When I first started in customer service, I realized it‘s about more than just closing a one-time deal. It’s about building relationships that boost customer lifetime value, ensuring customers stick around for the long haul.
That’s where customer lifecycle management or client lifecycle management (CLM) comes in. By analyzing the customer lifecycle, I can help marketing, sales, and customer service teams convert one-time buyers into loyal promoters. Even McKinsey & Company agrees: Mastering CLM boosts lifetime value through deep analytics, fine-tuned loyalty programs, and an elevated customer experience.
Today, I‘ll walk you through the ins and outs of the customer lifecycle. Here’s what you'll learn:
What Is the Customer Lifecycle?
The customer lifecycle refers to the process of prospects becoming aware of a product, purchasing from a brand, and ideally becoming a company's longtime customer. The process is made up of five stages: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.
More simply, it outlines the steps a customer takes as they progress through the flywheel and sales funnel. It gives marketing, sales, and customer service teams a complete picture of the customer's journey and highlights areas for improvement.
Your team can leverage the lifecycle to create lead acquisition content and deliver customer experiences that delight customers at every stage.
Before we go over the customer lifecycle stages, grab your free customer journey map templates so you can map your customer's journey as we go along.
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Got your templates in hand? Let's dive into customer lifecycle management.
What Is Customer Lifecycle Management?
Customer lifecycle management is the process of tracking the stages of the customer lifecycle, assigning metrics to each one, and measuring success based on those metrics. The goal is to track the business' performance over time as it relates to the customer lifecycle.
Every company has the opportunity to control and guide the customer journey.
From my experience, most customers follow a similar set of steps when choosing a brand's product or service and eventually becoming loyal to that brand. Rather than leaving that to chance and hoping that customers will choose us, I guide them in our direction.
How do I do this? By tailoring my content and interactions based on where the customer is in their journey.
This isn‘t manipulation. Rather, it’s an intentional approach where I provide them with the content they‘re looking for, thus providing value. In doing so, I prove my company is a reputable, transparent brand that has its visitors’ and customers' best intentions at heart.
The customer lifecycle is handy to see how your customers behave, so let’s jump into detail on what that looks like at each stage of the process below.
Customer Lifecycle Stages
As I mentioned, the customer lifecycle has five stages: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty. While it's similar to the buyer's journey, the customer lifecycle takes into account the customer’s experience, or what happens long after a prospect makes a purchase.
I'll walk through these stages one by one.
1. Reach
This stage is called “reach” because it‘s your chance to reach the customer while they’re deliberating.
In this stage, a customer searches for a product after becoming aware of an issue or problem they need to solve. They are comparing products across competing brands (including yours), carrying out research, and reading customer reviews. Social media marketing, SEO, search engine marketing, and other inbound and outbound methods should place your brand on this customer's radar.
The reach stage is successful when the customer reaches out to you for more information, looking to either educate themselves further or get a definitive price.
2. Acquisition
When the customer gets to your website or calls you on the phone, they've officially entered the acquisition stage.
This stage varies based on the acquisition channel. If they call, you’ll need to address their questions and concerns, gathering more information about the customer's needs. Then, offer the best products or services to meet those needs and educate them on their benefits.
If they find you through your website, ensure they encounter helpful, educational content to guide their purchasing decision. Every content piece, pricing page, or blog post should provide the information they need to make a decision.
Pro tip: Gating some content can help capture their information. And don't forget: Your service team should be ready via live chat to handle urgent inquiries. Remember, all interactions are customer service experiences — even a simple website visit is a customer service touchpoint.
3. Conversion
Having received all the necessary information and being delighted with your brand‘s customer experience, the prospect makes a purchase. They’ve officially converted and turned into your customer.
In the conversion stage, you want to make it clear that you‘re providing value. They’ve entered a relationship with you, not just made a purchase. But the work doesn‘t end here. It’s time to retain the customer so that they continuously come back to your brand.
4. Retention
Customer retention starts by finding out how the customer feels. Check in with them to ask how they've enjoyed their new product or service. I highly recommend conducting customer service surveys, measuring your Customer Satisfaction Score, and establishing a Voice of the Customer program to find out what you can do better.
