10 tips for developing scalable customer retention and lifecycle programs

This article comes from Kevin Lau’s insightful talk at our virtual Customer Marketing Summit in 2024, check out his full presentation.

At the time of the presentation, he was the Sr. Director of Global Customer Engagement at F5.

Retention is at the heart of sustainable growth. 

I'm Kevin Lau, and I’ve spent years building programs that turn first-time customers into long-term advocates. In roles at companies like Adobe, F5, and now Freshworks, I’ve seen how a structured, cross-functional approach to retention can transform customer relationships and drive significant business outcomes. 

In this article, I’ll walk you through my top 10 tips for developing scalable customer retention and lifecycle programs, covering everything from creating a foundational strategy to securing stakeholder buy-in and measuring results. 

Getting started with retention strategy

When it comes to retention, the first step is to create a clear strategy. This includes obtaining alignment and engagement from key stakeholders. 

Retention begins the moment a customer starts using your product, so onboarding is essential. Developing a multichannel approach is also crucial, and you’ll need the right resources — so don’t be afraid to ask for additional headcount or funding if needed.

At F5, we began building our customer engagement function around retention about a year ago, and I got to see first hand hand how impactful this focus can be. 

Developing a retention framework

For any retention marketing strategy to succeed, I believe a framework or blueprint is essential. At a high level, a retention strategy should be cross-functional, involving teams from product, sales, and customer success to drive the program effectively. 

Here’s a basic structure to guide you:

1. Learn - Start by understanding the essentials: What does your customer need? What are the technical requirements? Take inventory of what you know.
2. Listen - Listen proactively to successful customers. Understand their experience and map out the path to success.
3. Create and deliver content - Develop content that’s both peer-generated and tailored to the right channels. This could involve user-generated content, case studies, or best practices.
4. Measure and optimize - Continuously track the success of your implementations. Evaluate what’s working and adjust as needed.

Tailoring the retention strategy to customer stages and personas

Retention isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach; it must adapt to various customer stages and personas. For instance:

• Onboarding phase - When customers are new, focus on ensuring a smooth onboarding experience that clarifies the immediate steps they need to take.
• Familiarization phase - For customers who have been around for six months or so, reinforce their commitment by helping them derive continuous value.
• Advanced phase - Long-term customers (over a year) benefit from deeper engagement, like showcasing advanced use cases or new features.

It’s also important to think about who you’re engaging: Is it the end-user, the decision-maker, or an executive? Tailor your retention strategy based on these personas to ensure it resonates effectively.

10 steps to build a retention marketing strategy

Here are the ten steps that have consistently proven effective:

1. Learn and understand the requirements
2. Listen to customers and map the path to success
3. Create your charter and program strategy
4. Educate your stakeholder teams
5. Showcast what great programs can look like
6. Deliver a minimum viable program (MVP)
7. Measure the results and continuously optimize
8. Socialize your wins with stakeholders
9. Develop an expansion and future vision
10. Ask for what you need to accelerate results

By using these steps as a foundation, you’ll have a robust, flexible approach to developing and scaling a customer retention program that not only retains customers but also nurtures them into advocates. 

Let’s look into each of these 10 steps in more detail.

Tip 1: Learn and understand the requirements

The first step is simple, but it’s often overlooked: Ask the most basic questions upfront. 

Gather your team in a room, facilitate a workshop, and get everyone aligned by discussing, “What are we ultimately trying to solve?” Define the jobs that need to be done and identify the most pressing pain points. Ask, “What incremental change would yield a significant impact for our customers?”

Additionally, consider what can be realistically accomplished within a 90-day timeframe. Quarterly planning is common in most organizations, and defining achievable goals within this period helps keep efforts focused. 

At F5, when  we entered our FY24 and FY25 planning cycles, we were thinking strategically about what measurable results we can demonstrate by the time the next QBR or executive leadership report rolls around.

