Welcome to the 24th issue of Always Be Learning. The newsletter that requires some light stretching before reading to prevent injury.

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To succeed in marketing, you need to understand the way your customers think.

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If you want to understand your customers and prospects better, start reading his newsletter today 👇

Today's Marketing Breakdown:

In today's issue, I'm going to show you how to nail every part of your customer's lifecycle.

First, let's get aligned on the definition of this popular buzzword phrase:

What the heck is the customer lifecycle?

"Customer lifecycle" - we've all heard this one before...

We toss this phrase around like it's a "one-size-fits-all" type of deal.

But in reality, it's different for every single company.

I've worked at these 3 companies over the last 7+ years:

• FanDuel - sports gambling

• PetHonesty - dog supplements

• The Beard Club - men's grooming

If you asked me to describe the customer lifecycle for each of these businesses, you'd get 3 VERY different answers.

So let's try to simplify this as much as possible.

My definition of the customer lifecycle as a retention marketer:

I like choosing the email capture date as the start of the customer lifecycle because you control the narrative and timing from there. It's more predictable.

Before the email capture, the customer journey could look something like this:

• Day 1: prospect sees ad on Facebook.

• Day 14: prospect sees ad on YouTube.

• Day 16: prospects visits your site, pokes around and leaves.

• Day 42: prospect hears coworkers talking about your company at the office.

• Day 42: prospect visits your site and makes a purchase.

There are an infinite amount of possibilities for how a potential customer might interact with your brand before buying.

But after the email capture date, things start to become more clear.

Let me explain...

How to map out your customer's lifecycle

1. It starts with the email capture

From the time you capture their email, there are 3 possibilities of what happens next:

• Makes purchase

• Needs more convincing

• Just browsing, will likely never buy

You only really need to concern yourself with the top two bullets.

2. "Makes purchase" vs. "Needs more convincing"

Makes purchase: this customer has taken the leap and are now off to customer onboarding

Needs more convincing: this prospect is on the fence, but needs a few more details to push them across the finish line.

You do this with:

• Discounts

• Product education

• Social proof and testimonials

3. Customer onboarding

Your customer made their first purchase and is now learning how to use your product or service.

Important: This time period can vary greatly by business.

e.g. At FanDuel, customer onboarding is just a few days. A user signs up, deposits, and starts betting in a very short amount of time.

At The Beard Club, most customers start out on monthly shipments, meaning the customer onboarding cycle lasts roughly 30 days.

This stage is the most important part of building long-term loyalty. It needs to be personalized accordingly. I dove deep on this topic in a recent newsletter (check it out here).

4. Repeat customers

For most companies, the goal is to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

This is the final stage of the customer lifecycle and it lasts as long as you keep your customers coming back.

At this stage, you start thinking about things like:

• How do we reward loyal customers?

• What products can we upsell/cross-sell?

• How much product do they have on hand?

• How long has it been since their last order?

Similar to the customer onboarding stage, the repeat customer stage varies from business to business.

• Active customer (orders regularly)

• At-risk customer (in danger of churning)

• Lapsed customer (has already churned)

Each segment requires different messaging and a different cadence of communication.

Bottom Line:

"Customer lifecycle" is a buzzword phrase that gets tossed around often.

It takes a different shape based on the nuances of your business.

At the end of the day, the goal is simple: you want customers that stick around for the long term.

Knowing the ins and outs of your customer's lifecycle helps you send the right messages at the right time to keep them around.

There you have it! 1 marketing tip to help grow your DTC business.

Here’s what else I’m checking out in the DTC marketing world:

1. Use the Rule of 3 to persuade anyone (click here)

2. 7 questions to ask before building something (click here)

3. The brilliance of how Steve Jobs positioned and differentiated the iPhone (click here)

Hope this has been helpful!

If you enjoyed it, please forward it along to your marketing friends.

See ya next Thursday,

Joe

P.S. Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Join the waitlist for my Email Marketing 101 course (click here). Next cohort is in late September!

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