Using information directly from them, you can continuously make improvements to your products and services, as well as the customer service experience.
Pro tip: In this retention stage, you'll want to offer exclusive perks only your customers have access to. Think: 24/7 support, product discounts, and referral bonuses — basically, all perks that can take your customer from a plain purchaser to a brand promoter.
5. Loyalty
In the loyalty stage, the customer becomes an important asset to your brand by making additional purchases. They might post on social media about their experience with your company and write product reviews that inform a future customer during the reach stage.
Brand loyalty is of the utmost importance. Take the automobile industry, for example.
There are dozens of brands selling similar vehicles for similar purposes. So, what makes a customer choose an SUV between, say, Toyota and Chevrolet?
The answer: brand loyalty. Imagine a customer‘s first car was a Toyota Camry in the 90s. It served them well through college and beyond. Now, as they look to buy a new SUV, they’re likely to stick with Toyota, the brand that’s been reliable for decades — unless poor customer service pushes them away.
Your customer reaches this stage after experiencing the previous four stages. You can't manufacture loyalty out of thin air. It must be nurtured and instilled in the customer through positive service experiences and proven product value.
Note that the customer lifecycle isn’t rigid — it's fluid. Customers can discover your brand in various ways: recommendations from friends or family, social media, ads, research, and more.
Understanding this lifecycle helps you manage it effectively, and mapping it out is a great way to start.
Customer Lifecycle Map
A customer lifecycle map is a high-level, visual tool that marketers use to track where customers are in their buyer journey. It helps you understand customer behavior as they go through different stages.
Differentiating — or mapping out — what actions in the lifecycle correlate to each stage helps you build a buyer journey that takes prospects from being familiar with your business, to raving advocates.
Now that we understand the customer lifecycle and the use in mapping it out, let’s talk analysis.
Managing the customer lifecycle won’t be possible unless you carry out a customer lifecycle analysis, which will show you how your customers are currently moving through the pipeline.
Conducting a Customer Lifecycle Analysis
Knowing how you‘re faring at every stage of the customer lifecycle is essential to leveraging it for your brand’s benefit.
Free Customer Journey Template
Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.
- Buyer's Journey Template
- Future State Template
- Day-in-the-Life Template
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
Below, I‘ll share insights from my experience and list some questions for each stage to help you analyze your current customers’ journey and address problems to ensure a better overall experience.
Analyzing the Reach Stage
When analyzing the reach phase of your customer lifecycle, you'll seek to figure out whether prospects can find your company. I use the following questions to guide my approach:
- Where does a prospect first hear about your company? TV channels, social media platforms, sponsored ads, or search engines?
- How are you performing on these channels? Click-through rate and impressions can be indicators of reach.
- What are your competitors doing to reach customers that you're not doing?
- Are you known for a good or bad service experience?
- Do you post regularly on social media?
For example, I found that my target audience was highly active on LinkedIn and industry-specific forums. Focusing efforts on these channels significantly improved my reach.
I monitored engagement rates and social shares to get a fuller picture of my outreach efforts. Plus, I subscribed to their newsletters, followed their social media updates, and attended their webinars to stay ahead. Creating a feedback loop helped me regularly review and act on customer feedback, and I made sure to respond promptly to comments and messages on our social channels.
Pro tip: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to monitor competitors and identify gaps in your strategy. This has been a game-changer for me.
Analyzing the Acquisition Stage
The acquisition phase is all about the information and tools you offer. This information then allows prospects to become leads and get close to making a purchasing decision.
You'll want to answer these questions:
- What kind of content is on your website right now that can help make a customer make a decision?
- Do you have a blog? Is it easy to navigate and read?
- Have you created content offers that can entice a prospect to convert?
- Is your pricing available on your website? Do customers have the opportunity to call your sales team, should they choose or need to?
- Is your site easy to navigate, and is your service team easy to reach?
When I tackled this phase, I focused on addressing common pain points and offering actionable solutions through targeted blog posts. This approach not only boosted our SEO but also established our authority in the field. I also revamped our website's UI for smoother navigation and provided transparent pricing information to improve UX and build trust.