Identify and organize your requirements

When I talk about “requirements,” I’m referring to four main areas: data, technology, stakeholder engagement, and customer access. 

Here’s a closer look at each:

Data and analytics

First, understand the data and technology available to you. Collaborate with your data and operations teams to determine which reports and analyses are accessible. For instance:

• Win/loss reports or churn analysis data from sales ops
• Telemetry data on product usage, which might highlight onboarding issues or low engagement points
• Survey data like Net Promoter Scores (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), or customer effort scores (CES)

Having access to these metrics provides insights into customer behavior and helps pinpoint areas where improvement in retention could yield significant returns.

Inventory of your tech stack

Retention marketing is inherently multichannel. Take an inventory of your existing tools to understand which technologies can support your efforts at scale. 

Channels to consider include email, in-product messaging, webinars, and self-service options. What technologies are already in place, and which ones could be optimized or expanded to strengthen your retention strategy?

Stakeholder engagement

Retention is a team effort. Meeting with your key stakeholders to understand their current challenges and expectations is crucial. Retention involves departments across the organization, from customer success to product to marketing, so seek their support and input. 

Think of yourself as the quarterback — driving awareness and coordinating efforts while ensuring that each team understands their role in retention.

Self-service and educational resources

One way to empower customers is by making resources easily accessible. Educational assets can include:

• Community forums
• Knowledge bases
• Video tutorials or product guides
• Training academies or certifications
• User-generated content from current customers

These resources allow customers to find answers independently, reducing friction and building confidence in their use of your product.

The value of direct customer access

Direct access to customers is invaluable. Engage with a pool of advocates, top accounts, or participants in an executive sponsor program. Hearing directly from customers, whether through interviews, surveys, or feedback sessions, brings the retention strategy to life. 

This kind of customer input is the holy grail, making the program more dynamic and directly informed by customer needs and experiences.

Tip 2: Listen to customers and map the path to success

When it’s time to talk to your customers, there are several ways to do it: one-on-one, in small groups, or in larger group settings. 

Conversations can even take place asynchronously through recordings. 

By listening to these interactions, you can gain insight into customers' main goals and challenges.

The goal here is to identify their “hot buttons” — the core issues they’re trying to solve and the areas where improvements could enhance their experience. Moreover, explore how you can involve these customers in future initiatives. 

One of the most impactful approaches I’ve seen in my career was at Adobe, where we invited our most advanced customers — known as Marketo or Adobe Champions — to guide newer users. These champions not only excelled at using the technology but also provided peer-led education and shared experiences that enriched our customer community.

Mapping customer friction points

Direct customer engagement also allows you to map out common friction points. At a high level, some of these might include:

• Sales to CS handoff: Ensuring that customers feel smoothly transitioned from sales to customer success without missing critical information.
• Onboarding and implementation: Addressing any confusion or lack of clarity during initial setup and usage.
• Escalations and support: Identifying whether customers can easily find the resources and support they need or if they encounter obstacles.
• Renewal, upsell, and cross-sell: Determining if customers clearly understand the ongoing value of your solution and how it can evolve with their needs.

These insights are vital for shaping retention programs that not only address these pain points but also guide customers toward realizing and expanding the value of your product.

Tip 3: Create your charter and program strategy

Building a successful retention program starts with creating a clear program charter. 

At its core, I believe in the concept of customer-led growth — a direction that many organizations and industries are increasingly adopting. Specifically, when we talk about customer-led growth within retention, we’re focusing on programmatic and lifecycle initiatives designed to foster adoption and loyalty throughout the entire customer journey.

A well-defined charter serves as a one-page summary that outlines your program’s goals and initiatives, making it easy to communicate with stakeholders. When asked, “What does your program do?” this one-pager should encapsulate everything in a concise way.

Developing a content strategy that supports retention

Once your program’s charter is established, the next step is to dive into your content strategy. A strong content strategy does two things: it provides timely, targeted guidance, and it aligns the “how” and “why” of best practices for your customers. 

