What is Customer Lifecycle Marketing? A Simple Guide for 2021

Improve customer retention.

Increase customer engagement.

Build a large base of loyal customers.

That’s what customer lifecycle marketing is all about. Unlike other marketing approaches, lifecycle marketing considers the needs and wants of customers at specific stages of their journey with your brand.

The result is more personalized, relevant, and engaging marketing that tries to cultivate loyalty from the very first contact. In this article, we’re going to talk about customer lifecycle marketing and how you can implement this strategy properly in eCommerce.

What is Customer Lifecycle Marketing?

Customer lifecycle marketing is an approach to personalizing customer communication. It’s based on the idea that different marketing messages work best for customers at different stages of their journey with your brand. To create such personalized and relevant customer communications, you need to have a deep understanding of your target audience. 

Key Phases of Customer Lifecycle Marketing

Typically, customer lifecycle marketing consists of six specific phases. Each phase defines what your target audience might need, want, or like about your brand.

The six phases are:

• Awareness. Also called “discovery,” this phase involves customers coming in contact with your business for the first time. The contact might occur via any common marketing communication touchpoints (online ads, Google search, cold emails, etc.)

• Engagement. After learning about your brand, customers start engaging with you in many ways: follow your brand on social media, sign up for your email newsletter, or visit your website.

• Evaluation. Customers consider your brand’s offer as a part of their product/service research. They’re not buying just yet, because they might be considering other businesses as well.

• Purchase. After thinking about where to buy, customers make a purchase. In an ideal scenario, all the branded experiences customers went through before would lead to a real purchase.

• Support. In the US, 60% of customers decide to cut off a relationship with a brand after a poor customer service experience. That’s why it’s important to be available to your existing customers and help them maximize the value of their purchase.