BlueConic Lifecycles let you organize and visualize customer journeys, sequencing interactions across channels. Using stages, dialogues, and connections, you can orchestrate integrated marketing programs based on unified customer profiles. For example, track a customer's pre-purchase journey and use those milestones to target messaging, manage offers, and drive desired outcomes.

Lifecycles are flexible, allowing marketers to define stages based on their goals. You control the touchpoints within each stage, determining entry criteria, progression rules, and successful completion. For example, a subscriber retention lifecycle could incentivize upgrades. Each stage can have targeted touchpoints optimized to move customers forward.

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See the Introduction to Lifecycles video in BlueConic University.

Marketers can define an overarching customer lifecycle consisting of sequential, mutually exclusive stages and the criteria that determine if or when a profile advances from one stage to another.

Lifecycle marketing criteria might be an event (“signed up to receive emails”), a behavior score (“recency score hits 80+”), a state (anonymous web visitor), or a combination of them all. There is no limit to the number of criteria you can use to define a stage or lifecycle. For each Lifecycle in BlueConic, you define the following criteria:

Lifecycles are made up of sequential stages, each with a defined audience based on profile/group properties, segments, and consent. While sequential, customers can skip stages or move to other lifecycles. A profile can only be in one stage at a time within a lifecycle, prioritizing later stages if criteria for multiple stages are met. Profiles meeting lifecycle criteria but no stage criteria remain unassigned until they qualify.
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Touchpoints are the marketing interactions assigned to each lifecycle stage, spanning multiple channels and delivering relevant information for each customer. Touchpoints can include personalized website/app interactions (via dialogues) and coordinated emails/ads (via connection goals). Connection goals also allow exporting lifecycle data (e.g., stage information, associated profiles) to other systems and analytics tools.

By setting thresholds that cap the frequency of touchpoints in each stage, you can reduce campaign pressure in each stage.

At the top of each Lifecycle is a toggle switch for turning the Lifecycle on or off. Once you save your settings and turn the Lifecycle on, profiles in the lifecycle will be exposed to touchpoints for their current stage.

​Note: In order to save a Lifecycle and turn it on, you first have to set up stage criteria for each stage in the Lifecycle.

A message appears to remind you that once you turn the lifecycle on, the dialogues and connection goals used as marketing touchpoints in each stage will be shown only to profiles in that stage.

In addition, when your lifecycle contains dialogues or connections that are switched off, they will remain off after you've switched the lifecycle to On. Dialogues and connections will not be automatically switched On when a related Lifecycle is switched on.

Touchpoints remain active when a lifecycle is switched off. When you turn off a lifecycle, its marketing touchpoints no longer apply to the lifecycle stage audience but to the touchpoint’s entire eligible audience. This could result in unwanted targeting. You can manually switch off unwanted dialogues and connections.

Lifecycle reporting provides insights into customer journey performance, showing how customers move through lifecycles and which stages have the greatest impact.

The metrics displayed are unique to the specific mode you're in. The two modes are represented by specific icons at the top of the Lifecycle page:

To toggle between the edit and report modes, click its respective icon. (The icon for the currently active mode will be blue.) For more information, review the article Lifecycle reporting.

Generally, with Lifecycles, marketers design a specific experience for a subset of customers. For tips on designing a customer lifecycle, see Designing a customer lifecycle.

Yes. A profile can be part of one or more lifecycles for which it meets the lifecycle criteria. For each profile, you can see the lifecycles (and stages) a profile is part of, on the Profile Overview panel of the BlueConic Profiles window.

No, stages are mutually exclusive, meaning a profile, and therefore a person, cannot belong to two stages at the same time within the same lifecycle. Should a profile meet the criteria for more than one stage, they will be placed in the highest-numbered stage that is further along in the lifecycle.

No. When you add a dialogue to a lifecycle, it will only appear to profiles included within that lifecycle (even if the dialogue criteria might otherwise include profiles outside of the lifecycle). For this reason, reusing existing dialogues is not recommended.

Yes.

No. A connection goal that is placed in a lifecycle cannot be used in other lifecycles -- nor can it be used outside the lifecycle. To reuse a connection goal in multiple lifecycles, create a copy or duplicate the goal.

Dialogue touchpoints and most connection goals count toward the stage thresholds. Some connection touchpoints, because of how they work, do not count toward the threshold. (These exceptions are marked with the infinity icon.)

The threshold setting applies exclusively to a lifecycle and stage you set it in. It does not apply across lifecycles, or outside of the current lifecycle.

You can set a stage threshold to a certain number of interactions per day. This day is counted as a rolling window of 24 hours (for example, measured as three interactions in a 24 hour period), not by a calendar day (not measured as three interactions on Wednesday, July 1).

Yes, the stage threshold caps frequency only inside a stage, not over the whole lifecycle. So a profile could be exposed to the same touchpoint in stage 2 and again in stage 3, for example.

You would need to set a daily threshold for that stage. To do this, click the No stage threshold link in that stage, check the Stage threshold box, input your maximum number of touchpoints, and set the dropdown to per day.

Use the BlueConic Simulator to test how profiles move through stages, which dialogues are shown, and connection goals active in lifecycle stages. The Simulator helps you make sure the lifecycle is behaving the way you intend. Additionally, using the Simulator will show the reason why a certain dialogue is not showing for a profile if you expect it to, such as conflicting criteria.

You can add up to 10 stages to a lifecycle (including the "Profiles not assigned" category). A lifecycle can have an unlimited number of touchpoints.