Enhancing Brand Loyalty Through Customer Lifecycle Management

You caught your target customer’s attention and convinced them to buy your product.  

Now what? 

One purchase is not enough to build a long-lasting relationship that could lead to a significant boost in profits. It’s what comes next that determines your brand’s success – or lack thereof. 

We’re of course talking about an intricate process called customer lifecycle management (CLM) that helps you transform a one-off client into a repeat customer. But how? Here’s all the info you need on the benefits of customer lifecycle marketing and the best strategies to reap them. 

What is Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer lifecycle management (CLM) refers to the process of managing a customer journey and applying metrics that assess your brand’s success. From initial contact to post-purchase support, CLM helps you understand your customers better and optimize your strategy according to the results.

The process consists of several phases, commonly known as customer lifecycle stages. Starting from the first time a client becomes aware of your products and finishing at the holy grail of modern marketing – the coveted loyal customer – every stage focuses on different challenges and needs that pop up whenever a prospect reaches another level of engagement. 

With CLM, these steps can be meticulously tracked and analyzed so that you know which actions can help you guide the customer toward a long-term relationship with your brand. Since most customer journeys are similar, there are certain strategies – like offering personalized content at certain points of the sales funnel – that can push your client in the direction you want.

Why is Customer Lifecycle Important?

With so many options at our customers’ fingertips, understanding their behaviors and needs is more important than ever. The era of data continues, with data-driven businesses being 23 times more likely to get new clients. The only catch is that knowledge is not enough – it’s what we do with it that matters. In fact, 62% of retailers claim that their competitive advantage comes from data analytics AND information. 

And that’s when customer lifecycle management comes in handy. By applying metrics to each stage of a consumer journey, you get insight into your client’s expectations and the strategies that work (or, just as importantly, those that don’t) to appease them. It's a great way to not only obtain, but also utilize customer data and put each consumer at the center of your business strategy.

6 Benefits of Customer Lifecycle Management

As you can see, customer lifecycle marketing can offer several advantages to any business – specifically when it comes to large enterprises. 

Here are the most important benefits you can expect after implementing a customer loyalty management strategy: 

• Enhanced & personalized customer experience
• Higher customer retention
• Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Customer churn prevention
• Boost in sales and profitability
• Improved customer segmentation

Customer Lifecycle Management vs. Customer Loyalty Management

Customer loyalty is one of the desired outcomes of customer loyalty management. However, taking care of customer loyalty is not the same as taking care of customer lifecycle, as these are two distinct processes. Though both customer loyalty management and customer lifecycle management fall under the umbrella term of customer relationship management, each has a different focus and requires a different strategy.

6 Stages of Customer Lifecycle Management

As mentioned before, CLM consists of 6 basic phases at different points of a client’s journey. Below, we’re diving into the specifics of each customer lifecycle stage:

1. Awareness

A potential customer becomes aware of your company’s services or products– whether through advertisement or a quick Google search.

2. Engagement

The potential customer becomes a lead. By contacting your company through a website, phone call, or any other channel, the prospect demonstrates their interest in your business and its services. 

3. Purchase

After learning all the necessary info about your company, the prospect decides to make a purchase. 

4. Retention/Loyalty

With the first purchase achieved, it’s time to turn it into a long-lasting relationship. That usually entails fostering communication and engagement to build loyalty. 

5. Growth

Customers become attached to your brand and make more purchases while simultaneously signing up for loyalty programs and other initiatives your business offers.

6. Advocacy

Satisfied customers become promoters by recommending the brand, leaving positive reviews, or referring others.

How Do You Boost Loyalty With Customer Lifecycle Management?

The customer lifecycle management process takes care of your customer from start to finish – which is why it can be an excellent tool to enhance your brand loyalty. By focusing on the above-mentioned stages, CLM naturally checks all the boxes you need to build stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships.

The problem is… that happens only if the CLM strategy is actually good. So, what does it need to boost loyalty? 

Here are the most important customer lifecycle marketing strategies to implement:

Prioritizing communication

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, turns out that nailing communication with potential customers is much more complicated than it seems, and for many web users, it leaves a lot to desire.

For example, 70% of consumers are frustrated with brands sending irrelevant e-mails, and a staggering 72% say that they only engage when their messages are personalized. By fostering the right type of communication – including valuable product content and post-purchase customer care – you invest in a relationship with the customer and increase your chance of a loyalty boost.

Personalized customer experience

Speaking of personalization… it is no secret that it’s key to winning customers over. A 2018 Epsilon study proves that 80% of clients are more likely to purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences. 

After all, everybody loves to think they’re special. Have you seen how popular the end-of-the-year Spotify Wrapped initiative is? Deriving from emotional engagement and high-level personalization, the Spotify idea hits the nail on the head and is definitely something to get inspired by. 

Whether through personal recommendations or gamified mobile apps – implementing personalization in your customer lifecycle marketing strategy is a surefire way to make customers stay for the long term. 

Rewarding loyalty milestones

By utilizing CLM data, a company can easily reward customers for each loyalty milestone. Doesn’t matter if it’s signing up for a loyalty program, making the 10th purchase, or achieving another tier in an app game – the key is to make people feel seen and appreciated for choosing your brand.

Customer lifecycle analysis is an excellent tool for that because it can help you choose the type of reward that your clients will actually be interested in. It’s definitely worth focusing on since 66% of consumers modify their brand spending to maximize loyalty benefits.

Focus on engagement

Engaged customers are twice as profitable as their disengaged counterparts. That’s when customer lifecycle management can be your big asset, as the strategy can help you proactively engage with clients at different lifecycle stages and nurture long-term loyalty. 

A great example of this is Starbucks’s mobile app, which incorporates gamification elements such as progress bars and milestones to help customers track their achievements and work towards higher tiers. This boosts their motivation to reach the next level – and makes them more attached to the brand. 

Seamless omnichannel experience

By integrating customer lifecycle marketing across all customer touchpoints, a company can fulfill the very “in” need of providing clients with an omnichannel experience. Modern consumers want the lines between physical and digital shopping blurred. The numbers don’t lie – brands that know how to provide this win. 

In fact, companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies report an 89% retention rate compared to 33% of companies with weak omnichannel plans.

Just take a look at Amazon, which offers its clients a seamless cross-channel experience by ensuring consistency and personalized experience regardless of where the shopping takes place – either through browsing products on their website, using a mobile app, or even interacting with Alexa. And clearly, it pays off.

The Future of Customer Lifecycle Management

While the benefits of customer lifecycle management may already seem impressive, they will become even more promising. Like many other branches and aspects of modern marketing, CLM is poised for a significant transformation powered by artificial intelligence. AI is already revolutionizing the tools and technology we use to handle and optimize customer lifecycle management at each stage of the customer journey. 

For example – AI reduces response time, which will enhance post-purchase customer care. Predictive analytics will help us anticipate our customers’ needs, which will enable marketers to offer more fitting recommendations and create more personalized experiences. 

AI-driven algorithms will give us better insight into both industry and consumer behavior, which will facilitate targeted marketing campaigns and customer segmentation. And these are just a few solutions that we have already seen put into action – in the future, we can expect more AI tools that will be possible to integrate into CLM for enhanced customer loyalty and long-term business growth. 

By investing in customer lifecycle marketing, you can achieve what most retail (though not just retail) brands aspire to obtain – long-lasting customer loyalty. Turning existing customers into brand ambassadors is no easy task, which is why there are a lot of tools you can use to manage and track customer loyalty lifecycle better. Need help finding one? Check out our AI-powered Loyalty Marketing Platform.