The Ultimate Guide to Lifecycle Marketing

What is lifecycle marketing?

Targeting the right message at the right time to a customer is at the core of any lifecycle strategy. The definition of lifecycle marketing is the bespoke messaging based on funnel stage. Marketing touch points at each funnel stage guide a user through their journey.

What are the stages of a customer lifecycle?

Awareness (reach) - A customer is researching your industry, unaware of your brand. A user will research you and you competitive set.

Interest (act) - A user demonstrates interest in your product or service.

Action (conversion) - A user becomes a customer (purchases for the first time)

Loyalty (advocacy and retention) - Customer becomes an advocate

Retention - A customer buys your product again.

What KPIs matter for lifecycle marketing?

Awareness - Sessions, Bounce Rate, Session Duration

Interest - Lead capture, Add to Cart,

Action - Sales, Subscriptions

Loyalty - Referred Customers, Social Shares

Retention - Returning customer sales, Lifetime Value, Retention Rate

What does a lifecycle manager do?

A lifecycle manager has three core areas of functional expertise:

CRM marketing - CRM channel expertise is critical for deploying a lifecycle strategy.

Analytics - Lifecycle analytics can be complex. Brands need someone who can execute (or at least spec out) complex data queries.

Storytelling - Effective communication is a rule of any lifecycle strategy.

A lifecycle manager focuses most on retention and loyalty stages, with limited focus on awareness.

What is the difference between lifecycle and CRM marketing?

CRM marketing is the deployment of marketing tactics based on on a customer resource management dataset. As you can imagine, a CRM will contain lifecycle stage data points. For this reason CRM marketing is a subset of tactics within lifecycle marketing.

Important CRM marketing channels

Email - There is not a channel more important than email to drive action, loyalty, and retention.

SMS - A channel currently catching fire, SMS can be a great compliment to email. Leverage it in a limited capacity as it can be annoying if overused.

Customer Experience Team - Leverage your CX team to source qualitative data (interviews). They can also help close sales during the interest phase.

The Bottom Line

Lifecycle marketing is an integral part of any growth strategy. It should considered as it well worth the investment.