Lifecycle marketing is the practice of delivering targeted messaging, content, and offers to customers based on where they are in the product relationship. Stages include new, activated, engaged, at-risk, churned, returning, and advocate, typically executed through email, in-product messaging, SMS, push, and increasingly RCS. Stage transitions are triggered by customer behavior rather than calendar dates. It is the operational layer that turns a customer lifecycle model from a slide into actual messages that fire at the right moment.
The canonical stages most lifecycle programs cover: onboarding (the first 7 to 30 days, focused on activation), engagement (steady-state value reinforcement, feature adoption, education), ex...