Here’s how to think about structuring this:

1. Timely and targeted guidance - Delivering information exactly when customers need it makes a significant difference. Whether through in-product messaging, automated email nurtures, or self-service resources, each touchpoint should be scalable and tailored to the customer’s current needs.
2. Showcase best practices - Content should be more than just instructions; it should offer insights into how customers can maximize the value of your product. Explain not only the steps to use certain features but also why these features matter in driving business success.

Driving adoption and usage through strategic alignment

Ultimately, the goal of your content and programmatic approach is to drive product adoption and encourage ongoing engagement. By aligning with product teams, you can ensure that your retention initiatives support feature usage and showcase the benefits of advanced capabilities. 

In this way, every message or touchpoint is an opportunity to reinforce your product’s value, encouraging customers to keep using and expanding their engagement over time

Tip 4: Educate your stakeholder teams

A crucial part of building a successful retention program is educating your stakeholders on its long-term vision. 

In my experience at Adobe, retention marketing started with a small team of about six or seven people at Marketo and grew to a robust organization of fifty to sixty over several years. This growth was a journey that required significant education and a gradual building of understanding around what a true center of excellence for retention could look like.

Retention doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s part of the broader customer engagement landscape that includes advocacy, community involvement, and more. This vision shows that retention is fundamentally multichannel, meeting customers wherever they are and providing value through various touchpoints.

Multichannel approaches for retention marketing

In a comprehensive retention program, each channel offers a unique way to engage and guide customers:

1. Webinars - Feature-focused webinars can help customers make the most of key product features, particularly those that drive “stickiness” or long-term engagement.
2. In-product guidance - As customers log in, they can be supported with in-product tooltips and guides that offer real-time help, enhancing their journey while they’re actively using the solution.
3. Community engagement - A well-managed community offers a central place for customers to discuss topics, ask questions, and share insights on product use, creating a shared learning environment.
4. Workshops and live events - Regional events and large-scale conferences, like Adobe’s Summit, offer customers hands-on opportunities to dive deeper into the product alongside other users and experts.
5. Email nurtures - A tailored email series, whether it’s three to five emails or a longer series, can be designed to align with specific stages in the customer journey, providing relevant tips and educational content.

Building a phased roadmap for customer engagement

When developing a roadmap, start small and scale as you gain traction. Begin with foundational elements — for example, a simple email nurture or a basic onboarding webinar. Then, as you build momentum, expand to include multichannel touchpoints.

A strategic roadmap guides customers along a journey, providing key resources at relevant intervals. 

Recognize the crawl, walk, run approach

Building a sophisticated retention program is a phased process, typically beginning with foundational efforts and expanding in complexity over time. Early stages might involve overcoming technology limitations or upgrading existing tools. 

For instance, you might need to address tech debt or consider adding a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to enhance personalization and targeting. 

Start with a clear, straightforward journey and gradually evolve it, guiding customers to a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of how your product can meet their goals.

Tip 5: Showcast what great programs can look like

Demonstrating what great retention programs look like can inspire stakeholders and reinforce the value of the work. 

One effective approach I’ve used in the past is bringing in the most advanced customer advocates to become educators and voices for new customers. This peer-led learning has been highly successful, dating back to when we implemented it in 2017, and it remains a core part of Adobe’s strategy today.

Customers often trust insights from their peers over promotional messaging from the company itself. By hearing directly from other users who actively work with the same tools and face similar challenges, new customers gain practical advice and a deeper understanding of how the product can deliver value.

Leveraging peer advocacy at scale

Adobe Summit is a great example of this peer-driven approach in action. Each year, it brings together seasoned customers to share their experiences, discuss use cases, and guide others in maximizing their investment in the product. 

We also explored similar methods at F5, recognizing the effectiveness of leveraging customer champions to educate and engage new users. This peer-led model doesn’t just drive trust and authenticity; it also helps scale retention efforts by creating a community-driven support network that benefits everyone involved.

