is built into the platform to remove the grunt work, letting marketers focus on strategy, not setup. Over 9,000 brands trust us to power their messaging.
