Lifecycle Management

Customers are at different lifecycle stages according to bond strength of their relationship with the company in terms of CRM management. Although there are various approaches in lifecycle stages naming, we can basically count four different stages; new acquisition, on boarding, growth, retention.

At the new acquisition stage as the first step of lifecycle stages, the company should aim at getting the customers’ attention and increasing their awareness towards the company and its products and services. At the acquisition stage, traditional marketing instruments and powerful social media features such as look-like audience are the best supportive assistance. More mass advertisement, more lead generation and potential customers.

At the onboarding stage, customers have realized the company and are ready to buy its products or services. Now it is the time to start a good relationship with customers. Welcome and thank you communications are used at this stage and introducing the product and services is the best way to turn the customers to purchase. First purchase is the aim of this stage.

At the growth stage, the company aim at retaining repeated purchases from the customers. At this stage, data analytics become more crucial than it ever was beforehand. The company should start analyzing customers’ data and design the offers, products and services that meet customers’ needs, demands and expectations. Personalized and real-time activities must be used to reach specific customer with the right offer, content from the right channel and in the right time.

At the retention stage, the company must follow up with the customers. Some customers have significant loyalty with the company while the others pretend to leave the company. The company needs to improve different approaches to deal with two different groups. It is a must to keep loyal customers satisfied at the maximum level. On the other side, developing strategy to regain the lost customers is a must, too.

Every briefly tackled stage above has its own strategical thinking and well-planned action tasks. In future articles I would like to talk about it with more details to elaborate each stage.

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