# Playbook — Customer Value Journey (CVJ)

**Derives from:** Ryan Deiss, DigitalMarketer. See MANUAL §4.6.

## Thesis

This is the one playbook in the set that is not a build style — it's an **8-stage full-lifecycle audit grid**: Aware → Engage → Subscribe → Convert → Excite → Ascend → Advocate → Promote. Used to diagnose *which stage* of an entire existing business is broken, especially the post-purchase stages (Excite, Ascend, Advocate, Promote) that acquisition-obsessed businesses routinely ignore.

## When to use it

- Auditing an existing business with real historical data (like the 19Keys CRM) rather than designing a new cold-traffic funnel from scratch.
- You suspect the failure isn't at the top (traffic/awareness) but somewhere in the post-purchase lifecycle — this is the only playbook here built to catch that class of failure.
- You need a shared vocabulary to diagnose across multiple disconnected assets/platforms (the 8+ platform sovereign CRM problem) rather than one funnel in isolation.

## When NOT to use it

- Used as a rigid *build template* for a single cold-traffic offer — it's too coarse-grained for that; pair it with a build style (`tripwire-slo`, `perfect-webinar`, etc.) once you know which stage needs the work.
- There's no existing customer base or historical data to audit — CVJ needs real stage-level data to be worth anything; for a brand-new offer, start with a build style instead.

## Step-by-step build (audit variant — MANUAL §3.7)

1. **Map every existing asset/touchpoint to one of the 8 stages.** Be honest about gaps — a stage with zero assets mapped to it is itself a finding.
2. **Pull measured (not assumed) numbers** for volume/rate at each stage transition, tagged with data source, per MANUAL §3.7's audit variant.
3. **Aware → Engage**: is there content/ads reaching cold traffic and are they engaging (clicks, views, replies)?
4. **Engage → Subscribe**: is engaged traffic actually opting in anywhere (email, SMS, community)? A business with high engagement and low subscribe rate is bleeding warm traffic with no capture mechanism.
5. **Subscribe → Convert**: is the list converting to a first purchase at all, and at what rate?
6. **Convert → Excite**: after first purchase, is there an onboarding/quick-win moment that builds early trust? (Absence here predicts poor Ascend numbers downstream — see the 19Keys case below.)
7. **Excite → Ascend**: is there literally any offer presented to existing buyers? (The 19Keys diagnostic finding: **zero** ascension emails ever sent — this stage is not underperforming, it does not exist.)
8. **Ascend → Advocate**: are ascended/happy customers asked for referrals, reviews, testimonials?
9. **Advocate → Promote**: is there a mechanism (affiliate, referral program, UGC amplification) turning advocates into an acquisition channel? (This final pairing is the seed of the `flywheel` style.)
10. **Top-3 Drop-off Diagnosis**: name the worst 3 stage-transitions by measured gap vs. benchmark, each tied to a named principle (usually a B=MAP failure, MANUAL §2.6).
11. **Prioritized fix list**: each fix names the stage, expected-lift rationale, and an effort tag (cheap/moderate/expensive) — cheapest, highest-leverage fixes first (typically "unable" friction fixes, per Fogg).

## Worked mini-example — the 19Keys sovereign CRM

- **Measured state:** ~$611K total revenue, 4,591 buyers, 0 ascension emails ever sent (source: Supabase `YOUR_SUPABASE_PROJECT_REF`, direct query — tagged `[historical]`).
- **Stage-by-stage read:** Aware/Engage/Subscribe/Convert are clearly functioning — the revenue and buyer count prove it. **Excite → Ascend is not underperforming, it is unbuilt** — this is the single highest-leverage finding, because 4,591 already-converted buyers is the cheapest audience in the entire business to sell to again (they've already crossed the hardest threshold, Freedman & Fraser §2.12).
- **Diagnosis:** the Excite→Ascend gap is a **B=MAP "unprompted" failure** (§2.6) — motivation and ability plausibly exist (they already bought once, they're a warm list), but there has never been a prompt.
- **Prioritized fix:** #1 fix — build and send an ascension sequence (see `product-launch-formula` or `value-ladder` for the build style) — cheap effort tag (the asset barely exists to build, the audience already exists), highest expected lift of anything in the audit.
- **Advocate/Promote:** unaudited in this pass — flagged as the next audit priority once Ascend is instrumented.

## How the verify gate applies

This deliverable follows the `funnel-audit` linter (MANUAL §8.4), not the `funnel-blueprint` one — the distinguishing requirement is that every number in the Current-State Stage Map must be **measured**, tagged with its actual data source (e.g., `[historical — Supabase query 2026-07-12]`), never a `[guess]`. Any diagnosis lacking a number, or a number lacking a source, fails outright. The fix list must be ranked, not just listed — an unranked fix list is a named linter failure (§8.4). The CVJ's own honesty test: if a stage genuinely has zero data (like Advocate/Promote above), the audit must say so explicitly rather than silently omitting the stage.