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TG3 SaaS/Glossary/Customer marketing
SaaS metrics glossary

Customer marketing.

Marketing to the people who already pay you, the audience most teams forget. Here is what customer marketing covers and why it is chronically underfunded.

Definition
Customer marketing is marketing aimed at the customers you already have, driving adoption, retention, expansion and advocacy rather than new logos.

In a subscription business most lifetime revenue arrives after the first sale, through renewals and expansion. Customer marketing is the discipline that works that revenue and it is usually the least funded function in the building.

What customer marketing covers

What customer marketing covers.

Adoption  +  expansion  +  advocacy  =  customer marketing
Adoptioneducation and lifecycle comms that deepen product usage
Expansioncampaigns that surface upgrades, seats and cross-sell at the right moment
Advocacyturning happy customers into reviews, references and referrals

The scoreboard for all of it is retention that compounds, see net revenue retention.

Benchmarks

Why customer marketing is underfunded.

New logos are visible and celebrated. Renewals are assumed. So budgets skew overwhelmingly to acquisition while the revenue base that actually compounds gets a quarterly newsletter and good wishes.

The irony is that customer marketing is usually the cheapest revenue available. The audience already trusts you, already uses the product and costs nothing to reach. A small team working adoption and expansion often outperforms the same spend on cold acquisition.

How to improve it

How to do customer marketing well.

01

Market past the sale

The journey does not end at closed-won. Build comms for every stage after it.

02

Time expansion to value

Surface upgrades at usage moments, not on a billing calendar.

03

Build advocates deliberately

Reviews, references and referrals happen on purpose, not by luck.

04

Share the NRR goal

Give customer marketing a revenue number, not a newsletter open rate.

Common questions

Questions about customer marketing.

What is customer marketing?+

Marketing aimed at existing customers to drive adoption, retention, expansion and advocacy, rather than acquiring new logos.

How is customer marketing different from customer success?+

Success works accounts one to one. Customer marketing builds the one-to-many programs, lifecycle comms, expansion campaigns and advocacy.

Why does customer marketing matter in SaaS?+

Because most lifetime revenue arrives after the first sale. Working that base is usually the cheapest revenue available.

How do you measure customer marketing?+

On net revenue retention, expansion pipeline and advocacy output such as reviews and references, not on email opens.

Customer successNet revenue retentionSaaS expansion revenueLifecycle marketing

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