What actually matters in lifecycle marketing in 2025?

For a long time, brands could buy their way to growth through acquisition channels using the walled gardens. But in 2025, acquisition alone is no longer enough. CAC keeps rising, ROAS is less clear-cut, and even with endless resources — which most teams don’t have — it’s simply not a good use of budget to be fully dependent on paid channels.

Retention and LTV are the top priorities for many companies — which means that lifecycle teams now often own the most critical marketing channel in the organization. Companies are ramping up investment in owned channels like email, SMS, and push, but most teams don’t know where to start, what actually matters, or how to build a program that lasts.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve built and managed lifecycle programs and scaled them from ground zero to millions of users and millions of sends. In this blog post, I’ll share the exact principles I’ve used (and still use) to successfully build, scale, and optimize programs — designed to drive growth, connect with customers, and place lifecycle teams as strategic powerhouses within organizations.