Pro tip: Implement heatmaps using tools like Hotjar to understand how users interact with your site. You can then use the insights to identify and address improvement areas.
Analyzing the Conversion Stage
In your analysis of the conversion phase, your goal is to understand where there might be barriers to making a purchase.
Here's my quick checklist to optimize the conversion stage:
- Is the purchasing process easy and straightforward? Do you offer an option for guest checkout, if applicable?
- Are there blockers to making a purchase? A buggy site, an outdated checkout page, or an insecure domain?
- Have you created a privacy policy that protects your customers from abuse and theft?
- Do you have a clear refund policy, product guarantee, or try-it-before-you-buy-it program that makes it easier to do business with you?
- Can your customers tell the quality of your product based on your product descriptions?
Pro tip: Use A/B testing for different elements of your checkout process to identify what works best for your audience. This iterative approach helped me continually improve the conversion rates.
Analyzing the Retention Stage
When analyzing the retention phase, you‘ll want to surface where you can make your customer’s experience better, so that they stay with you for longer.
Ask yourself these questions:
- How do your customers feel about your business?
- Have you made it easy for customers to do business with you again? For example, do you include a one-click reorder button in your user portal?
- Do your customers have a dedicated customer success manager who can help them navigate their new product, if applicable?
- How do customers like their new product after they purchase from you?
- Have you personalized the customer's experience so that they feel seen and appreciated by your brand? For example, do you deliver product recommendations based on their previous activity?
Here's what works for me: I regularly collect and act on customer feedback through surveys and direct interactions. Plus, use data analytics to personalize the customer journey.
One of my colleagues assigned dedicated customer success managers. This significantly strengthened our relationships with customers.
Pro tip: Implement a loyalty program that rewards repeat customers. According to a study by Accenture, 57% of consumers spend more on brands to which they are loyal.
Analyzing the Loyalty Stage
Inspiring customer loyalty is difficult. To improve this phase of the lifecycle, you'll want to analyze how likely it is that the customer will return for another purchase (and bring others along, too).
You'll want to answer these questions:
- Have you included social media follow buttons on your website and marketing emails?
- Do you engage with current customers in your social media profiles and comments?
- Do your current customers experience unique perks such as exclusive offers, discounts, and birthday gifts that can keep them coming back?
- Is there a referral program in place that makes it easy for your customers to bring you more prospects?
- Have you made your company easily accessible to your customers via email, phone, and live chat?
My top recommendation for this stage is to offer perks like exclusive discounts, early access to new products, and birthday gifts to make customers feel valued. You can also implement a referral program to incentivize existing customers to bring in new prospects.
While you're at it, ensure your company is easily reachable via email, phone, and live chat to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Now that you know how to analyze each stage of the customer lifecycle process, let’s talk through how you can manage your own.
How to Manage the Customer Lifecycle
1. Identify your target audience.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Reach
Before your customers discover your company, you need to determine who you're trying to reach. Rather than marketing to everyone, identify a specific target audience and create relevant content for your target audience.
I find that creating buyer personas is the easiest way to go about this. These personas are fictional characters that represent the demographic and behavioral characteristics of my customer base. They have names, backstories, and even hobbies. Everything I need to know about my customers is found in these personas. At the same time, I‘m also cautious of the fact that they’re fictional, and the needs of my customers may evolve.
Here's an example of a buyer persona template from HubSpot.
2. Share relevant content.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Reach
Give customers a reason to trust your company before they invest.
I put out a lot of useful, engaging, search-engine-optimized content so that my brand pops up more frequently when customers search for related topics. This includes original blog posts with industry insights, templates for email, infographics, marketing tools, and online courses like those from HubSpot Academy.
Later, when customers are looking for certain products or services, my company will be the first that comes to mind. This forms the basis of my inbound marketing strategy.
3. Provide self-service resources.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Acquisition
Once customers are familiar with my brand, I take it a step further by offering self-service resources that detail every aspect of my product. Providing comprehensive information makes potential customers' lives easier and reduces their need to contact customer service teams, helping them make well-informed decisions.
