CRM and Lifecycle Marketing skills
CRM and Lifecycle Marketing Skills-md for Marketers, Claude & Codex
CRM and lifecycle marketing skills are SKILL.md files that turn Claude, Codex and other AI agents into careful retention marketers. They map customer journeys from real events, build segments that respect engagement, design onboarding, retention and win-back programmes, keep email out of spam under the 2026 Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft rules, use SMS and WhatsApp where they earn the interruption, and measure what lifecycle really adds with holdouts. All 13 are below: copy one, download it, or take the set.
13 skills, 21,724 words, version 1.0.0, researched October 2026.
Lifecycle Marketing Audit
Audit a whole CRM and lifecycle marketing programme across eight layers (data and events, consent, segmentation, journeys and flows, channels, deliverability, content and offers, measurement) for Klaviyo, Braze, HubSpot, Customer.io, Iterable or Salesforce, map lifecycle stages from events, find coverage gaps and overlapping flows, separate attributed from incremental revenue and produce a scored 90-day plan.
Customer Journey Mapping for Lifecycle
Build a lifecycle journey map from behaviour data and customer research: stages with measurable entry and exit events and windows, the value moment that predicts retention, time between stages, stalls and drop-offs, touchpoints outside marketing, and a blueprint of triggers, messages, channels, priority and suppression rules for e-commerce, subscription, SaaS and marketplaces.
Lifecycle Segmentation and Engagement Tiers
Build segments that drive action: lifecycle stages, engagement tiers based on clicks, purchases and logins rather than Apple-inflated opens, RFM and value groups, intent and preference segments, B2B fit, an action matrix for journeys, frequency, offers and channels, and a sunset policy that protects deliverability.
CRM Data Hygiene and Enrichment
Audit and fix CRM and marketing data across completeness, validity, accuracy, uniqueness, consistency and timeliness: data flow and systems of record, field governance, channel-specific consent records, deduplication with match and survivorship rules, source fixes in forms and integrations, list hygiene, deliberate enrichment and a monitoring dashboard for HubSpot, Salesforce, Klaviyo and similar tools.
Lead Scoring and Routing
Build B2B lead scoring and routing from closed-won data: signed-off lifecycle stage definitions (MQL, SAL, SQL), separate fit and intent scores with decay, a fit by intent action matrix, product-qualified lead signals, routing by territory, segment, ownership and capacity, speed-to-lead service levels, sales feedback loops and nurture for everyone below threshold in HubSpot or Salesforce.
Onboarding and Activation Sequences
Design onboarding and activation programmes that get new customers to first value fast: one activation goal with a window, the path to value and its drop-offs, product friction fixes, behaviour-triggered email, in-app, push, SMS and human touchpoints with exits, stall branches, segment branching, habit building, post-purchase sequences for e-commerce and holdout measurement.
Retention and Churn Prevention
Reduce churn before customers decide to leave: split voluntary and involuntary churn, fix failed payments with retries, card updaters and dunning, build and validate a health score from leading indicators, match interventions to churn reasons, design a fair cancellation flow with pause and downgrade options, build loyalty for healthy customers and measure saves against holdouts.
Win-Back and Reactivation Campaigns
Win back lapsed customers without damaging deliverability or margins: define lapse from the purchase cycle, segment lapsed groups by value, recency and reason, lead with what changed, set tiered offer guardrails, design email, paid audience, SMS, WhatsApp and direct mail sequences, send in safe batches, measure reactivation against a holdout and sunset non-responders.
Email Deliverability and Inbox Placement
Get email into the inbox under the 2026 rules from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft: SPF, DKIM and aligned DMARC with a staged rollout, RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe, spam complaint rates below 0.1% and never 0.3%, list quality and sunset policies, separate transactional and marketing streams, domain and IP warming, Postmaster Tools monitoring and diagnosis of sudden drops.
Lifecycle Email Copy and Design
Write and review lifecycle emails that get one clear action: honest subject lines and preheaders, mobile-first single-column design, accessibility with live text, alt text and contrast, personalisation with fallbacks, dark-mode and client rendering checks, compliance footers, copy patterns for onboarding, post-purchase, replenishment, win-back and re-permission emails, and tests judged on clicks and conversions.
SMS and WhatsApp Lifecycle Messaging
Use SMS and WhatsApp for the lifecycle moments that matter: channel roles by urgency and cost, explicit per-channel consent, US 10DLC registration, UK PECR, EU and Nigerian rules, WhatsApp template categories and per-message pricing since July 2025, utility and marketing flows, message copy, frequency caps, quiet hours, cost forecasts and incremental measurement.