Tip 6: Deliver a minimum viable program (MVP)

The idea behind a Minimal Viable Program (MVP) is to launch with something simple yet impactful, allowing you to start engaging customers without waiting for a fully developed program. 

An MVP could be as straightforward as an email nurture series — three to five emails covering essential information for new customers. For example, you might include a welcome email, followed by a series introducing them to the top ten things to know as they get started, or highlighting essential steps to succeed with your product.

Simple and scalable content for an MVP

MVP content doesn’t need to be elaborate. Here are some practical ways to get started:

• Email templates: Using marketing tools like Marketo, HubSpot, or Eloqua, create an email template with basic information. Include placeholders for customer quotes, relevant video links, or resources that make it easy for customers to find value quickly. If you have a small team, collaborate with marketing operations to develop a flexible wireframe with instructions on what to include.
• Embedded content: Consider embedding this content within community pages, product newsletters, or even onboarding pages. At Adobe, we used this approach in our Adobe Analytics community, where we included video content and customer stories from Adobe Experience Maker award winners. Showcasing real use cases from customer advocates provides additional insights and can later be repurposed for more in-depth content.

The beauty of an MVP is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. The goal is to launch quickly, gather feedback, and improve over time. By getting content in front of customers sooner, you can assess which elements resonate best, whether it’s instructional videos, user-generated content, or practical tips. 

This iterative approach ensures that you’re consistently refining and enhancing your program to deliver more value as you go.

Tip 7: Measure the results and continuously optimize

A critical aspect of any retention program is measuring its effectiveness and optimizing based on the results. Retention metrics can vary, but they generally fall into a few categories:

1. Email engagement metrics: Start with basic email engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates. These give a quick indication of whether your content is capturing interest and driving action.
2. In-product messaging engagement: If you’re using in-product guides or tutorials, track guide completion rates to see how many customers are finishing essential onboarding or instructional sequences. You can also measure engagement with specific buttons, requests for help, or downloads of resources embedded within the product. Solutions like Gainsight PX and Pendo make it easy to track these types of interactions.
3. Webinar and workshop participation: For live events, track registration and attendance rates. These metrics show which topics or sessions resonate most with customers, helping you refine future offerings.
4. Product adoption metrics: This involves more advanced tracking and can be the most revealing for retention. Track core adoption metrics like Gross Retention Rate (GRR) and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). Additionally, monitor upsell and cross-sell rates to see how well your retention efforts support long-term revenue growth. These metrics take time to develop but offer insights into how your retention program impacts customer expansion and loyalty.

By combining these metrics, you can begin to see how your retention efforts influence customer engagement and overall product adoption. Over time, track progression and look for patterns that indicate where your efforts are most effective.

Tip 8: Socialize your wins with stakeholders

Effectively communicating your program’s successes to stakeholders is key for ongoing support and expansion. At F5, we developed various dashboards to highlight our wins and demonstrate the impact of our retention efforts. 

For example, a dashboard might show engagement rates by region or compare the effectiveness of different channels, like email versus in-product messaging.

Using dashboards to highlight key metrics

Dashboards provide a clear visual representation of your progress, showing stakeholders how engagement varies across different mediums and regions. If email isn’t performing well, for instance, this insight might prompt a shift to more effective in-product messaging. 

By testing multiple channels, you can ensure that your message reaches customers in the most impactful way possible.

In addition to engagement metrics, we track influencing metrics related to churn, showcasing how retention efforts help reduce customer turnover. Dashboards can also break down engagement by content type or customer segment, giving a more detailed look at what resonates most with specific audiences.

Starting small and scaling data sophistication

You don’t need an advanced setup from the start. Even basic Excel sheets can serve as a simple way to track key data points and trends. If you have access to a data team, they can help you build more robust dashboards over time, allowing you to progressively increase the sophistication of your tracking and reporting.

