From Emails to Experiences: Transforming Marketing with Customer-Centric Journeys

The days of blasting customers with generic emails and hoping for a click are slowly coming to an end. In fact, more and more marketers are wising up and steering away from single campaign efforts because it’s no longer an effective approach. By examining a customer’s past behaviors, their lifecycle stage, and capitalizing on real-time triggers and signals, marketers can now appreciate customers as unique individuals with their own distinct needs. Embracing this customer-centric mentality fosters stronger connections and drives meaningful results, allowing businesses to thrive in a modern digital landscape.

Overcoming Traditional Marketing Strategies

To understand the benefits of customer-centric journeys, it’s crucial to first understand the opportunities missed with legacy marketing strategies.

Historically, many businesses have relied on marketing approaches that, while once effective, are increasingly falling short in today's dynamic digital landscape. Let's quickly review a few of the more popular marketing methods that no longer pack the same punch:

• Single-channel focus: Marketers often focus their efforts on one primary channel, such as email or print. Unfortunately, this approach misses the omnichannel reality of today's customer experience where customers seamlessly switch between devices and touchpoints.

• Fixed or seasonal marketing plans: Marketing calendars are usually set far in advance, with campaigns planned around specific dates or seasons. This approach lacks agility and misses out on real-time trends or in-the-moment customer behaviors.

• Batch or static content delivery: Traditional marketing often relies heavily on pushing messages out to a broad audience, hoping to capture attention through sheer volume. This approach can feel intrusive and fails to consider the customer's specific needs or interests.

While these approaches had their merits once upon a time, they now fail to capture the nuanced, real-time interactions that define modern customer experiences.

Meet Customers Where They Are

Effective customer journeys require an understanding of where customers are in their decision-making process. Marketers today should be transforming their legacy static messaging into a dynamic, multi-channel experience that supports them at every touchpoint. This means providing informative content during the awareness stage, in-depth comparisons during consideration stage, and clear calls to action at the decision stage. Then, post-purchase, executing personalized support and loyalty programs keep customers engaged. By leveraging data for personalization, maintaining an omnichannel presence, and triggering relevant content and offers, marketers meet customers where they are, building trust, driving conversions, and fostering long-term relationships.

The Customer Journey

So how do we meet customers where they are? Let’s use a (semi) real-life example to illustrate the potential.

Imagine you’re in charge of marketing for Chicago’s newest annual music festival, Jammapalooza, and your team gets to create the communication strategy for ticket buyers. Liz, an avid music lover who enjoys attending concerts with her friends, got lucky and scored early tickets. During her registration process she indicated that her favorite artists are: Blink-182 and Billie Eilish. (excellent choices!)

This may not seem like much information, but in reality you have enough detail to help personalize Liz’s event experience and to stay connected before, during and after the festival using multiple channels and platforms. So, instead of sending a standard, “thank you for your purchase” email and mailing her tickets, here’s what you could do:

Pre-Event

• Personalized welcome email: No generic confirmation emails here. This purchase confirmation email not only ensures entry into the event, but it is also personalized for Liz with info on her favorite artists – Blink-182 and Billie Eilish (maybe linking to some past performances?).

• Interactive wristband activation: This is a no-cash / no-credit card event – wristbands only. Once you have delivery confirmation that Liz received her physical wristband, send her a message to activate it. Entice her to complete the activation process and offer up a promotion she can use at the event.

• Event app download: Everything about the festival lives in the event app. Liz needs to know she may miss out on a key performance if she doesn’t download the app to her phone in advance. Send her a message with some key benefits of downloading early. If you know she’s already got the app, send some recommended bands or show times based on her provided preferences.

During the Event

• Personalized schedule: The mobile app allows Liz to set reminder notifications for her favorite artists’ schedules and locations. On festival day, the app prominently displays set times and stages for Blink-182 and Billie Eilish, and sends real-time push notifications to ensure she doesn’t miss any performance and has memorable festival experience.

• Interactive map: Helping attendees easily find their way around an event is a key to the optimal experience. The in-app map provides Liz with a clickable list of vendors to help locate what she’s looking for, and even favorite them to visit later. Using geofencing capabilities, the app displays Liz's location within the festival grounds and alerts her when she’s near a favorited vendor.

Post-Event

• Survey and preference center: Continuous feedback and improvement are necessary to sustain interest in any annual event. After the event, send Liz a digital survey asking for feedback including a link to a preference center where she can choose the type of future communication she wants to receive, ensuring your emails and promotions are relevant to her interests. We know collecting feedback conversions can be tough – so add an incentive! Send Liz a “thank you” promotional offer for completing the survey and she will receive an exclusive discount on festival merchandise (you know, that t-shirt she really wanted but didn’t buy!).

By personalizing Liz's journey at every touchpoint, from welcome emails to exclusive post-event offers, you can create a memorable experience that fosters brand loyalty and makes her want to come back next year.

Key Take-Aways

Getting the right mix of channels and personalization can be tricky, but you have to start somewhere! If you’re interested in standing up your own customer journey-based engagements, here are some things to remember:

1. Ditch the one-size-fits-all approach: Move beyond generic marketing and tailor experiences that recognize customers as individuals with unique needs and preferences.

2. Maintain omnichannel marketing: Develop a cohesive strategy across multiple platforms to meet customers where they are, whether on social media, or mobile apps.

3. Focus on customer journeys stages: Tailor content and communication to each stage of the customer’s journey – awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase.

4. Prioritize real-time engagement: Respond to a customer’s behavior and triggers in real-time to create a more dynamic experience.

5. Build trust and loyalty: Personalized experiences foster stronger connections leading to trust, conversions, and long-term relationships with your customers.

If you’d like to know more, or want help developing your own customer journey, you can reach us at: BrazeHelp@CovalentMarketing.com.