CASE STUDY · COINTREAU · CRM & LIFECYCLE
Running CRM for a heritage spirits brand, across cycles.
Lifecycle program
Ongoing
Journey architecture
Awareness
Conversion
Retention
Reactivation
Foundation
Data model
Segmentation
Deliverability
Documented
Monitored
Shipping
Client
Anonymized — Premium spirits brand
Industry
Premium spirits
Service area
CRM & Lifecycle
Engagement type
Retainer
Status
Ongoing
01 — The brief
A premium spirits brand with a CRM stack that had grown organically across multiple platform decisions, multiple agency partners, and multiple internal team transitions. The kind of stack where active journeys are running that nobody can fully document, where the database has accumulated assumptions across cycles, and where the next change always touches three things you didn’t expect to touch.
The ask wasn’t a CRM rebuild — it was something harder. It was ongoing operational ownership: keep the engine running, fix what’s broken without breaking what isn’t, and make sure the lifecycle program ships campaigns and journeys that move the right metrics.
02 — What we did
Full CRM program ownership across the lifecycle. Strategy, journey architecture, segmentation, deliverability, and the day-to-day operational work that makes the rest of it possible.
The team has worked across multiple CMOs, multiple internal team transitions, and multiple platform decisions. Each cycle is a moment where most agencies churn — and a moment where the institutional knowledge of how the stack actually works becomes critical to keep things shipping.
01
On the strategy side
lifecycle program design, segmentation framework, retention strategy. Customer journey mapping that reflects how the brand’s audience actually engages — across awareness, conversion, retention, and reactivation. The work that sits upstream of the campaigns and tells the team what to build, not just how to build it.
02
On the architecture side
journey design, automation logic, data extension structure, sender authentication, deliverability monitoring. The unglamorous engineering layer that has to be right before any of the strategy above it can actually execute. Most CRM problems trace back to this layer being a mess; we’ve kept it clean.
03
On the operational side
campaign delivery, journey iterations, ongoing optimization, deliverability monitoring across providers, technical debt management. The day-to-day work that most clients underestimate — and that defines whether a CRM stack drifts or compounds.
03 — How the engagement runs
Managed-service retainer. Monthly cadence with strategic reviews quarterly. The CRM work is integrated with the broader digital strategy and analytics work — same team, same room, same accountability for whether the lifecycle program actually moves retention.
04 — What changed
“
Active journeys map to a documented data model. Deliverability is monitored, not assumed. The team can answer the question “why is this journey doing what it’s doing” without two weeks of archaeology.
The lifecycle program ships campaigns, runs experiments, and adjusts based on what works — instead of being permanently stuck in “we need to clean up the data before we can do anything new” mode.
The more substantive change: a CRM operation that survives leadership transitions. Most CRM stacks regress when the people who built them leave. This one hasn’t, because the institutional knowledge lives in the agency relationship as well as in the in-house team.