SKILL.md
Customer Lifecycle Marketer
Expert guidance for post-acquisition customer marketing — from onboarding through advocacy. Turn new customers into loyal advocates who grow your business.
Philosophy
Acquiring a customer is just the beginning. The real value comes from:
- Onboarding that sticks — First 30 days determine lifetime value
- Expansion over acquisition — Growing existing customers is 5-7x cheaper
- Retention as growth — Reducing churn by 5% can increase profits 25-95%
- Advocacy as acquisition — Happy customers are your best salespeople
How This Skill Works
When invoked, apply the guidelines in rules/ organized by:
onboarding-* — New customer activation and time-to-value
expansion-* — Upsell, cross-sell, and revenue expansion
retention-* — Churn prevention and customer health
advocacy-* — Referrals, reviews, and customer marketing
lifecycle-* — Segmentation and automated sequences
Core Frameworks
The Customer Lifecycle
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ ACQUIRE → ONBOARD → ACTIVATE → RETAIN → EXPAND → ADVOCATE │
│ │
│ ↑ │ │
│ └───────────────── REFERRAL ────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Expansion Revenue Model
| Type |
Description |
Example |
| Upsell |
Higher tier of same product |
Basic → Pro plan |
| Cross-sell |
Additional products |
Add-on features |
| Seat expansion |
More users |
Team growth |
| Usage expansion |
Increased consumption |
More API calls |
Customer Health Score Components
| Factor |
Weight |
Signals |
| Product usage |
30-40% |
Logins, feature adoption, depth |
| Engagement |
20-25% |
Email opens, support tickets, NPS |
| Growth signals |
15-20% |
Seat additions, usage trends |
| Relationship |
15-20% |
Exec sponsor, champion strength |
| Payment |
5-10% |
On-time, expansion, contract length |
Lifecycle Stages
| Stage |
Timeline |
Goal |
Key Metric |
| Onboarding |
Days 1-14 |
First value |
Activation rate |
| Adoption |
Days 15-60 |
Habit formation |
Feature adoption |
| Retention |
Day 60+ |
Ongoing value |
Renewal rate |
| Expansion |
Varies |
More value |
Net revenue retention |
| Advocacy |
Post-success |
Share value |
Referral rate |
Key Metrics
| Metric |
Formula |
Target |
| Activation Rate |
Activated / Signed Up |
60-80% |
| Time to Value |
Days to first "aha" moment |
<7 days |
| Net Revenue Retention |
(MRR + Expansion - Churn) / MRR |
100-120%+ |
| Gross Retention |
Retained MRR / Starting MRR |
85-95% |
| NPS |
Promoters - Detractors |
30-50+ |
| Referral Rate |
Referred / Total Customers |
10-30% |
Customer Segmentation Matrix
| Segment |
Characteristics |
Strategy |
| Champions |
High usage, high NPS |
Advocacy, referrals, expansion |
| Healthy |
Good usage, satisfied |
Expansion opportunities |
| At-risk |
Declining usage, low engagement |
Intervention, support |
| Dormant |
Minimal usage, no engagement |
Re-activation campaign |
| Churning |
Cancel signals, complaints |
Save team escalation |
Anti-Patterns
- Onboarding ends at signup — Real onboarding is 30-90 days
- Treating all customers the same — Segmentation drives relevance
- Reactive churn prevention — By cancellation it's too late
- Selling before value — Earn the right to expand
- Ignoring advocates — Your best channel left untapped
- One-size-fits-all emails — Lifecycle stage matters
- NPS without action — Survey fatigue with no follow-up