Customer lifecycle management

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Table of Contents

What is customer lifecycle management?

Customer lifecycle refers to a customer’s journey with a brand. Its stages start from when a customer first becomes aware of your brand, then acquiring that customer, converting them into customers, retaining them and ending up turning them into loyal customers. 

Customer lifecycle management is a process of gauging all the stages of a customer lifecycle and measuring their success based on defined metrics respectively. The main goal of managing the customer lifecycle is to measure business success as both are closely related.  

Most audiences choose to move forward on a specific path when it comes to making a buying decision from a brand for the first time. Customer lifecycle management can be used as a strategy which focuses on delivering relevant marketing messages triggered by customers moving into or being in a particular stage of their lifecycle. In this case, you are not manipulating the prospects but rather leading the customers in the right direction and providing them with correct information on the products and services they were looking for. 

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What are customer lifecycle management best practices?

In this section we will discuss, in short, the customer lifecycle management best practices which will ensure business success: 

  • Standardize customer data  

Gathering customer data helps in successful CLM processes, what’s even more beneficial is unifying or standardizing customer data. The data you gather from the customers through various channels and methods is not always organized and clean. Tools that can help you with the same can be web analytics platforms or CRM for customers.  

When you collect data, you will need all of it in one place and in a standard format. Using central customer data platforms such as Barilliance will help you organize your customer data.  

  • Key metrics for each stage  

Defining key metrics for each stage of the customer lifecycle helps you measure the success of your CLM. But since it is known to be a bit difficult to do so. Hence, these are some suggestions of metrics you can define for all the 5 stages of the customer lifecycle: 

  • Acquisition stage – focus on payback period for acquisition phase.  
  • Engagement and conversion stage – focus on the click through rates, usage and repeating purchases.  
  • Retention stage – measure the retention by paying attention to retention rates and its inverse churn. 
  • Loyalty stage – pay close attention to how much purchase rates increase and referral rate that enhance loyalty. 

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  • Segmentation  

Now that you have customer data in one place, it is now time to apply segmentation techniques to derive various customer segments that interact with your business.  

Behavioral segmentation tells you how your customers can be grouped based on their common behavior. For example, a segment of customers might take into consideration the price of the product while another segment might focus on the quality.  

  • Cohort analysis  

Cohort analysis uses behavioral segmentation to measure customer behavior over a period of time. Those defined behaviors are with respect to the metrics that we defined in step 2.  

Cohort analysis can accurately estimate CLV based on ongoing and optimization of various stages. It helps you understand the most profitable acquisition channels and the effectiveness of your loyalty program to enhance sales.  

  • Create compelling offers  

In this last phase, you need to create compelling offers for the customers. Now that you know customer segments based on behaviors and stages, you can begin to create customized incentives to take the customers through their journey.  

Based on various customer segments, you can provide personalized discounts and experience which will keep them on the edge and engaged with your brand. 

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Customer lifecycle software

You will need customer lifecycle software to analyze the interactions that happen in all the stages of a customer’s journey with your business and give clear and understandable results for you to use for the betterment of your brand.  

These tools help you to identify issues of customers in a particular lifecycle stage and address those issues along the way. In this section of the article, we will discuss some of the customer lifecycle software and tools you can use to monitor and manage customers through all the 5 customer lifecycle stages.  

  • Omnisend  

Omnisend is a platform designed by keeping in mind the needs of ecommerce businesses. It serves as a marketing automated platform which delivers automated email, SMS and other channels with an easy-to-use interface. 

With Omnisend solution, you can manage your complete lifecycle by analyzing your customer data smartly segmenting your audience. Omnisend platform is as simple as creating the message in the editor, scheduling omnichannel workflows and letting the platform earn the revenue on auto-pilot.  

  • Pipedrive  

Pipeline is a visual representation platform which represents your sales process with an easy customization of needs and suits. There are pre-defined templates which you can use as is, input your customers and see the visualization of every step.

Pipedrive is an easy-to-use tool which is beneficial for small businesses. You can ensure customer engagement by being on top of the sales processes and measuring and monitoring them for improvements simultaneously. Although Pipedrive is efficient in its functions, it doesn’t provide you with automated marketing processes like Omnisend, but is helpful in providing sales solutions. 

  • Hubspot  

Similar to Omnisend, Hubspot is another big name in the ecommerce industry known for providing automated marketing solutions. Hubspot CRM (customer relationship management) allows businesses to gather customer data, derive valuable insights, visualize sales funnels and plan strategies and plans for customer retention. 

The platform makes it easier for businesses to segment customers based on their needs and wants and serve them accordingly depending on extra time and attention for those who might need it. One of the many advantages of the Hubspot ecosystem is that it allows you to have CLM, marketing, sales and customer support all in one place which makes it easier to monitor and measure.

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  • Zoho  

Zoho is considered a power packed suite for successfully managing your entire business, although its flagship product is Zoho CRM. Let’s look at some of the factors of Zoho in customer lifecycle: 

  • Easy lead management for the awareness stage of the customer lifecycle 
  • Marketing automation to nurture and make sales 
  • Contact management for easy segmentation of customers 
  • Omnichannel possibilities 
  • Range of powerful analytics

Apart from all those benefits, more of the add-ons can be its capability to make accurate forecasts based on the data it collects, which allows you to plan ahead with confidence.  

Another benefit is the built-in gamification, which rewards fun little trophies when jobs are completed and targets achieved.

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