Using Intercom for Lifecycle Marketing: Proven SaaS Use-Cases That Drive Results

It’s time to rethink how you use Intercom.

Although Intercom highlights its CS use, the tool is a lifecycle marketing powerhouse—especially for SaaS teams with sophisticated software products. 

Unfortunately, most pay a lot for it but use only a fraction of its capabilities. If you feel like you’re one of them, good thing you bumped into this article. 

You probably just haven’t discovered the right features that will move your conversion needle yet. Or maybe, you focus most of your efforts on the acquisition part of lifecycle marketing like the 61% of brands do and now you’re ready to do more.

We’ll show you actual Intercom SaaS use cases that guide users from their first hello to becoming active advocates! Feel free to steal them. 

The SaaS lifecycle 

The SaaS Lifecycle is a user’s different stages with your SaaS product. 

And engaging with them through those phases is called SaaS lifecycle marketing. That’s it. 

To do it right, you have to:

• Map both your user and customer journeys  
• Use custom behavior and actions to trigger marketing activities
• Deeply understand how customers perceive your product’s value (DO NOT assume this)

How do other SaaS companies use this strategy?  

Let’s take a sneak peek into some real-world use cases in the next sections. 

Take note, what we’ll cover are actual Intercom practices by SaaS teams like you.

Phase 1: Acquisition stage

Use Case: Targeted Lead Capture & Qualification

The most important touchpoint in the lifecycle—the acquisition stage. 

It’s the moment when you have the chance to convert a web visitor into a blog subscriber, demo lead, or free user. 

It also becomes an opportunity for you to collect additional data to tailor the messages they get.

How SaaS companies do it

Phytech, a one-stop digital farming platform, engages its homepage visitors. They have a Workflow bot that asks which crops the visitor is growing. Then, they wasted no time by asking for the lead’s email for more info, but only once they gave permission.

Intercom tips for effective lead capture forms and chatbot scripts

• Make the first question easy to answer so they engage. Keep the chat short. You don’t want to overwhelm them with too many questions.
• Target specific actions to catch website visitors when they’re most interested. You could wait for 5-10 seconds before firing that message.
• Experiment with the Workflow. Try asking for the essential information (like email address) right from the start or towards the end.
• Always explain why you’re collecting information and how it will be used—use a clear CTA.
• For B2B SaaS, you can set bots up to ask qualifying questions before routing the hottest, high-quality leads to a sales rep using Intercom’s Salesforce integration. This will make your SDRs happy.

Phase 2: Activation Stage

Use Case 2: Personalized Product Tours

It is said that 89% of potential customers will consider switching to competitors if your onboarding is complicated. 

So if you don’t want to lose users while they’re testing your product, take notes on how you can use Intercom to activate new users effectively.

How SaaS companies do it

Webex Events, an end-to-end event management platform, uses Intercom’s product tour features to show users around.

They first highlighted the different ways they could help a new user, showed where the users could find the events, and ended with an even more advanced timeline feature.

They also used a mix of Intercom features like product tours, checklists, and even emails. Let’s break it down even more below.

Intercom tips for creating an engaging onboarding experience

• Tone it down. Too many welcome pop-ups WILL overwhelm new users, increasing the risk of hitting the ‘x’ button.
• Include video tutorials, gifs, and add important help links they could go to whenever they get stuck.

• Break tours into bite-sized milestones, and include the step number (i.e., “3 of 6”) to let users know how far they’ve come. 

• Frame product tours as mini tasks that they can finish right away. Keep the energy up and build confidence from the start.

• The Getting Started Guide shows them the top 1-3 actions they need to do to experience the value of your tool. Use it.

Quick tip: Make sure to create segments based on user behavior or even plan type so you don’t accidentally ask paid users to upgrade or annoy active users with a feature they’re already super familiar with.

Phase 3: Engagement & Retention stage

Let’s now turn our attention to keeping your customers satisfied so they stay. 

For this stage, we have 2 use cases. The first one is for Customer Support and the second one is for Marketing and Sales.

Use Case: Proactive Customer Support & Issue Resolution

First off, the self-serve x chat combo.

Did you know that 57% of respondents prefer a mix of self-help and human-guided onboarding?

That said, better to use Intercom’s Help Center features with the chatbots that route to your support team.

How other SaaS companies do it

One good example is Toggl. They proactively preempt the increase of support tickets and turn inquiries into resolved questions.

They’ve pinned important Help Articles on their chat. This solves the user issues proactively—whether self-serve or live support.

RapidSeedbox also uses Intercom to improve its user engagement.

All their customer responses come back to them through Intercom. This helps them respond to inquiries about new products, features, or promotions quickly.

Deyan Georgiev of RapidSeedbox shares: 

“We’ve implemented a chatbot that first engages with customers – gathering their information and attempting to resolve common issues. 

