Lifecycle Marketing for founder led businesses
The Path Map

You embody the courage to keep changing.

Your business already knows how to change with you.

Most founder led businesses are running a rerun.

You had the win. 1 offer, 1 launch, 1 season where everything connected. Every year since, you've rebuilt it a little louder, and every year it returns a little less.

You don't have a marketing problem. You have a loyalty problem, and the person you're being loyal to is who you were years ago.

You kept growing. The offer stayed fixed at the version of you who made it. So now you're performing her, because the revenue depends on it.

Meanwhile your people have been showing you where they'll follow. What your newest customers open first. What your longest customers quietly stopped opening. That gap is the outline of who you're becoming.

The rerun, in a typical business
Launch 1 Launch 2 Launch 3 Launch 4 Launch 5
The original offer, relaunched What your newest customers open

What the path tells you

Most lifecycle marketing is built to push people down a path someone else designed. I work in the other direction.

Every open, every click, every pause and every quiet exit is someone showing you where they stand in relation to you. I read the path your people are already taking and show you what it says about where you're going.

Then we build the business that can meet them there.

See what a finished reading looks like →

How people move toward you is information about you.

What I look at
Where new people come inThe door they actually used, not the one you built
What they open firstThe thing you mentioned once in passing
Where long time customers go quietRead as a message, not as churn
What people come back forThe part of you they keep choosing

Built properly. Built quiet.

A messy system gives you a distorted reflection. Duplicate contacts, tags that mean 3 different things, and emails landing in spam can make it look like people left when they never heard from you.

So the CRM underneath gets cleaned and built right. Then it stays out of the way, and the reading can be trusted.

What gets fixed
  • 1 record per person, with duplicates merged
  • Tags and fields that each mean 1 thing
  • Authenticated sending: SPF, DKIM, DMARC
  • Sunset and suppression rules that protect your inbox placement
  • Purchases and product events flowing into 1 place

Braze · Iterable · HubSpot · Kit · Customer.io

Zillow · Lyft · DoorDash · 23andMe · Quizlet

10 years of lifecycle and CRM for companies with millions of customers. The same rigor, brought to businesses built around 1 person.

More about me →
How to work with me

Start with what's already there.

Start here · The Path Map

A written map of how people move toward you

3Weeks
$3,500Fixed fee
3Per quarter

You get the map, a prioritized list of what needs optimizing in the CRM underneath, and a 90 minute live session to walk through it. You keep everything, whether or not we keep working together.

See a sample map → Request a spot
After the map · The Quarter

We work on what the map found

3Months
FixedHours
1 or 2Priorities

We pick the 1 or 2 things that matter most and work on them for 3 months. At the end of the quarter, we both decide whether to continue.

  • The program. Turning what the map found into the emails and journeys your people actually get.
  • The system. Building or rebuilding your CRM in the platform you already use.
  • The inbox. Deliverability, so your emails get seen at all.
  • Your people. Working alongside whoever you have, or being your whole lifecycle function if you have no one.

Starts after the map.

Who this is for

A clean fit

ForFounders whose business changes when they do, and who want to see where their people are already following.
Not forAnyone who wants a funnel that runs the same way forever, or a louder version of last year's launch.
About me
Désirée Stephens

The right people are already looking for you. My job is to make sure they can find you.

For most of my career I was the marketer you hire to hit the number. I could tell you which segment would convert and when. I worked inside the standard best-in-class playbook: segment, test, optimize, hit the goal.

Over time I noticed what the playbook leaves out. The "customer" on the dashboard was a profile assembled from clicks and conversions. The real person was always more interesting, and the data kept hinting at it.

I still love the data. Now I use it to show founders something most marketers miss: the path your people take toward you reflects your own transformation.