The contact lifecycle describes the stages a person or company goes through in relation to a brand – from first contact through lead and customer to an inactive or lost contact. The point is for the system to know what stage each contact is in, so that communication matches it: a new lead is not sent an offer for an add-on service, and a long-standing customer is not told what the company does. Stages should change automatically based on events, for example completion of an order or a longer period of inactivity, not manually. An overview of the distribution of contacts by stage is also a useful business indicator, because it shows whether the company is gaining new people or just communicating with the same ones.
See also: Database segmentation, RFM segmentation, CRM implementation in a company.
