Customer Lifecycle

A customer lifecycle is a path a person takes from becoming aware of a product until converting into a loyal client. The process is divided into the five key stages: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

This article will uncover the importance and stages of a customer lifecycle. We’ll also show how to manage it.

Why is customer lifecycle important?

According to Conversational, repeat customers spend more money with brands than new consumers. Loyal clients shape 40% of eCommerce companies’ profit while making up only 8% of the entire list of clients. So, the profitability of your business relies heavily on customer retention. Retaining consumers and encouraging customer loyalty requires you to analyze the customer lifecycle. Since this process consists of five stages, you need to keep an eye on each of them and assign metrics to evaluate the success of each step. As a result, you’ll have a clear understanding of overall company health.

Customer lifecycle management provides a comprehensive picture of the buyer journey and shows at which point leads drop off. A customer lifecycle empowers you to identify the most and least profitable channels to allocate budget wisely. You can also find out which content users like and dislike and improve your content strategy.

Tracking the customer lifecycle allows you to unveil the stages where potential clients churn out. Once you have these phases identified, you can analyze them and figure out the reasons why people churn. Moreover, you can unveil your strengths and understand why your prospects convert into loyal consumers. As a result, you’ll be able to revise your strategy and make some alterations to prevent customers from leaving.

Customers’ preferences may change over time. That’s why you need to keep a track of each phase of your customer lifecycle. After analyzing the changes in consumer behavior and preferences, adapt your offer to retain customers. Align with customers’ needs, be active on social media, and make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.

When customers are happy with your product, they will become brand advocates and maximize your profits. Your main task is to provide a relevant offer to help consumers solve their problems. Use preferred marketing channels to reach your audience, communicate, and promote your offer.

Now that you know why customer lifecycle is essential, it’s time to review customer lifecycle stages. The next section will give you a hint of how you should act at each of them.

5 Customer Lifecycle Stages

In this section, we’ll review the five elements of the customer lifecycle. Knowing the phases enables you to choose the right framework to communicate with consumers at each touchpoint.

1. Reach. People are likely to search for a specific product after they face a problem. Users search various options on the internet and ask friends for recommendations. It’s the moment when you have the chance to communicate your offer and obtain new customers. Yet it’s not that easy since prospects compare different options to find the best in terms of price and quality. At this stage, you need to do all to educate leads about your product. Consider hosting webinars, investing in advertising and SEO, using social media marketing, and creating a blog to generate interest and share cases.
2. Acquisition. A lead visiting your brand’s site or profile on Instagram denotes the start of the acquisition stage. Ensure fast page load time, mobile-first design, and usability of your website. Provide users with information, such as product features, pricing, an “About Us” page, etc. You should also have a knowledge base, blog, and other materials like ebooks, podcasts, and tutorial videos to educate about your product. Once potential customers have urgent inquiries, they will contact customer support. A live chat is a brilliant alternative. It helps reduce the workload of your customer service team and provide instant assistance. With SendPulse, you can create a live chat for your website for free without any coding skills. If you have profiles on social media, make use of chatbots to set up auto-replies and respond to customer questions 24/7. SendPulse’s chatbot builder allows you to create a message flow for subscribers on Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook and answer users’ requests fast.
3. Conversion. At this stage, a prospect makes a purchase and converts into your customer. It is the beginning of relationships with your consumer. At the conversion stage, you need to do all in your power to establish loyalty and retain customers. Develop a loyalty program, ask for customer feedback, improve user experience, and run a referral program. You should build trusting relationships with consumers, meet expectations, improve your product and service, and provide personalized offers.
4. Retention. According to OutboundEngine, attaining new consumers is five times more expensive than retaining the current ones. Give sufficient attention to existing customers. Contact clients to figure out whether they enjoy your product. You should know what your customers feel about your product. Ask consumers to go through customer service surveys. Consider implementing the voice of the customer program because it allows consumers to speak out their opinion and suggest improvements.
5. Loyalty. At the loyalty stage, your consumer is the most valuable asset. Customers can become your brand advocates. So you need to care about their needs and prove that your company is worth their recommendations. Provide your clients with attractive offers, discounts, loyalty programs, and new releases. They will refer friends and multiply your revenues.

Now that you know how to act at each phase of your customer lifecycle, you’ll be able to meet customers’ requirements and address their issues. In the next section, we’ll unveil steps that will help you capture attention and attain loyal customers

How to manage your customer lifecycle?

Sometimes brands have difficulties communicating with consumers because they have limited knowledge of their customer lifecycle. This short step-by-step guide will enable you to manage this process properly.

1. Determine your target audience. Before marketing your product, define your target audience. You need to have a clear picture of your ideal customer. Targeting everyone isn’t a good idea. After identifying your target audience, you can craft personalized offers and share relevant content based on the customer lifecycle stage. If you want to use your resources efficiently, consider developing a buyer persona. It will represent your ideal customer and cover demographic and behavioral characteristics.
2. Create relevant content. To earn trust and build a positive reputation, you need to put all your knowledge and experience into your blog articles, social media posts, and website information. As a result, you’ll share quality guides, detailed instructions, engaging video tutorials, etc. To rank high on Google, you need to use keywords people use to find answers to their questions. Provide answers to these questions in your articles. Writing informative and helpful blog posts ensures that users will find your website and use your content.
3. Provide a centralized base of your brand information. Provide self-service resources to let users explore your product in more detail. Develop a website covering your company, pricing, and product features. Create a knowledge base and a blog to deliver essential materials about your product and answers to FAQs. Users with access to a centralized database will make informed purchasing decisions and won’t contact customer support for small things.
4. Ensure support during the purchasing stage. If a purchase is expensive, decision-making can be stressful for consumers. To dispel customer doubts, consider ensuring support during all stages. A live chat widget linked to a support representative can help users avoid several problems. Once customers have inquiries, they can contact your support and get assistance. With SendPulse, you can create a chatbot for Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram or design a live chat widget for your website. Our drag and drop builder enables you to respond to customer inquiries and provide 24/7 support instantly.
5. Consider using a CRM. Once your startup starts turning into a bigger business, you need an easy-to-access place where you can store the data about your subscribers. CRM enables you to have a centralized database, interact with prospects, and improve customer service. The software will help you manage your list of contacts and their personal data. SendPulse offers a free CRM that helps you store clients’ personal data, automate communication with customers, and check the statuses of deals.
6. Ask customers for reviews. If your consumers are satisfied with your product, offer them to share their experience with others and help them make buying decisions. Send customer surveys, share your profiles on Yelp and Google Reviews sites, and build referral programs. They will encourage word-of-mouth promotion. Reward customers with discounts, gifts, and special products for bringing friends.

We offer you to leverage SendPulse to lead consumers through the stages of your customer lifecycle with email campaigns, chatbots, SMS, and web push notifications. It’ll help you collect detailed information about consumers, which results in personalized communication. Moreover, multichannel marketing will enable you to have more touchpoints for interaction with your audience, increase the possibility of customers’ seeing your offers, send relevant email newsletters, and more.

References:

1. This article provides readers with the stages of the customer lifecycle.
2. This article defines the term and unveils how to measure the success of your customer lifecycle.

Last Updated: 30.06.2023