Analyze customer lifecycles
Note
The terms audiences and segments are interchangeable. Optimizely has updated all segments to audiences on the Audiences page and is updating the UI on other pages. See Understand audiences to get information on audiences.
Overview
The lifecycle analysis highlights the customer journey and groups customers based on purchase consideration and engagement. You can use this information to create audiences for targeted campaigns and additional reporting.
There are two classes of lifecycles for segmentation:
- Ecommerce Lifecycle – Purchase count history.
- Engagement Lifecycle – Web visitation history.
Go to Reports > Lifecycle Report to access the lifecycle analysis and toggle between ecommerce and engagement lifecycles.
Note
Customers appear in lifecycles only if they have done at least one active event. If a customer has neither ordered nor responded to a campaign, you may not see them in Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) immediately after syncing. They are included as they visit your site, order, or respond to campaigns.
Understanding discrepancies between active events and audiences
Not all events recorded in ODP are considered active events while performing a lifecycle analysis. Typically, events like campaign send or customer_discovered are system-generated and do not reflect direct customer activity.
Lifecycle reports are designed to focus exclusively on the active events (customer-driven engagements) to provide an accurate display of customer behavior. However, standard audiences include all events by default when calculating customer membership.
This difference in event consideration is the main reason you see a discrepancy between the customer count in a lifecycle report and a standard audience with similar criteria.
Aligning audience counts with lifecycle reports
To match your standard audience counts with the count in your lifecycle reports, add an active event filter to your audience definition. For example, you can include a condition like Customers who have done anything at least 1 time ever to ensure only active events are considered when creating a lifecycle report. See Create standard audiences for information on creating a condition.
Ecommerce lifecycle
The Ecommerce lifecycle lets marketers see the impact of purchase count on purchasing metrics.
Ecommerce lifecycle stages
The order count that qualifies a customer for the ecommerce lifecycle stages excludes canceled orders but includes returns and refunds. Orders can consist of multiple items. For example, if a customer's only order included three items, they would still be in the 1 Purchase lifecycle.
- No Purchase – Never submitted an order.
- 1 Purchase – One order.
- Repeat – Two orders.
- Loyal – Three or more orders.
Contact Customer support to change the defaults to different purchase counts.
Ecommerce KPI Groups
KPI Groups, or buying cycles, represent the current funnel location for a customer.
- At Risk – The customer was not seen across any channel in over 30 days.
- Recent Buyer – The customer purchased within the last 30 days but was not seen on any other channel since.
- Awareness – The customer was seen in the last 30 days.
- Interest – Customer shows a basic level of interest in a product (viewed/interacted with a product) in the last 30 days.
- Considering – The customer shows further interest in a product (like viewing a single product twice) in the last 30 days.
- Intent – The customer shows real purchase intent (adding a product to cart) in the last 30 days.
Ecommerce metrics
- Customers – Number of customers currently in this stage.
- % – Percentage of the total customer base that is in this stage.
- Total Revenue – Revenue from all orders, including those that were canceled, returned, or refunded of customers in this stage.
- % Convert – The sum of customers in stages further to right divided by the sum of the current stage and stages further to the right. For example, the conversion rate for the 1 Purchaser stage is: (Repeat + Loyal) / (1 Purchaser + Repeat + Loyal).
- Days to Convert – The time it took those that have moved out of this stage to convert from the time they first entered the current stage.
- AOV – The average value of the orders from the customers in this stage (Revenue/Order Count). AOV ignores canceled orders.
- LTV – The lifetime value of the orders all the customers in this stage. LTV indicates how much revenue you can expect a customer to generate over the course of your relationship with them. The longer a customer continues to purchase from a company, the greater their LTV becomes.
Contact Customer support to customize metrics in the lifecycle configuration.
Ecommerce filters
You can select and apply the audience (1), lifecycle stage (2), buying cycles (3), and dimension values (4) as filters to the analysis. Select an audience, lifecycle stage, or buying cycle to see the list of customers that match.
Engagement lifecycle
The engagement lifecycle lets marketers see the impact of session frequency on purchasing metrics.
Engagement lifecycle stages
By default, lifecycle stages are broken down by session. Sessions are user-generating engagements or series of engagements (excluding email sends and push message sends). The session ends once user engagements have stopped for 30 minutes.
- 1 Session – Customers who only engaged for one session and never returned.
- 2 Sessions – Customers who engaged for 2 sessions.
- 3-10 Sessions – Customers who engaged in 3-10 sessions.
- 11+ Sessions – Customers who engaged for more than 11 sessions.
Contact Customer support to change the defaults to different session counts.
Engagement Metrics
- Total Value – Sum of engagement values produced by the customers in this stage.
- Average Customer Value – Value that the average customer produces within this stage.
- Throughput – Percentage of customers that make it to the next lifecycle stage.
- Conversions Per User – Average number of engagement events per user, per engagement with value.
- Time Since Last Session – How recent the user's last session was. Customers in the 24 hours audience had their last session most recently, and customers in the 35+ days ago audience had their last session 35 days or more ago.
Contact Customer support to customize metrics in the lifecycle configuration.
Engagement filters
You can select and apply the audience (1) , lifecycle stage (2) , time since last session (3) KPI Groups, and dimension values as filters to the analysis. Select a lifecycle or buying cycle to see the list of customers that match.
Dimensions
You can select from many dimensions. The following image shows a sample Campaign dimension view.
Each of the values for the dimensions is calculated based on the activity of the customers within each given lifecycle stage. For example, if a customer had mobile device activity as a No Purchaser but has desktop-based activity as a 1 Purchaser, then only their desktop activity in the current stage counts.
Any purchase dimensions (product/category purchased) are reported for the purchase that was responsible for moving them into their current stage. For example, showing the Root Category Purchased dimension for the 1 Purchaser shows the root categories of the items in their first purchase.
Save a lifecycle audience
You can save a filtered view of a lifecycle as an audience for future review. After applying your filters, click Save as Lifecycle Segment. The saved lifecycle audience displays in the drop-down menu.