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7 min read

Track and demonstrate your email results with a customer journey map

As more organizations focus on customer-related business models, customer journey mapping is increasingly gaining more recognition as a marketing approach. It can be an indispensable tool for understanding your consumers' needs and expectations.
It also may help you build the future expectations of your consumer base. And as this approach becomes more popular, it becomes a helpful tool for developing effective email marketing campaigns. So, where should you start? And where should you focus on? Scroll down to learn more!

Have you experienced such a scenario?

Not all beginner marketers may know or be aware of customer journey maps. Let alone constructing a visual path for the email sequences or creating a communication map. We’ve asked a few of our collaborators to explain what truly bothers them when creating one, and here is their answer.
Typically, creating a customer journey map is not a challenging task, as many companies highlighted that you should understand how your funnel works and draw the journey that your consumer performs. However, during this process, most marketers told us that some essential data might not be consolidated in one place. Furthermore, there could be insufficient time to create one as there are other important tasks. To sum it up, our collaborators outlined that, in most cases, there is no single platform with collected information from all communication channels.
So how do they usually solve this problem? Building and keeping your journey map in a shared team space is the answer.

What is the point of a customer journey map?

A customer journey map depicts interactions between a business and its customers across various channels during a set period. Most maps break down the customer journey with diagrams, images, or simple charts.
Some maps may cover the entire period from the first interaction to the time they make a purchase. Others may focus on a particular purchasing phase or a sales period, such as how current users resolve product issues by consulting your knowledge base.
The journey mapping process seeks to comprehend customer requirements and eliminate pain points at all crucial brand touchpoints. Gaining such a crucial understanding is vital to you as a business owner. It is the key to connecting the perception of your business in the mind of your customers in the appropriate ways and at the appropriate time.
Journey mapping can also provide valuable insights into why customers act as they do.

  • Customer journey maps can result in a return on marketing investments over 50% higher by allowing you to connect with the right customers faster than ever before.
  • Various independent types of research show that customer journey maps can assist businesses in reducing customer service expenses up to ten times. Thus, it will turn in fewer customer service complaints and increased revenue.
  • Data demonstrate that leveraging the insights from path mapping can boost more than 20 percent of positive social media interactions and mentions. In other words, mapping guarantees that you are marketing to the appropriate customers.

What are the contents of a journey map?

Identifying the five critical steps to begin mapping the client journey is helpful. Depending on your business, the order and contents of these may vary. The five fundamental stages include:
  • 1
    Awareness
    The initial stage of a customer's journey is identifying a need or desire for your product or service. This step also includes making your company's existence known. This can happen through a search, referral, social media advertisement, Google advertisement, website, or social media post. It is crucial to determine how and where your consumers discovered you to connect with more leads from a selected channel.
  • 2
    Consideration
    In the consideration stage, your customer considers their available options. They are still thinking about whether they should proceed with their purchase. In this step, your buyer may begin shopping on your fashion website, look up the comments on particular dress sizes, check your social media accounts, etc. Here, it is an excellent chance to craft a series of automated emails that can persuade people to select your products over your competitors. Automated emails should include links to special deals, offers, gifts, or positive customer reviews.
  • 3
    Acquisition
    This stage contains the act of purchasing but does not conclude when the "purchase" button is clicked. Rather, this phase establishes a service- and communication-based partnership.

    The objective moving forward is to get a loyal customer satisfied with your offerings. At this stage, touchpoints may include customer discounts and automated emails.

    Understanding the acquisition phase will give you vital insight into why your clients choose you. In the future, you should customize yo
  • 4
    Retention
    Retaining new customers is vital for the continued success of a firm once they have been attracted. This phase may involve offering ongoing discounts or soliciting customers' sincere feedback.

    Such marketing approaches as unique material or firm advice/examples content may significantly improve this phase.  In this phase, your consumer may share their positive experience with other prospective clients. Engaging in social media marketing and gathering positive feedback is essential during the advocacy phase. Remember that this phase also ensures that your existing clients remain active and engaged.
  • 5
    Advocacy
    Strategies for advocacy must include proactive methods for addressing criticism and highlighting positive feedback. If a negative review begins to trend on social media, will you be able to contact the customer directly, assess the situation, and resolve it? Finding comments about your brand is the first step; a free service like Google Alerts makes this simple. Keeping a close eye on your company's social channels is also essential, as it is becoming increasingly common for customers to vent their frustrations on social accounts.

What data do you need to include?

To properly understand your customer journey maps, you must analyze audience data. Carefully chosen metrics may show your client behavior patterns that bring them to the desired activities.
At each described stage, you will find common touchpoints where specified audience segments connect with your organization. After identifying them, you can use these touchpoints to map out client journeys.
Customer journeys will vary significantly based on variables such as your business strategy and each customer's unique circumstances. With the correct data and segmentation, however, you can map customer journeys that correspond with the habits and motivations of your segments.
It is essential to identify hurdles on the way to buying. Obstacles can be:
  • For the awareness stage, you will have to mostly look into the Impressions, Reach, and CPM. As you already know, during this stage, you will most likely analyze how impactful your initial approach is. Break down your reach and the impressions you get from the efforts you have put in.
  • For the consideration stage, you might want to concentrate on the total Clicks, CTR, Engagement Rate, and CPC. Here your customers will make their first moves on your products/services. They will assess and evaluate your offers and the content approach that will warm them up.
  • For the acquisition stage, analyze the total leads, CTR, Sales, CPL, and Cost per Conversion. As your users will initiate their first purchases, you should not let your focus go astray. Instead, try to perceive how many leads there are and what is the main driver for the conversion rate through the highlighted metrics. Since conversion rate optimization can reveal which content receives the top level of engagement and the spots where customers are most likely to abandon your website.
  • For the retention stage, consider assessing your Customer Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, NetPromoterScore, Feedback, and CLV. As the customers will finally be able to complete their purchase cycle, it is now time to look into their feedback. Try to understand what advantage will overwhelm you against your market rivals. Try to pinpoint the negative feedback as well, as it will only increase customer loyalty.
Maintain a tight watch on your analytics and consult directly with your customers to understand what is (and is not) working for each section of your customer journey.

Conclusion

It is essential to always remember that consumers are people. It's easy to become buried in the data and consider people as numbers and objectives rather than the individuals they are. When designing customer journeys, putting yourself in the customers' shoes is essential. Data and technology provide a great deal of information about when and where customer journey difficulties arise, but they need to provide a human understanding of why these hurdles occur. Data is essential for defining client journeys, but it is only helpful with human insight into what the data shows.

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