Tip 9: Develop an expansion and future vision

Step nine is about showcasing the potential of a fully developed retention strategy and identifying the gaps you’ll need to address along the way. 

Think of this as creating a flywheel of engagement throughout the customer journey — a cycle that moves from deployment to value realization, advocacy, and beyond to net recurring retention (NRR). 

This roadmap not only guides future initiatives but also sets a north star for your team and stakeholders, illustrating what’s achievable with a comprehensive approach.

Building the retention flywheel: from deployment to advocacy

A retention flywheel includes several key stages that drive continuous engagement and value realization:

1. Deploy and onboard - Leverage telemetry data to coordinate a Customer Success (CS) onboarding program that supports users from day one. Here, customer engagement and marketing teams act as the marketing arm for post-sales teams, delivering a nurture plan that enhances the onboarding experience across channels.
2. Use and realize value - Once customers begin using your product, guide them toward best practices that help them achieve their goals. Peer-led initiatives, like customer-led webinars, office hours with champions, and community forums with MVPs, can enhance this phase by sharing proven approaches from experienced users.
3. Optimize and adopt - Identify customers who could be early adopters for new features or solutions, fostering a natural cross-sell or upsell path. Gather feedback through surveys and voice-of-customer (VOC) initiatives to deepen engagement.
4. Renew and advocate - As customers reach the renewal stage, consider programs that foster advocacy, such as generating peer reviews, customer stories, and case studies. Customers who understand the full value of your solution are more likely to recommend it to others and explore additional solutions down the road.

Highlighting best-in-class examples and industry benchmarks

To inspire stakeholders and reinforce your vision, highlight examples of exceptional retention programs from within and outside your organization. Iconic brands like Cisco and Salesforce offer proven models for customer success, and showcasing these examples can help stakeholders see the possibilities for growth and improvement in your retention strategy. 

At F5, I brought in experienced team members from Adobe, like Katie and Connor, to share insights on how Adobe scaled its retention program over a three- to five-year period. These benchmarks set a north star for the team, helping to plant seeds of what’s achievable.

Creating a long-term vision and prioritized roadmap

For effective stakeholder buy-in, maintain a clear, prioritized roadmap for the next steps in your retention strategy. This roadmap might include:

• Short-term (3-6 months): Immediate initiatives like refining onboarding emails, introducing customer-led webinars, or optimizing in-product messaging.
• Mid-term (12 months): Expanding cross-functional programs, developing advanced analytics for customer insights, and enhancing community engagement.
• Long-term (24-36 months): Achieving a mature, fully integrated retention framework with advanced personalization, predictive analytics, and continuous cross-sell and upsell support.

This forward-thinking approach demonstrates a clear understanding of how the retention program can evolve and sets you up to continuously deliver value to customers while aligning with your organization’s growth goals.

Tip 10: Ask for what you need to accelerate results

To make meaningful progress, it’s essential to communicate what resources you need — whether it’s additional headcount, budget, or new tools. 

Map out your ideal team structure, showing what a customer or retention marketing team might look like at different sizes. 

A useful approach for presenting budget requests is the “T-shirt sizing” method. Develop a one-pager or slide deck that includes different funding levels: small, medium, and large. For each level, detail what initiatives you could accomplish (e.g., a nurture campaign or an in-product messaging program), the potential impact, and the approximate time to value. 

For instance, if given a $200,000 budget, outline a small-scale initiative with clear outcomes. Show how a larger investment, say $600,000, could deliver accelerated results within six to twelve months, setting expectations that retention is a long-term strategy but with clear incremental benefits.

Final thoughts

Retention marketing is an evolving process. As you grow your program, start with one channel — perhaps email — and expand into in-product messaging, webinars, and community engagement over time. Iteration is key. Each new initiative builds on the last, creating a foundation that continuously grows in impact and sophistication.