Lifecycle Marketing 101 – Part 1
Broad Strokes
This post is adapted from a longer piece I wrote for internal consumption, with some minor changes, edits for flow, and privileged tidbits removed.
You may know Lifecycle Marketing entirely or in part referred to as Customer Marketing. Though there is overlap, Lifecycle is, in practice, a bit more focused in scope, with attention paid primarily to the customer’s interactions with the product and its specific features versus the whole of the customer experience.
Some schools of thought include pre-conversion audience touchpoints under Lifecycle, while others view pre-conversion as a completely different (though related) area.
So, what is Lifecycle Marketing anyway?
Lifecycle Marketing encompasses the strategy and tactics employed to engage and retain customers. These efforts comprise timely nudges and relevant messaging that meet customers where they are. The tactics used coalesce as a seamless complement to the product experience.
Once someone becomes a customer (always paid and arguably free customers), then from a communications point of view, they’ve entered the Lifecycle domain. From this point on, your collective business objective is to increase revenue from existing customers in a manner that aligns with your brand and values.
Central to the success of any Lifecycle effort is a deep understanding of and empathy for the customer, starting with a keen awareness of:
- Who are your customers? (ever-evolving personas & archetypes)
- What are their jobs to be done? Their pain points/problems? Their passion points?
- What are the core outcomes desired by your customers?
- What is the product experience happy path for each of your core customer archetypes?
- What does success look like for your customers, and what is your measurable proxy of this for your product experience? (the customer’s success = your success)
- Given the landscape, what are your competitive advantages in helping them achieve those outcomes?
- Hint: If you’re having trouble answering this question, you probably need some perspective. Sometimes, old-school business stuff is just the ticket: if you can’t answer those questions, a SWOT analysis (and perhaps some user research) is in order.
Given the answers to the preceding questions, what messaging and associated medium(s) of communication would best serve your customers during their journeys?
Value for value should always be top of mind, and in this v4v relationship, the customer should always come out ahead.
(Suggested) takeaways
- Lifecycle Marketing comprises the strategy and tactics employed to encourage customer activation, retention, and loyalty.
- Lifecycle refers to the strategy (e.g., personalized automation) and approach (e.g., product education) rather than the medium (e.g., email).
- Lifecycle Marketing is all about making it easy for the customer to connect the dots between their JTBD and our solution(s).
- The three primary purposes of a Lifecycle Marketing program embedded within a larger Marketing function are to:
- reduce churn
- increase expansion revenue
- increase customer referrals/WoM.