Lifecycle Experimentation and Holdout Testing
Measure what lifecycle marketing really adds: flow, channel and global holdouts, A/B tests on meaningful changes such as offers, timing and channel mix, hypotheses, sample size and duration planning, randomisation, guardrail metrics, honest analysis with confidence intervals and a test log, for Klaviyo, Braze, Customer.io and similar platforms.
Lifecycle Reporting and Attribution
Build lifecycle reporting leadership can trust: a metric dictionary, health, engagement, attributed, incremental and customer outcome layers, clear labels for attribution models and windows, UTM and order ID tracking, reconciliation with finance, cohort retention and lifetime value views, holdout-based incrementality and monthly decision-focused dashboards.
No skill matches that search. Clear it or choose All.
On this page
- What CRM and lifecycle skills do for an AI agent
- Where to start: audit the whole programme
- Which skill fixes which problem, and the evidence
- Example prompts for each skill
- What the agent needs from you
- What an agent cannot do, and myths to ignore
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources and more marketing skills
What CRM and lifecycle skills do for an AI agent
Ask a general AI model to “build an email flow” and you usually get a welcome series with a discount, a cart reminder and a monthly newsletter, judged on open rates. That approach ignores three things that decide whether lifecycle marketing works in 2026: inbox providers now enforce strict sender rules, open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, and platform-attributed revenue routinely overstates what flows really add.
These skills start from the customer and the evidence. They map stages from real events, find the action that predicts retention, segment on clicks, purchases and logins, and build journeys with clear triggers, exits and priority rules. They treat deliverability and consent as gates, not afterthoughts. And they measure with holdouts, so every flow can show its incremental contribution.
Lifecycle marketing, CRM and retention: how the skills fit
CRM is the system and the data; lifecycle marketing is what you do with it at each stage of the customer relationship; retention is one of the outcomes. The skills cover all three: data and segmentation, the programmes for each stage, the channels that deliver them, and the measurement that proves they work. They work with Klaviyo, Braze, Customer.io, Iterable, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp and WhatsApp Business Solution Providers.
Where to start: audit the whole programme
Start with the lifecycle-marketing-audit skill. It reviews eight layers (data and events, consent, segmentation, journeys, channels, deliverability, content and measurement), finds coverage gaps and overlapping flows, compares attributed revenue with any incremental evidence, and hands each finding to a specialist skill.
If you are starting from scratch, map stages first with customer-journey-mapping, then build onboarding-activation before anything else, because new customers are where lifecycle work pays most. If emails are landing in spam, fix email-deliverability before touching copy.
Which skill fixes which problem, and the evidence
Use this table to go straight to the right skill when you already know the symptom.
| Symptom or task | Likely cause | Skill to use |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody knows what lifecycle is worth | No audit, no holdouts | lifecycle-marketing-audit |
| Flows overlap and stages are unclear | Journey never mapped from events | customer-journey-mapping |
| Everyone gets every campaign | No behaviour-based segments or sunset policy | lifecycle-segmentation |
| Duplicates and broken personalisation | Dirty data and weak consent records | crm-data-hygiene |
| Sales says marketing leads are poor | Scoring not based on closed-won data | lead-scoring-routing |
| New users don’t stick | No path to first value | onboarding-activation |
| Churn is rising | Failed payments and late interventions | retention-churn-prevention |
| Lapsed customers never return | No segmented, reason-led win-back | win-back-reactivation |
| Emails going to spam | Authentication, complaints or inactive addresses | email-deliverability |
| Emails get ignored | Unclear purpose, weak copy, poor mobile design | lifecycle-email-copy-design |
| SMS costs rise without results | Wrong channel roles, consent or templates | sms-whatsapp-lifecycle |
| Email revenue looks too good | Attribution without holdouts | lifecycle-experimentation |
| Leadership doesn’t trust the numbers | Undefined metrics, no cohorts | lifecycle-reporting-attribution |
The evidence behind these skills
Lifecycle advice is full of benchmarks from vendors measuring their own customers. These skills rest on provider rules and on testing, checked on 10 October 2026:
| Finding | Source | Label |
|---|---|---|
| Google and Yahoo require SPF, DKIM, DMARC and one-click unsubscribe for bulk senders; enforcement began in 2024 | Google and Yahoo sender guidelines | Confirmed |
| Gmail asks bulk senders to keep spam rate below 0.1% and never reach 0.3% | Gmail sender guidelines | Confirmed |
| Microsoft began enforcing similar requirements for Outlook.com high-volume senders in May 2025 | Microsoft, 2025 | Confirmed |
| Gmail stepped up enforcement against non-compliant traffic from November 2025 | Google, 2025 (as reported by deliverability vendors) | Reported |
| WhatsApp moved to per-message pricing on 1 July 2025; utility templates in an open service window are free | Meta developer documentation | Confirmed |
| Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates by pre-loading images | Apple, 2021 | Confirmed |
| Platform-attributed revenue often overstates true incremental impact | Holdout studies and practitioner tests | Consensus |
Example prompts for each skill
Each skill triggers on everyday wording. These prompts are good starting points:
- Audit: “Audit our Klaviyo programme. Flow exports and Postmaster data attached.”
