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Track, Segment, Target: An Introduction To Customer Journey Mapping

track,-segment,-target:-an-introduction-to-customer-journey-mapping

Should “customer journey” be part of your eCommerce vocabulary?

Absolutely! Customer journey mapping can help you learn how people behave when they visit your website, what you can do to improve their experience, and how to increase sales while encouraging repeat purchases.

So, what is a customer journey anyway?

“A customer journey map tells the story of the customer's experience: from initial contact, through the process of engagement and into a long-term relationship.”

Like any other kind of story, the customer journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes, it's also referred to as the sales funnel. Though there are many models of what a customer journey looks like, most include some variation of these phases:

Awareness

This phase refers to customers who haven't made a purchase yet. They could have looked at your website, clicked on some products, or even added some items to their cart.

Conversion

This phase looks at customers seriously considering purchasing or having already made one.

Re-Engagement

This phase involves turning customers into repeat purchasers, maybe even making them advocates for your store.

There are many different ways to define the customer journey. Later in this blog post, we will look at a version with five phases. But first, let's unpack why this is so important for you and your eCommerce business.

Why should you care about the Customer Journey?

customer-journey-lifecycle

Image via: super office

Every customer goes through a lifecycle with a brand, starting with even just being aware that a company exists. If things go well, that customer may eventually become a regular customer or advocate for your business.

TTracking where customers exist on this cycle allows you to strategically promote and grow your business. By separating your customers into different stages, you can visualize them as other groups with individual wants, needs, and interests.

It's also an excellent way to highlight strengths and opportunities within your sales funnel and make the most out of your marketing efforts by ensuring the right people receive the right message at the right time.

In a nutshell, customer journey mapping can help you:

  • Move people through your sales funnel
  • Increase engagement
  • Target the right customer with the proper promotion
  • Drive conversions and repeat purchases
  • Build trust and brand loyalty

Let's look at some examples of “customer journey” focused promotions:

New-Client-Promo

Can you guess which stage of the customer journey this would speak to? These offers appeal to customers who are just discovering your business or thinking about making their first purchase. On the other hand, if you send this to someone already a regular customer, it will quickly find its way to the recycling bin.

Here's a different kind of offer:

rewards

Promotions like this work well for turning existing customers into repeat purchasers or advocates for your brand. On the other hand, if someone has only looked at your store once, they likely won't be interested in signing up for a membership or rewards program.

As you can see, knowing which customers are on which stage of the customer journey can be very useful when coming up with the right promotional strategy.

What are you waiting for? If you haven't started customer mapping, now is the time. Let's look at different approaches to creating your customer journey map.

The customer journey will look a little bit different for every business. Here are three steps for creating your customer journey map.

Step 1: Do Your Research

You can conduct two types of research when building your customer journey profiles: analytical and anecdotal.

Analytical research refers to quantifiable analytics, such as how much time people spend on your website, how often people have clicked on a link, or the conversion rate of a web banner.

Anecdotal research is sometimes trickier, relying on personal testimony and using informal gathering methods. Social media can be a great way to gauge the general attitude of your customers. You can also try putting out surveys or trying to get customers to fill out a quiz.

Step 2: Identify customer touchpoints 

A touchpoint is anywhere that people interact with your brand. Common touchpoints include ads, your website or social media pages, brick-and-mortar store locations when customers receive your product in the mail, and re-engagement tactics like follow-up emails and surveys.

Try to identify any obstacles or opportunities at each touchpoint so that you can build a strategy that moves customers smoothly through your sales funnel.

Step 3: Create a map 

Now that you've researched your customer journey's various touchpoints, strengths, and opportunities, the final step is to create a visual map.

If you aren't a graphic designer, we recommend getting one to help you. In addition to being visually appealing, you want your customer journey map to be clear, concise, and easy to read so that anyone you work with can understand and articulate your business goals and opportunities.

Your customer journey map should have somewhere between 3-5 categories, each with sub-tactics or descriptions that tell the story of how your business operates.

Here's an example:

customer journey

Image via: childforallseasons

Notice how this map breaks out the different stages of the customer journey and highlights other touch points, strengths, and opportunities? As you can see, customer journey mapping can be a handy tool for articulating the goals of your business and planning successful marketing campaigns.

At this point, you might be excitedly scribbling down the first draft of your customer journey map — or maybe you're thinking, “This seems like a lot of work.”

Fair enough. Depending on the size and scale of your business, you may not need something this intricate. However, that doesn't mean customer journey mapping has no place in your small to medium-sized eCommerce business. Let's look at an easier way.

Here's an easy and effective way to start gathering data and building your customer journey map today with just two apps.

The first app is called Bold Brain, and it's free!

If you use Shopify, you may have heard about or tried our Bold suite of eCommerce apps. They are easy to install and integrate into your store, giving you access to a diverse toolbelt of functionality to sell more or manage your eCommerce business.

Add the Power of A.I. to your Shopify Store 

brain4 (1)

What if you could tell what your customers were thinking and the kinds of promotions they would like by tracking their activity on your store? Sounds pretty great, right?

For years, companies like Amazon have used this technology to track how we behave on their site and try to get us to buy more.

You've probably seen something like this before:

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 10.40.59 AM

Don't worry; an employee at Amazon isn't watching your web browsing and updating the page in real-time with recommendations. That would be a little intense!

These are called intelligent recommendations, meaning the site automatically generates them based on browsing.

Bold Brain works the same way. All you have to do is turn it on, and it will gather information, integrate with your other apps, and make suggestions tailored to your customer's interests.

Try Bold Brain FREE 

This brings us to the other Bold app you need to start tracking customer journeys today: Bold Loyalty Points.

This app creates rewards programs, offers V.I.P. promotions, manages referral programs, and more.

But that's not all.

Now, when combined with Brain, Loyalty Points can track each customer's journey right in the dashboard of your Shopify store. That's right, you don't even need to hire a designer to create a fancy infographic. Working together, these apps will segment your customers into different customer journey stages for you.

Bold Loyalty Points breaks your customers into five carefully thought-out segmentations. These include:

Awareness – I have just looked around.

Consideration – have browsed products, added items to your cart, or subscribed to your mailing list.

Acquisition – have made a purchase.

Retention – Have completed more than one order or redeemed loyalty points.

Advocacy – have referred other customers or shared or tweeted on social.

Once you install and activate Loyalty Points and Brain, your store will automatically start grouping your customers into these five stages. As Brain tracks your customer's behavior on your store, it will begin to populate each step of the customer journey with analytics, just like this:

Screen Shot 2019-11-20 at 3.53.56 PM

Look at all that data!

Not only does this allow you to see how many customers are in each stage of the sales funnel. It also shows you the audience value, the number of orders, and other key sales metrics you can use to run marketing campaigns.

The app also integrates easily with Mailchimp to run segmented email marketing campaigns for each customer segment.

mailchimp

Imagine how it will make your customers feel when an offer shows up in their email inbox that is tailored to their individual wants, needs, and interests!

Using the Bold Brain and Loyalty Points apps, you'll have everything you need to run a successful Black Friday retargeting campaign fuelled by accurate data and customer insight.

Embrace the future of eCommerce

You can start tracking your customer's journeys on your eCommerce store today.

This article was originally published by our friends at Bold Commerce.

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