After 15+ years of leading relationship marketing initiatives, I've developed this blueprint for a comprehensive customer loyalty strategy. The focus is primarily on digital content subscriptions and SaaS, however these principles will work for any business looking to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value. Please share your comments and questions! My contact information is on slide 31 if you'd like a copy.

1. A Customer Loyalty Blueprint
for the Digital Market
Contact: Dave Ury, dave@lifecyclemarketing.net

2.  Overview 3
 Customer Intelligence 7
 Strategic Alignment 11
 Lifecycle Marketing 14
 Conclusions 20
 Appendix 23
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3. 3

4.  Digital content subscriptions and SaaS present an
exciting opportunity to build lasting, profitable
relationships with consumers
 But the business model has inherent challenges:
◦ Fast changing, competitive environment
◦ Easy come, easy go nature of digital relationships
◦ Lack of communication reach and frequency
 Lower customer engagement, loyalty and lifetime
value are often a strategic problem
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5. 5
Alignment
•Conflicting
objectives,
e.g. customer
acquisition impact
on churn
•Insight is gathered
but not leveraged
•Extraordinary
investments may
be needed
Measurement
•Difficulty
benchmarking or
testing
•Limited access to
product usage data
•Time lag between
execution and
measurable results
Assumptions
•Service is
accessible and
performing well
•Service has high
mind-share or
engagement
•Low usage is just a
feature awareness
issue

6.  To maximize customer LTV, digital subscription
businesses need a comprehensive loyalty strategy
encompassing:
1. Customer Intelligence = Behavior, Attitude, Demographics
2. Strategic Alignment = Right Customer, Right Product
3. Lifecycle Marketing = Execution of Customer Treatment
Strategy
 The good news is that these essential components can
be managed in parallel, and frequently there are quick
wins to be found
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7. 7

8. Customer value should drive priority, while all metrics should inform
product planning and customer treatment
8
Metric Description and Examples
Customer
Value
Define customer worth in terms of estimated profits or revenue.
The customer base is your most valuable asset, what is the asset
worth?
Behavior
• Buying: Purchasing additional products, subscription renewals
• Use: Range and frequency of product feature and content use
• Advocacy: Sharing/recommending to friends and colleagues
Attitude/
Perception
• What features and product attributes matter the most?
• Would they recommend to a friend?
• Why do they stop buying?
Performance Service delivery. Uptime, outages, support, etc.

9. 9
 Attrition by Cohorts
 Average Lifetime by Sales
Source
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9
Referrals
Website
Email
Paid Search
Affiliates
Average Lifetime Duration
(subscription in months)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Subscriber Attrition by
Tenure (subscription in months)
Jan Sign-ups
Feb Sign-ups
March Sign-ups

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Interactions Profile Update Communication
- Membership Log-ins
- Content Use
- Feature Use
- Purchases
- Campaign Response
- Customer Support
- Record at Individual-Level
- Enhance with Predictive
Modeling, Segmentation, etc.
- Event-Based Messages
- Alerts
- Offers
- Recommendations
- Customized UI

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12. Customer loyalty and the
resulting profitable
relationships are all
about delivering great fit
12
Understand the
profile and needs of
loyal, high-value
customers
Relevant to
high-value
prospects and
customers
Match the
needs of high-
value
customers
Right Customer
Right Product Right Message

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Executive: Oversight and Shared Goals
Marketing:
Acquire the right customer
Build the right product
Technology:
Integrate customer data with
tools that enable analysis and
personalized treatment
Support:
Prioritized service based on
customer value
Finance:
Most valuable asset = Customer
Customer LTV drives decisions

14. 14

15. Management of the customer relationship should be needs-
based, and oriented around lifecycle phases
15
Onboarding
Habituate &
Expand
Relationship
Advocacy
Customer Engagement
& Profitability
Customer Tenure
4
Save/
Win-Back

16. Objectives: Deliver the product, maintain excitement,
provide orientation
16
Event Description and Notes
Purchase Flow Easy, quick, and reinforce the sale
Order Confirmation
and Welcome
Single, comprehensive message confirming status and
providing recommendations on what to do next
Product Delivery and
Access
User’s first engagement with product. Track
“conversion” from sale to first use, performance
perceptions
User Guide, Tutorials
and Support
Make support easy to find. Show user how to get the
best value, even if UI is highly intuitive
Free Trial Conversion
Timely and relevant upsell for free trial users. Test to
determine optimum timing, message, and medium

17. Objectives: Make product part of customer’s routine and
expand use. Facilitate loyalty and up-sell or cross-sell
17
Event/Touch Point Description and Notes
Updates, News,
Alerts
Maximize awareness of new features, content or other
“news”. Communicate with targeted, relevant message
based on explicit or implicit interests
Tips and
Recommendations
Increase user’s perceived value of the product by
introducing/promoting features they haven’t used
X-Sell, Up-Sell
Once value has been established at initial service bundle,
encourage expanded relationship with relevant offer

18. Objectives: Develop a universe of vocal fans and help them
tell your story
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Event/Touch Point Description and Notes
Measure
Use Net Promoter or similar study to track progress
- How likely are you to recommend to a friend?
Understand
Motivation
Talk to your customers
- What elements of your service deliver the greatest value?
- Is this the kind of service you talk to your friends about?
- When is a good time to ask for referrals?
Track conversations and sentiment on social media
Facilitate Make sharing content and reviews highly visible and easy