A knowledge base — a centralized online resource with extensive information about your products, services, and FAQs — is a great example here.
In fact, 91% of customers say they would use a knowledge base if it met their needs. Customers like to handle as much of the purchasing process on their own, so providing them with a means to educate themselves will further attract them to your brand.
4. Use proactive customer service.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Acquisition
Even if people haven't bought your product, they may still have questions about it or your company. They may not know how it works, or even what it does, and this can lead to potential customers walking away from a purchase.
Here's the thing: I don’t rely solely on self-service tools solely. We have a proactive sales team that reaches out to leads and offers trials or demos to familiarize potential customers with our products.
This approach not only promotes our product line but also helps build a personal connection with the customer.
5. Remove friction from the purchase stage.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Conversion
Build a simple, online ordering system. That way, the most difficult part of the purchasing process is the customer writing out their credit card number. While it may seem obvious; the easier it is to add items to a cart, add shipping and card information, and press “submit” — the more likely it is that a customer will make a purchase.
6. Provide support options during the purchasing decision.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Conversion
The purchase stage can be a high-stress moment for customers, depending on what I'm selling. No one wants to experience buyer's remorse, and this fear can create a major point of friction during the customer experience.
To counteract this, I provide support options during the purchase stage. For example, I added a live chat widget to my website that links directly to a support rep. This way, customers can easily contact my team with any questions while shopping. Instead of navigating away from the page they're on, they can simply click on the chat widget, ask a question, and return to their purchase.
7. Personalize the customer's experience after a purchase.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Retention
I make sure not to forget about my customers after they‘ve made a purchase. Ignoring them usually ensures they’ll be one-time customers.
To make them feel as cared for post-purchase as they are pre-purchase, I set up an automated email system that immediately thanks them for their orders. Our customer service team also personally reaches out after their product has shipped to ensure they got exactly what they wanted and are happy with their purchase.
8. Invest in automation.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Retention
Personalizing your post-purchase engagement is easy when your team only works with a handful of customers each day. But as your customer base grows, you'll need to scale your efforts accordingly to keep pace with customer demand.
This is where marketing automation comes into play. Pairing it with your contact base and CRM allows you to quickly access user information and turn it into personalized content.
I usually set up a workflow to automatically email customers whenever we release a new product or service. This keeps us in steady communication with our customers and helps maintain an active relationship with them.
[Video: https://youtu.be/JuE9HWY8gTg?si=VrTU7KvH098qcO0- ]
9. Invite customer reviews and encourage referrals.
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Loyalty
Sometimes, a customer just needs that final nudge to go the extra mile for our brand. I encourage satisfied customers to share their experiences by sending brief surveys via email, linking them to our Yelp or Google Reviews pages, and offering discounts or rewards for referrals.
You can follow a similar approach — just design an easy feedback process that doesn't.
Managing the customer lifecycle is critical to guide customers to your brand. By following these steps, I ensure we’re always maximizing the effects of client lifecycle management.
At every stage, you should follow best practices to ensure you’re getting the most of your efforts.
Customer Lifecycle Management: Best Practices
1. Personalize interactions with prospects and customers.
Every interaction — whether it’s a call, email, or chat — should be personalized to the customer’s stage in the lifecycle. For instance, you shouldn't send an early-lifecycle customer a discount offer to purchase your product when they may still be doing research and considering a competitor. Instead, send helpful resources that address their problems and how your product can solve them.
Pro tip: Using a CRM like HubSpot helps me here. By checking my customer’s browsing history, I can gauge their interests and readiness to buy. If they’re reading a specific blog post, I know what kind of research they’re doing and whether they’re close to making a purchase.
2. Create an omni-channel experience to reach customers where they are.
Effective lifecycle management means being present on all the platforms my customers use. If I’m only active on a few, I’ll miss out on crucial interactions and insights. Offering an omni-channel experience ensures I’m consistently engaging with customers across all their preferred channels.
3. Survey current customers to find out points of friction during the lifecycle.
I firmly believe my current customers are a goldmine for feedback. I send out surveys asking them how they found me, their feelings about my company, and any gaps they've noticed in the acquisition process. For instance, if they mention my website needs an update, I’ll prioritize that for the next quarter.
