We’ve been discussing communication requirements that reflect a new business reality after years of pandemic-related upheaval. Is your company maximizing the value of first party data to improve customer journeys?
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are an essential element in modern marketing to enable deeper personalization with relevant offers, targeted communications and better experiences. What does that level of personalization look like in practice? Here are three common marketing use cases:
1) Unsubscribe lists
Users are placed on a suppression list which is used to prevent future communication to them via email, SMS, phone calls and more. It is an important mechanism for large organizations to ensure preferences are respected across departments.
2) Lead scoring
Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical points, to each lead you generate for the business. The process helps sales and marketing teams prioritize incoming leads and nurture prospects more effectively through the sales cycle.
3) Predicting churn risk with personalized win-back offers
One of the most compelling features of CDPs is automating next-best offer, next best channel or next best action to move customers through the funnel. What used to be the domain of data scientists can now be completed in less time. Using activity history, a CDP can tap into machine learning to identify customers who are at risk of churning. With this data, you can create ultra-personalized offers or other win-back incentives to retain customers.
What do these use cases have in common? The bigger picture of connected data and experiences. With unified customer data at the center, marketers can use unified omnichannel applications to deliver connected customer experiences that are relevant and engaging.
With an integration between OpenTextTM TeamSiteTM and Google Audiences, target anonymous users and automatically re-market to them as their interest and audience data are updated. Remarketing with Google Audiences ensures your visitors are always seeing the most captivating content to help them reach that conversion event. The opportunity continues even after conversion. With a CDP, marketers can use customer behavior to inform every interaction with the brand.
Moving from events to customer journeys
A customer journey is a tool that helps marketers understand the series of connected experiences that customers desire and need – whether that be completing a task or the end-to-end journey from prospect to customer to loyal advocate.
What does the journey from acquisition to advocacy look like? According to IT research firm Omdia, the process involves six steps starting with awareness gained through advertising, word-of-mouth or events. The second stage is consideration, which involves proactive engagement with offers and content at the right time and place. Next comes evaluation when marketing and sales engage with hyper-personalized product information. The purchase and enroll stage is when the sale is completed, and then comes support with personalized service, training or repairs. The final step is nurturing / advocacy, which includes the use of rewards programs to build loyalty and next-best actions for continuous engagement.
Applying customer journey management
Journey mapping allows marketers to move from a transaction to a timed journey.
1) Data visualization and segmentation
The best way to map out your customer journey is to capture your first-party data and illustrate it using reports and dashboards. This includes any data capture from Voice of the Customer programs, surveys, contact center or web feedback. Drill-down and segment the audiences, analyze data against KPIs and export audience datasets.
2) Orchestration
During this stage of the process, marketers start to build journey maps defining triggers for new omnichannel communications based on customer action or inaction. Define A/B or multivariate testing plans. Find journey breakpoints and automate your customer experiences. Analyze your customers action or inaction and orchestrate your communications based on customer events. Ensure the orchestration handles non-optimal conditions – a reminder if the customer is non-responsive or a more explanatory message if tackling confusion.
3) Authoring
Get creative! Craft the content for each touchpoint of the journey you defined in the prior step. Create emails, landing pages, cross-channel promotion, SMS/RCS or social content for each specific stage.
4) Analytics and optimization
Mine insights into customers’ behavior from first-party data to detect patterns and predict the next best action. Understand and diagnose potential issues in journeys. Automate suggestions for audiences and segments based on interactions. Optimize for key customer segments and adjust content based on performance.
Start small with journey management by collecting data from your Customer Communications Management (CCM) platform. Check if a communication was received (or not) and opened (or not ) and clicked (or didn’t). Add additional capabilities by interacting with other solutions to evaluate communication effectiveness. For example, examine web touchpoints, if a form is received, loan is approved, geolocation from app, or entry in a physical store. Compare it to the journey map, optimize and improve. In a basic example, negative sentiment detected in the call center could trigger a rule to be applied to the event type and sent to the orchestrator. Follow-up letters are provided based on sentiment, positive drives a communication with an enthusiastic tone while negative triggers a more conciliatory message. The key is to start collecting customer and event data for the future. A rich supply of historical data is needed to support more effective communications.
Data and insights solve for modern communication needs
The future of communications rests on data and analytics. When it comes to your communication goals, it’s important to ensure alignment between strategy and execution while solving for journey management. Building a shared view is essential when it comes to customer data and content strategy. People, process and technology must be cross-functional and cross-silo. There has to be a plan to bring these elements together to ensure a cohesive and modern customer experience. And finally, technology considerations are paramount. Consider the whole communications and experience stack: CCM, CDP, web content management, digital asset management, messaging, workforce optimization and journey management. According to 451 Research, 68% of businesses say that integration across CX technologies is important to improving the customer experience. Integration matters!
Get started with customer journey management.