19. Objectives: Re-engage customer, problem resolution, billing
optimization. Manage voluntary and involuntary churn
19
Event/Touch
Point
Description and Notes
Payment
Processing
For auto-renewals, billing optimization can be an easier
opportunity because it’s often just back-end processes changes
Customer
Support
Could apply at any point in lifecycle, although most contacts
occur when customer has an issue and is at-risk of cancelling
Proactive
Outreach
Infrequent or dormant users are usually at-risk. Communicate
high value features and relevant content
Cancellation
Requests
“Save” customer by uncovering the issue and offering a solution.
Manage through self-help or customer care agent
Renewal Notice Proactive reminder when customer must actively renew
Win-Back Targeted renewal offer to high-value, former customers

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21.  Know customer value
 Targeted acquisition
 Product design
 Meet performance expectation
 Relevant communication and treatment
 Test and learn
 Measure behavior (what) and attitudes (why)
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23. 23

24.  Situation: To better understand the drivers of early subscriber churn
at a digital content subscription provider, we examined account
sign-in data. We discovered that many former customers had never
signed-in to access their subscription during their entire tenure.
 Treatment Strategy: Proactively contacted these “orphaned”
customers via email and offered help with account access.
 Execution: Designed a series of tests covering email subject line
and content, and landing page content. Also presented alternative
content and treatment if customer had installed software client or
not. All tests were compared against control cell which received no
treatment.
 Results: Winning test combination increased first time sign-in by
46% and reduced 90 day attrition by 6% over control group.
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25.  Situation: Using web surveys at a mobile navigation service
provider, we identified key product features that were strong drivers
of customer satisfaction, and that a large share of users were not
aware of these features.
 Treatment Strategy: In addition to increasing visibility of these
features throughout the customer lifecycle, we initiated a monthly
email newsletter focused on these satisfaction-drivers.
 Execution: Each edition of the newsletter focused on a single
feature, highlighting use cases and benefits. To determine any
change in behavior, a series of four newsletters were sent to a test
group, while a control group didn’t receive the recurring campaign.
 Results: After 4 months, the test group receiving the monthly
newsletter had 27% lower attrition than the control group.
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26.  Situation: Significant churn at a digital music service was caused by
subscriber's credit cards failing to authorize and settle during
automated billing . While the billing success rate was already
relatively high, we determined that even small improvements could
yield meaningful revenue.
 Treatment Strategy: Focused on testing and optimizing back-end
billing processes.
 Execution: Tested and carefully measured any lift from
reconfiguring the timing and number of “recycling” attempts on
failed credit cards. Applied several other process changes identified
with the help of our payment processor, testing each in isolation.
 Results: Reduced monthly customer churn by .5%, and yielded
$600k/yr incremental lifetime revenue.
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27.  Situation: Based on primary research and customer support
feedback at a mobile GPS fleet management service, we identified
issues with on-boarding, product feature awareness and on-going
support for small and medium business customers.
 Treatment Strategy: Created a more robust CRM program. Helped
customers get needed support and maximum value.
 Execution: Deployed a series of new treatments including website
knowledge base, welcome email, new user activation guide, and
tutorial videos. Initiated new order status reports to carrier
partners, working with them to improve order processing success
and expedite timing from order placement to fulfillment.
 Results: Increased top-box customer satisfaction rating 32% yr/yr
and reduced contact center call volume by 15%.
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28.  Situation: At a digital music service, there were a broad set of factors
influencing customer churn, as well as significant resource and
organizational hurdles affecting our ability to better manage churn.
 Treatment Strategy: Addressed customer churn as strategic problem.
 Execution: Built a cross-functional team with performance goals tied
to customer loyalty. Segmented customers by behavioral and
attitudinal data, creating a profile of our high-value target customer.
Used same data to identify satisfaction drivers.
 Results: Delivered loyalty “blueprint” including a full-year budget
recommendation for the team. Gained support for key initiatives
including: email platform, data warehouse, music recommendation
engine, revised acquisition strategy, shift to agile development and
improved product performance, and range of relationship marketing
programs.
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29.  Situation: At a digital recipe provider there was an ongoing challenge
to increase Website retention among program members and
anonymous visitors. The goal was to increase advertising value to our
partners, particularly with high-value sponsored video playback.
 Treatment Strategy: Explore the of use banner ads on the web to
invite new and previous visitors to return to the site.
 Execution: Worked with Ad Ops Team to enable remarketing,
including preference-based targeting using previous video playback
history. Supplemented with less expensive content marketing for cost
and performance comparison. Monitored and optimized campaign
throughout testing period.
 Results: Significantly increased site engagement among remarketing
targets, including a 130% increase in page views. Achieved goal of
increasing overall video playback 5% during test.
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30.  Situation: At a travel network, a primary objective was to help
member travel agencies become more effective in managing their
clients and understand the value of mining customer data. The
challenge was to make segments simple and actionable for hundreds
of independent travel agencies and thousands of travel advisors.
 Treatment Strategy: Create segmentation based on a client’s buying
lifecycle, from prospect, to active to lapsed.
 Execution: Worked with team of agency owner/managers to co-
create a pilot program to test segment-based treatments using email
and outbound calls. The goals were to increase client engagement
and sales, and build agency advocacy for client segmentation.
 Results: Increased client engagement with their travel advisors,
highlighted by 74% increase in sales by former clients. Positive
results let to network-wide adoption of targeted treatment program.
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31. Dave Ury is Marketing Director and Principal of Customer Insight & Lifecycle
Marketing. He is an accomplished leader offering over 20 years of proven
success in relationship marketing including acquisition, CRM, and retention.
Before starting his consulting practice, Dave successfully led national marketing
programs and cross-functional teams for globally recognized brands including
Cox Communications, AT&T Broadband and RealNetworks. He earned a B.A. in
Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a
M.B.A. from the University of Colorado.
Dave can be reached at dave@lifecyclemarketing.net, or 425-999-7548
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