What is customer lifecycle management?
Customer lifecycle management is strategically managing a customer’s journey with your brand, from their first interaction through retention and advocacy.
For B2C businesses, this means creating meaningful, personalised experiences that drive trust, loyalty, and repeat revenue across several touchpoints and micro-moments.
Why is customer lifecycle management important for B2C businesses?
For B2C marketers, building strong, lasting relationships with customers is more challenging than ever. Consumers today expect personalised, cohesive experiences across every brand touchpoint. This includes social media messages, welcome series, SMS messages, chatbots, in-store experiences, and more.
Customer lifecycle management isn’t just about managing transactions—it’s about nurturing deeper relationships that drive loyalty and sustainable growth.
Businesses that effectively manage their customer journey to create exceptional customer experiences often experience the following as a result:
- Increased customer retention and lifetime value (CLV).
- The ability to quickly deliver tailored experiences that meet changing customer expectations.
- Maximised ROI with more resource efficiency.
- The creation of brand advocates who help grow your business organically (i.e. word of mouth).
The 5 stages of the customer lifecycle
Thankfully, marketers use a 5-step, standardised customer lifecycle to visualise their customer journey.
1. Awareness
The awareness stage is when potential customers first learn about your brand. Whether they use social media, search engines, or word of mouth, the goal is to capture their attention and spark curiosity.
Here are some awareness strategies to consider:
- Targeted advertising: Use pay-per-click (PPC) ads and social media campaigns to reach your audience.
- Educational content: Share articles, videos, and infographics that address people’s pain points and goals.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO): Optimise your website for search queries related to your product or industry.
2. Consideration
Once they’re aware of your brand, customers enter the consideration phase. They’ll compare products, read reviews, and consider prices before deciding.
Here are some consideration strategies to consider:
- Social proof: Showcase social proof, such as user-generated content (UGC), reviews, and case studies, on your website and marketing assets.
- High-converting email forms: Encourage email sign-ups with compelling offers to nurture people through personalised messaging.
- Social media engagement: Interact with people and share valuable content to keep your brand top of mind.
3. Conversion
At this stage, consumers are about to become customers. A marketer’s focus is on nudging those people toward a sale.
Here are some conversion strategies to consider:
- Offer incentives: Provide limited-time discounts or free shipping to nudge hesitant buyers.
- Tackle objections: Use surveys or feedback to understand common concerns and address them in your messaging.
- Feature UGC: Highlight real customer experiences on your marketing channels to build trust.
4. Fulfillment
After the sale, you’ll want to make sure customers feel good about their decision and that they get the product they ordered in a timely fashion. This stage of the customer lifecycle lays the foundation for repeat business and long-term customer loyalty.
Here are some fulfillment strategies to consider:
- Send transactional emails: Send clear order and shipping confirmations. Use these emails to show appreciation and build excitement.
- Offer proactive support: Make it easy for customers to contact your support team if they have questions or concerns.
- Enhance the unboxing experience: Invest in thoughtful, sustainable packaging that aligns with your brand values and leaves a positive impression.
5. Loyalty
The loyalty stage is technically the last stage of the customer lifecycle. It is about turning satisfied customers into loyal advocates and repeat purchasers. When customers love your brand, they’re more likely to buy again, recommend your products, and join loyalty programs.
Here are some loyalty strategies to consider:
- Retention campaigns: Use personalised email and SMS campaigns to engage customers with exclusive offers.
- Loyalty programs: Reward repeat purchases with points, discounts, or VIP perks.
- Reviews and referrals: Satisfied customers are often happy to share their experiences or recommend your brand.
Remember that your customer lifecycle stages may expand beyond loyalty. For some businesses, the lifecycle can even start over again after this phase.
Challenges in customer lifecycle management
Managing the customer lifecycle is critical for business success, but it’s not without challenges—especially for B2C businesses dealing with diverse customer bases and high expectations.
Here are some of the most common problems businesses face:
- Data silos: One of the most significant challenges in managing the customer lifecycle is getting a unified view of the customer. With data spread across multiple tools and platforms, you may not have the information you need in one place to personalise brand experiences across all customer lifecycle stages.
- Lack of automation: Without automation, managing customer interactions across lifecycle stages can be time-consuming and inefficient. Manual processes increase the risk of delays and inconsistent messaging.
- High expectations: Today’s customers expect brands to deliver personalised, timely, and frictionless experiences. Falling short of these expectations can lead to churn and negative word of mouth.
Why you should use Klaviyo for customer lifecycle management
Klaviyo is the marketing automation platform and central source of data truth for more than 130,000 brands globally. The platform includes out-of-the-box automations and flows to help you address every step of the customer lifecycle, including welcome series, browse abandonment series, cart abandonment series, post-purchase series, product review flows, product replenishment flows, and more.
Klaviyo also consolidates your messages in a single place and integrates with more than 300 third-party tools to ensure you build a single customer view for every customer from day one.
This means you can more easily identify variations to the standard customer lifecycle journey within your data, and create more meaningful and compelling messages and flows for your unique customer base.
Klaviyo AI also helps you to identify segments ripe for even more custom messaging, and predicts a customer’s repeat next purchase and churn events to help you address opportunities or challenges throughout the customer lifecycle proactively.
Sign up for Klaviyo today or schedule a demo to see how we can help your business grow.