4. Survey prospects who never converted to find out what prevented a purchase.
Your next best source of truth? Prospects who never made a purchase.
Knowing what keeps your audience from converting is integral to removing roadblocks and points of friction. For instance, they might prefer a competitors’ product because of its ease of use, or maybe they felt that they couldn’t find enough information about your product online to make a purchase decision. Whatever it is, it’ll allow you to address these concerns and feed more customers into your flywheel.
5. Continue nurturing customers post-purchase.
The customer lifecycle doesn’t end with a purchase — retaining customers is often more impactful than acquiring new ones. I regularly check in with them, offer new perks, and make them feel valued. They chose us over competitors; my job is to show them they made the right choice.
The key to managing the customer lifecycle effectively is listening to your customers at every turn. That’s going to help you refine your strategy at the reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty lifecycle stages.
Next, let's go over some of the tools you can use to manage the customer lifecycle and encourage customer engagement.
Customer Lifecycle Software
Using customer lifecycle software can help you automate the client lifecycle management process. There's no need to remember each customer by name — so long as your software does it for you.
Here's some software you may need:
1. Content Management System
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Reach, Acquisition, Conversion
Most customers find companies online — meaning you'll need a website and, more specifically, a content management system. With a CMS, you'll be able to reach customers via search engines, acquire them with tailored content offers, and convert them with an easy-to-navigate site that facilitates the purchasing process.
It should also give prospects immediate access to your service team. You should have the option to add live chat, lead capture forms, and click-to-call buttons.
Here are some CMS resources to get you started:
2. Marketing Automation Tool
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, Retention
After acquiring or converting a prospect into a customer, it‘s time to nurture and retain them. You’ll need a marketing automation tool that allows you to send emails, gate content, provide personalized experiences, and segment your customer list based on behaviors and attributes.
Here are some marketing automation resources:
- How to Implement & Succeed With Marketing Automation
- The 14 Best Marketing Automation Software Tools Available to You
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Acquisition, Conversion, Retention, Loyalty
A CRM keeps track of prospect information and activity in a unified database. In their contact card, you'll have access to their name, email, and phone number, as well as their activity on your website.
A CRM comes in after the customer submits a form or signs up on your website. In other words, you'll use it after they enter the reach stage to collect leads, assign contacts to team members, and create automation workflows.
HubSpot allows you to keep all of your prospects' information in one simple-to-use platform, keep all conversations in one inbox, and automate follow-up emails. You can start with our all-in-one CRM for free, then scale up as your business grows.
Here are some CRM resources:
- How to Use a CRM: The Ultimate Guide
- The 11 Best CRM Tools for SMBs & Enterprises Alike
- 12 Key Benefits CRM Systems Provide to a Business
4. Customer Service (Help Desk) Software
Customer Lifecycle Stage: Conversion, Retention, Loyalty
Last but certainly not least, you'll want a customer service tool. While it only applies to the last three stages of the customer lifecycle, a help desk software is arguably the most important tool for customer lifecycle management. Customer service experiences can deter a customer from returning to you — worse, they might tell others to avoid doing business with you.
A customer service software tool should allow you to create tickets, communicate with customers across platforms, carry out customer experience surveys, and create a knowledge base.
Here are some customer service tool resources for client lifecycle management:
- What Is Customer Experience? (And Why It's So Important)
- Help Desk: What It Is & The Software That Supports It
- The 16 Best Customer Service Software Tools in 2021
Grow Your Business with Customer Lifecycle Management
My biggest takeaway is that understanding and optimizing each stage of the customer lifecycle is crucial for long-term success. Always listen to your customers and adapt your strategies based on their feedback.
Every customer progresses through the five stages of the customer lifecycle. While it seems like that process is a result of chance — like me, you can take control of your customers' lifecycles by analyzing your current performance, initiating lifecycle marketing campaigns, and using the right tools to manage each stage. Use customer lifecycle management to create a loyal customer base and grow your business exponentially.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Free Customer Journey Template
Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.
- Buyer's Journey Template
- Future State Template
- Day-in-the-Life Template
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
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