- Journey: “Map our SaaS lifecycle stages and find the activation moment from this event data.”
- Segmentation: “Build engagement tiers and a sunset policy for 240,000 subscribers.”
- Data: “Our HubSpot has thousands of duplicates. Plan the clean-up.”
- Lead scoring: “Rebuild our MQL definition from 18 months of closed-won deals.”
- Onboarding: “Design a behaviour-based onboarding sequence to raise trial activation.”
- Retention: “Churn is 9% a month. Split it and plan interventions.”
- Win-back: “Win back 65,000 lapsed customers without hurting deliverability.”
- Deliverability: “Gmail clicks halved this month. Diagnose it.”
- Copy: “Rewrite our replenishment email so it gets one clear action.”
- SMS and WhatsApp: “Should our Lagos store move order updates to WhatsApp?”
- Testing: “Design a holdout for our abandoned cart flow.”
- Reporting: “Build a lifecycle dashboard finance will trust.”
What the agent needs from you
Lifecycle work depends on your data. The most useful inputs are:
- Flow and campaign exports: triggers, audiences, sends and results for 90 days.
- Event and purchase data: sign-ups, key actions, orders and renewals with timestamps.
- Deliverability data: Google Postmaster Tools, bounce and complaint rates, DNS records.
- Consent records: channel, source and timestamp for email, SMS and WhatsApp.
- Retention data: cohort curves, churn split by type, cancellation reasons.
- Attribution settings in each platform, and any holdout results.
If something is missing, the skill works with what you have and says which findings would change with more data.
What an agent cannot do, and myths to ignore
An agent can plan, write, segment and analyse, but it can’t see your platform unless you export or connect it, and it can’t make sending decisions that need legal judgement for your markets. Consent law differs by country; the skills flag requirements and recommend confirming with counsel. Decisions with revenue risk, such as suppressing large segments or removing discounts, stay with you.
| Myth | What the evidence says |
|---|---|
| Open rate shows engagement | Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images, inflating opens; use clicks, purchases and logins |
| Attributed revenue is what email earns | Holdout tests often show a much smaller incremental effect |
| More emails mean more revenue | Frequency raises complaints, which hurt inbox placement for everyone |
| Discounts are the best win-back lever | What changed, service fixes and value adds often work without cutting margin |
| Authentication guarantees the inbox | It is the minimum; engagement and complaints decide placement |
Frequently asked questions
What is lifecycle marketing?
Marketing that moves people through the stages of their relationship with a business: from subscriber to customer, activated, repeat or loyal, at risk and lapsed, using the right message and channel at each stage.
What are the 2026 email sender rules?
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft require bulk senders to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep spam complaints low. Gmail asks for a spam rate below 0.1% and never 0.3%.
Do these skills work with Klaviyo, Braze or HubSpot?
Yes. They are platform-neutral and include notes for Klaviyo, Braze, Customer.io, Iterable, HubSpot, Salesforce and WhatsApp Business Solution Providers.
Why not use open rates?
Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images for many users, so opens are recorded whether or not people read the email. Clicks, conversions and logins are more reliable.
What is a holdout test?
A randomly chosen group that doesn’t receive a flow or channel. Comparing it with the group that does shows the true, incremental effect.
Should I use WhatsApp for marketing?
In markets where customers prefer it, yes, with explicit opt-in and correctly categorised templates. Since July 2025 Meta charges per template message, so plan costs and measure incrementally.
How do I reduce churn?
Fix failed payments first, act on early warning signals such as falling usage, match interventions to reasons, offer pause and downgrade before discounts and measure saves against holdouts.
How do these skills relate to the SEO skills?
SEO brings people in; lifecycle keeps them. Content and AEO skills attract and inform; CRM skills turn first visits into lasting customers.
Sources and more marketing skills
- Gmail email sender guidelines, Google
- Yahoo sender best practices
- Google Postmaster Tools
- RFC 8058, one-click unsubscribe
- WhatsApp Business Platform pricing, Meta
- UK ICO guidance on direct marketing
Checked on 10 October 2026. Pair this set with the Content and On-Page SEO skills for acquisition content and the AEO & GEO skills for AI search. See every subcategory on the Marketing Skills-md page.
