It’s well known among marketing professionals that customers go through a series of stages – a lifecycle – in their relationship with vendors. Despite differences in customers and the vendors with whom they do business, the lifecycle stages are pretty universal: Awareness (also known as Attraction), Consideration, Purchase, Retention and Advocacy. What differs is how long prospects remain in each stage, what kind of experience they have while they’re there, and what must happen to advance the relationship to the next stage. Marketing is ideally the steward of the customer journey, and it faces several challenges in fulfilling this responsibility. One of the most formidable challenges is the self-directed nature of the journey. The norm is for prospective customers to start their journey in stealth mode, making significant progress on their own without marketing and sales aid, influence or assistance. Marketing has historically presided over the Awareness stage, and together with sales, the Consideration stage. But now, customers often pass through both of these stages undetected, and marketers understandably feel some anxiety over their diminished influence in these lifecycle stages. While the stages of the customer journey are well known, from the customers’ perspective traversing them is sometimes a bumpy ride. Customers don’t view their relationship with vendors as a series of stages, each with a different conductor who may or may not know what transpired in a previous stage. Customers want a smooth journey and expect vendors to know the history of their relationships and the content already consumed; they don’t want to have to re-explain their needs and interests each time they transition to a new stage. They prefer seamless, consistent quality across all touch points and stages of the relationship, regardless of the device or channels through which interaction occurs. They value one-to-one, contextually relevant engagement that is sensitive to who they are, what they do and where they’re going.

2. 3
5
Introduction
Ownership & Understanding
7
9
Customer Lifecycle Marketing Benefits & Challenges
Lifecycle Marketing Critical Success Factors
Table of Contents
© 2016 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
License our research to fuel your content marketing programs.
Contact us at info@demandmetric.com or +1 (866) 947-7744
2Lifecycle Marketing Report - August 2016
11 The Revenue Impact of Customer Lifecycle Marketing
12 Lifecycle Marketing Action Plan
13 Acknowledgements

3. INTRODUCTION
It’s well known among marketing professionals that customers go through a series of
stages – a lifecycle – in their relationship with vendors. Despite differences in
customers and the vendors with whom they do business, the lifecycle stages are
pretty universal: Awareness (also known as Attraction), Consideration, Purchase,
Retention and Advocacy. What differs is how long prospects remain in each stage,
what kind of experience they have while they’re there, and what must happen to
advance the relationship to the next stage.
Marketing is ideally the steward of the customer journey, and it faces several
challenges in fulfilling this responsibility. One of the most formidable challenges is the
self-directed nature of the journey. The norm is for prospective customers to start
their journey in stealth mode, making significant progress on their own without
marketing and sales aid, influence or assistance. Marketing has historically presided
over the Awareness stage, and together with sales, the Consideration stage. But now,
customers often pass through both of these stages undetected, and marketers
understandably feel some anxiety over their diminished influence in these lifecycle
stages.
While the stages of the customer journey are well known, from the customers’
perspective traversing them is sometimes a bumpy ride. Customers don’t view their
relationship with vendors as a series of stages, each with a different conductor who
may or may not know what transpired in a previous stage. Customers want a smooth
journey and expect vendors to know the history of their relationships and the content
already consumed; they don’t want to have to re-explain their needs and interests
each time they transition to a new stage. They prefer seamless, consistent quality
a c r o s s a l l t o u c h p o i n t s a n d s t a g e s o f t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p ,
regardless of the device or channels through which interaction occurs. They value
one-to-one, contextually relevant engagement that is sensitive to who they are, what
they do and where they’re going.
© 2016 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
License our research to fuel your content marketing programs.
Contact us at info@demandmetric.com or +1 (866) 947-7744
3Lifecycle Marketing Report - August 2016

4. INTRODUCTION
This description of seamless, consistent engagement across the full customer lifecycle
is not the norm. Demand Metric research on customer lifecycle marketing has shown
that less than 20 percent of organizations are currently marketing to their customers
across the entire lifecycle of the relationship. Figure 1 shares the current state of
customer lifecycle marketing from a recent Demand Metric study on the subject.
© 2016 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
License our research to fuel your content marketing programs.
Contact us at info@demandmetric.com or +1 (866) 947-7744
4
12%
15%
23%
9%
22%
19%
Not familiar with it
Familiar but not doing
Considering adopting it
Marketing in some stages; no plans for all
Marketing in some stages; plans for all
Marketing in all stages of the lifecycle
Approaches to Customer Lifecycle Marketing
Figure 1: Less than 20 percent of companies studied are marketing
across all stages of the customer lifecycle.
Rather than experience a seamless path through every stage of their journey, the
current situation is that customers often encounter some turbulence, unintentionally,
but turbulence nonetheless. This guide will help you guide your customers to the
smooth air during their journeys. It explores the issues of ownership, benefits,
challenges, impact and critical success factors of customer lifecycle marketing.
Lifecycle Marketing Report - August 2016
“Customer Lifecycle Marketing”, Demand Metric Benchmark Study, November 20151
1

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Demand Metric is grateful to Marketo for sponsoring this report.
About Marketo
Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading engagement marketing software and
solutions designed to help marketers develop long-term relationships with their
customers - from acquisition to advocacy. Marketo is built for marketers, by marketers
and is setting the innovation agenda for marketing technology. Marketo puts
Marketing First. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices around the world,
Marketo serves as a strategic partner to large enterprise and fast-growing small
companies across a wide variety of industries. To learn more about Marketo’s
Engagement Marketing Platform, LaunchPoint® partner ecosystem, and the vast
community that is the Marketo Marketing Nation®, visit www.marketo.com.
About Demand Metric
Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership
community of over 80,000 marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries.
Offering consulting methodologies, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing
tools and templates, Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing
community plan more efficiently and effectively, answer the difficult questions about
their work with authority and conviction and complete marketing projects more
quickly and with greater confidence, boosting the respect of the marketing team and
making it easier to justify resources the team needs to succeed.
To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit: www.demandmetric.com.
© 2016 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
License our research to fuel your content marketing programs.
Contact us at info@demandmetric.com or +1 (866) 947-7744
13Lifecycle Marketing Report - August 2016