Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketing Automation Misses Customer Fertility Journeys
Transcript
- Lucas: Let me run a scenario by you. A woman in her early thirties starts Googling 'fertility clinic reviews' and 'how long does it take to get pregnant.' She buys a pack of ovulation test strips on Amazon. She signs up for a baby registry on Babylist, then deletes it a week later. What does her marketing automation profile look like? Luna: Probably a bunch of generic baby-targeted emails that assume she's definitely pregnant and just haven't gotten to the part where she unsubscribes. Lucas: Exactly. Most marketing automation platforms treat fertility as a binary event—pregnant or not. But the reality is that the journey to pregnancy is long, uncertain, and emotionally charged. And the data shows we're missing a huge opportunity. Luna: I mean, it's sensitive data. Are we sure we want marketing platforms tracking when someone buys a pregnancy test? Lucas: That's the tension. But let me give you a number. According to the World Health Organization, about one in six couples worldwide experiences infertility. That's roughly 186 million people. And yet, when I looked at the trigger libraries for HubSpot and Marketo—the standard life events they track—fertility isn't there. No 'ovulation test purchase,' no 'fertility clinic search,' no 'pregnancy test negative' trigger. It's a total blind spot. Luna: So what happens when a brand does try to target based on those signals? I remember the backlash when Target figured out a teen was pregnant before her dad did. That's the cautionary tale. Lucas: Right, the 2012 Target story. But there's a difference between inferring pregnancy from shopping patterns and explicitly offering fertility-related content that the user has signaled interest in. Let me give you a concrete example. A fertility-focused DTC brand called Glow—they make a fertility tracking app—started timing their email campaigns based on when users logged ovulation test results. Their open rates went up about 40 percent, and conversion on their premium subscription was three times higher than generic monthly blasts. Luna: But Glow is a health app. Users explicitly consent to sharing that data. What about a general retailer that sells pregnancy tests and baby wipes? Can they ethically build a fertility segment? Lucas: That's where the privacy calculus gets tricky. The letter of the law—GDPR, CCPA—doesn't explicitly ban using purchase history to infer fertility stage. But the spirit is that you need a legitimate interest. And 'legitimate interest' for a diaper coupon feels weak if the user hasn't opted into health-related messaging. Luna: So what's the alternative? Just ignore the whole lifecycle? Lucas: No. The smarter approach is permission-based triggers. Instead of tracking the pregnancy test purchase, ask the user: 'Are you trying to conceive? Would you like content tailored to that journey?' Some brands are doing this. For example, the fertility supplement brand Beli explicitly asks during email signup what stage you're in—preconception, trying, pregnant, postpartum. And their click-through rates are four to five times higher than segmenting by age alone. Luna: That's opt-in. That feels better. But doesn't it limit the scale? Most people won't raise their hand and say, 'Yes, I'm trying to get pregnant.' Lucas: You're right. Only about 5 to 8 percent of users typically fill out those preference forms. But the ones who do are incredibly valuable. And you can supplement with less invasive signals—like browsing behavior on fertility-related pages, without tying it to a specific person until they consent. Luna: There's also the risk of getting it wrong. What if someone buys a pregnancy test as a gag gift or for a friend? Now they're in a 'trying to conceive' segment and getting inundated with ovulation trackers. Lucas: That's a real problem. One misclassification can destroy trust. The solution isn't to avoid the topic—it's to build triggers that require multiple signals, not just one. A single pregnancy test purchase shouldn't trigger anything. But a pattern—test purchase plus visit to fertility clinic website plus reading articles about conception—that's a stronger signal. And even then, the first message should be a gentle check-in, not a hard sell. Luna: So you're saying the automation should start with an invitation, not an assumption. Lucas: Exactly. Something like, 'We noticed you've been exploring fertility-related content. Would you like to receive tailored resources?' That's respectful. And it gives the user control. Luna: I wonder how many marketers are even thinking about this. I mean, I've worked with HubSpot for years and I never considered building a fertility journey. Lucas: And that's the point. We have these powerful platforms that can automate almost anything, but they're only as smart as the use cases we program into them. The default templates are built around obvious life events—marriage, home purchase, birth of a child. But the journey to that childbirth is full of micro-moments that go completely untargeted. Luna: If today's conversation sparked something you've actually used in your own marketing, that's exactly why we do this. And the way these episodes stay ad-free is listener support. If you found this useful, you can buy me a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely helps us keep going. