Field Note #002: Lifecycle Leverage Starts with Inputs you Can Trust

How reliable inputs enhance personalization, build trust, and drive growth

Growth leads, PMMs, lifecycle folks... seem to be wrestling with the same challenge these days: they're personalizing on top of signals they don’t really trust. There's no shortage of data. But ask a team, “Would you bet your onboarding flow on this signal?” and you’ll get a shrug, or a nervous laugh.

Too many systems are built around what’s easy to track, not what’s meaningful. Too many articles skip straight to branching logic without questioning the foundation. Too many dashboards give the illusion of insight.

This note is a response to that pattern. It's for anchoring personalization efforts in signals that actually move the needle because they’re observable, repeatable, and meaningful.

This piece is focused solely on signal validation. Operationalization, tooling orchestration, and data governance each deserve their own treatment and will be covered separately.

At Shopify, when we first built the lifecycle programs in 2018, we had no shortage of signals: product usage, support pings,…