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The State of CRM & Lifecycle Marketing 2026

A short study on how people actually use CRM and email/lifecycle platforms day to day. Takes about 4–5 minutes. This is partly personal research and partly to inform a product I'm exploring building, so your honest experience either way is genuinely useful.

1. What best describes your role?

This decides which follow-up questions you'll see later.
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D

2. What type of business do you run or work with?

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B
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E

3. Which platform(s) do you currently use?

Select all that apply.

4. Which one of these is your primary platform?

The one you use most, day to day. This is what your later answers about frustration and workarounds will be tied to.
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B
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E
F
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5. If you run or work with an online store, which ecommerce platform do you use?

Skip this one if you're not running an online store.
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F

6. Why did you choose your primary CRM/email platform?

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7. What takes the most time in your day-to-day use of your platform?

8. Which task frustrates you the most?

9. What's one thing you've had to work around manually because your platform couldn't do it?

Exporting to Excel, using Zapier, switching tools mid-task or anything.

10. Rate how frustrating each area is in your day-to-day work, from 1 (no issue) to 10 (constant pain).

1 (No issue)
2
3
4
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10 (Constant pain)
Building automations
Segmentation
Reporting
Customer / contact management
Campaign creation
Analytics

Already half-way 🎉 50% of the survey completed!

11. What do you love about your current platform?

12. Which feature do you rely on most?

13. Which feature do you never use?

14. What are you currently paying per month for your platform(s)?

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15. Have you ever added another tool or tried switching platforms to fix a problem with your current one?

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16. If you switched platforms tomorrow, what would make you choose the new one?

Price, a missing feature, a bad experience or whatever it actually is.

17. When a customer stops engaging, how do you tell if they're low-value or worth chasing??

Walk me through how you'd currently figure that out.

18. If you could change one thing about your current platform tomorrow, what would it be?

This one question alone often surfaces the best ideas.

19. Would you be open to a 15-minute follow-up chat?

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B