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the content independent and focused on what actually works. Appreciate anyone who chips in. Anyway, back to the fertility gap. I think the biggest takeaway is that marketing automation needs to embrace the 'messy middle' of life stages. Lucas: So what's a practical first step for a marketer listening? Start by auditing your current triggers. If you have a life event field, does it include 'trying to conceive' or 'fertility treatment'? Probably not. But you can add a custom property in your CRM and start building a welcome flow for that segment. Luna: Also, look at your existing data. If you sell prenatal vitamins, you probably have a lot of customers who bought them but never moved to baby products. That could be a signal that the pregnancy didn't go to term, or they switched brands. Either way, it's a relationship worth checking in on. Lucas: That's a smart insight. And it ties into something bigger. The fertility journey doesn't end at birth. There's postpartum, there's secondary infertility, there's the decision to stop trying. Each of those is a distinct communication need. Luna: I read a study from the Journal of Medical Internet Research that said 70 percent of women who experience pregnancy loss feel that brands don't acknowledge their situation. They get bombarded with baby emails for months after a miscarriage. Lucas: That's brutal. And it's completely avoidable. You can set up a suppression list or a preference center where users can say, 'I've experienced a loss, please pause baby content.' Some brands, like the period tracking app Clue, have a 'loss mode' that adjusts content automatically. Luna: So it's not just about targeting the right people. It's also about knowing when to stop targeting. Lucas: Right. And that's where most marketing automation fails. We're so focused on sending the next message that we don't build 'off ramps' for people who no longer fit the journey. Luna: Let me ask you this: do you think the major platforms will ever build fertility triggers natively? Or will it always be a custom build? Lucas: I think we'll see it, but slowly. HubSpot recently added a 'life event' property that includes 'expecting a child.' That's a step. But it's still binary. They don't have 'trying to conceive' or 'fertility treatment.' I suspect the privacy concerns make them cautious. They don't want to be seen as tracking reproductive health. Luna: So the burden falls on the marketer to build these journeys themselves, with the right guardrails. Lucas: Exactly. And the good news is that the technology supports it. You can use predictive lead scoring to identify users who are displaying fertility-related behaviors. You can build custom events in Marketo that fire when someone visits a 'fertility FAQ' page three times. The tools are there. It's the imagination and the ethical framework that's lacking. Luna: I'd love to see a case study where a brand does this well. Not a health brand, but like a financial services company that offers fertility insurance or something. Lucas: There's a startup called Carrot that offers fertility benefits for employers. They do a great job of segmenting by stage—'exploring options,' 'in treatment,' 'post-treatment.' Their email nurture is very carefully timed. And they report a 25 percent higher enrollment when they trigger communications based on employee searches for fertility coverage. Luna: That makes sense. The need is high, but the information is hard to find. If you can be the brand that provides that information at the right moment, you build immense trust. Lucas: Trust is the real currency here. Because fertility is deeply personal. If you get it right, you have a customer for life. If you get it wrong, you've violated a very private space. Luna: So the key is to start with empathy, not automation. Build the journey around the person, not the platform. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the challenge and the opportunity. Marketing automation was supposed to make us more human by freeing up time. But if we don't program in the full range of human experience, we're just scaling indifference. Luna: Scaling indifference. That's a good line. And a good note to end on. Lucas: Yeah. Next episode, we'll look at another blind spot in the customer journey. Thanks for listening.