If the chatbot can’t resolve the issue, it seamlessly transfers the conversation to one of our team members. This approach has streamlined our support process and improved customer satisfaction.”

Intercom Tips for setting up efficient support workflows

•  Add your knowledge articles, step-by-step guides, and FAQs together with support bots. Set them up with automated responses for commonly asked queries or complaints. 
• If live chat isn’t always available, use Intercom to set response time and expected wait times.
• Set up proactive messages for users likely to need help, create segment-specific macros for faster, more relevant responses, and tailor responses using custom attributes.
• Set up workflows that prioritize high-value customers. For example, users on your enterprise plan might automatically be routed to a dedicated support team, while smaller accounts first interact with a chatbot.
• Automate ticket assignment by creating rules based on customer attributes, tags, or keywords. Your team will love this!

Use Case: Targeted Upsell & Cross-Sell Campaigns

Now onto the 2nd use case under the engagement & retention stage…

This use case identifies relevant products and services and offer them to the right existing customers—a.k.a upselling and cross-selling.

How other SaaS companies do it

An example is UpLead, a B2B prospecting platform. 

They use Intercom’s in-product messaging to offer active customers the option to go annual with a 20% OFF.

Campaign triggers could be seasonal. Think of the Holidays, BFCM, or Labor Day. It could also be user attribute too. 

For example, Phil Portman of Textdrip shares:

“Our most successful use case has been using Intercom to trigger personalized upsell campaigns after users hit specific milestones. 

For example, once a user sends 1,000 SMS messages, they’re offered additional features or plans. This has increased our paid conversions by 30% over 6 months. 

Integrating this workflow with Salesforce helped us segment and target users more effectively.”

Intercom tips for creating effective upsell & cross-sell offers

• Don’t pitch upgrades too soon until the user is deeply engaged with your product.
• Identify power users who might benefit from premium features or higher-tier plans. You can add custom attributes on Intercom.
• Combine cross-sells with onboarding because only active users will see the relevant value of the features right away.
• Make sure you plan for the data tracking and user attribution in a way that they’re mutually exclusive so you don’t smother users with multiple, simultaneous campaigns.

Phase 4: Advocacy & expansion stage

Use Case: Asking for feedback/reviews/case study

In this 4th phase, the focus switches from retaining customers to turning them into loyal customers — or raving fans. It’s about building lasting relationships and encouraging customers to spread the word.

How SaaS companies do it

Asking for feedback is a form of building relationships with customers, even the irate ones. 

Coda uses Intercom to ask users where they heard about them.

Intercom’s chat can be used to get subjective feedback quickly like how UpLead does it below. 

But you could also integrate with a wide range of survey and feedback apps like Upvoty, VideoAsk, AskNicely NPS Chat, and more. 

Intercom tips for personalizing interactions and building advocacy

• Segment your target participants to understand their needs and motivations.
• Make every participation worth their while. Offer small discounts, extra credits, or even a marketing feature for customers who submit a testimonial, participate in a case study, or leave a review.
• Ask satisfied customers to leave reviews or testimonials on famous review sites like G2 and Capterra. Limit the invite to active free users who had been using your tool for a while or long-time paying customers. 

Bonus Use Case: Referral programs

Referral programs are one of the most effective ways to grow your customer base. A kind of marketing money can’t buy, but you can reward. 

You can use Intercom for your referral program. Just be data-driven so you send it at the right moment to the right customers. Also, make the benefits clear and the process simple.

How SaaS companies do it

You could use Prefinery to integrate with Intercom for your referral marketing efforts.

Intercom tips for designing effective referral programs

• Integrate Intercom with your favorite Referral apps like Referral Factory and Referral Hero so you get recommendations right within your app. It’s easier for your customers that way.
•  Use Intercom’s behavioral data to automatically remind users about your referral program when they’re highly engaged with your product. 

Are you making the most out of Intercom?

Intercom is so much more than just a customer support tool—it’s a complete lifecycle marketing solution. 

Use it to maximize every touchpoint with your customers and that means exploring  Intercom features for lifecycle marketing use.

Here’s how the platform can support you throughout the customer stages:

• Acquisition stage where Intercom helps you attract and qualify high-quality leads.
• Activation Stage where Intercom helps drive early adoption.
• Engagement & Retention stage where Intercom ensures issues are resolved before they escalate and increases revenue through targeted upsell/cross-sell campaigns.
• Advocacy & Expansion stage where Intercom helps turn happy customers into brand ambassadors.

Intercom offers a powerful suite of features for lifecycle marketing, but the real magic happens when you combine it with DataBox.  

Imagine having a clear, data-driven view of your entire customer journey, from initial engagement to long-term advocacy like this.

With Databox, you can visualize key metrics, identify areas for improvement, and fine-tune your Intercom strategy for maximum impact. 

The best part? You can see it all in one place!

Plug your Intercom data into Databox today and unlock a new level of customer engagement and growth. Try it free.