6 certified reasons why customer journey mapping matters

A very warm welcome to you. This might be the start of your Websand customer journey, or perhaps you are well into your customer journey.

You’re reading chapter 7 of our email marketing automation blog series, and this one’s a biggie.

Over the last couple of chapters, we dug deep into the best practices for acquiring new customers and marketing to existing ones.

Now, it’s time for a change of pace as we take on the matter of customer journey mapping.

This key component of automated email marketing should be second nature for any business owner looking to leverage email to drive online revenue.

If it’s the first you’re hearing about it, though, don’t worry – your initiation has already begun.

Let’s kick off with another definition from the Websand dictionary. From there, we’ll introduce you to the big, wide world of customer journey mapping. From there, you’ll be itching to kick-start your own journey map.

What is the customer journey?

In the online world, the customer journey is the sequence of steps a user takes during their relationship with your business.

This journey begins at the point a user first interacts with your business. This might be on social media, via a paid ad or organic search.

If your marketing strategy is on point, this journey never really ends. Strictly speaking, though, every individual customer journey ends with a conversion. Whatever that means to your business.

For the purposes of this post on customer journey mapping, we’re going to treat conversions as good old-fashioned online product sales.

What is customer journey mapping?

As you might now have gathered, creating a customer journey map is the process of visually mapping out the steps a user takes during their experience with your brand.

This customer journey mapping follows the steps taken by the user from first contact to final sale (and beyond to the next sale).

By going to the trouble of visualising this journey for your customers, you can identify roadblocks, pain points and, most importantly, timely opportunities for targeted marketing.

The visual aspect of customer journey mapping really can’t be overlooked, either.

It’s one thing to have an abstract understanding of your customers’ needs. It’s another entirely to plot their route to conversion with surgical precision.

Your customer journey map will be a route you’ve devised. It won’t necessarily be a journey that’s followed to the letter.

For example, the ideal customer journey map ends with a goal completion (or sale), but we daresay not every member of your mailing list goes on to become a paying customer.

Get to grips with your customers’ journey and, as always, gather and analyse hard data on drop-off and disengagement.

Armed with this data, you can restructure, refine and streamline to remove friction along the way and prime users to convert.

Keep reading for access to your very own template which will make the process of customer journey mapping that much easier.

Why do I need a customer journey map?

So, we’ve touched on the basics of why customer journey mapping is worth the time and effort you’ll put into it. But if you need a little more incentivising, rest assured there are bags of benefits that come with charting a course to conversions.

Here are just some of the many reasons so many businesses are profiting from plotting their customer journey map.

It pays to know customer problems inside out

An innate understanding of the problems your customers face is simply vital.

Many businesses mistakenly believe their brand exists to sell a product.

It doesn’t.

It exists to solve a customer problem.

Before you put pen to paper on your customer journey map, you need to understand what the core problem is that your product range solves.

With this guiding mission clear in your mind, the process of customer journey mapping will help you identify touch points along the way where you can make contact.

Each one of these touch points presents an opportunity to showcase your problem-solving prowess.

Customer journey maps make inbound sales a breeze

Outbound sales is a slog with a capital S. There’s no getting around that. With no indication the people on your contact list are qualified leads, this area of customer service can be an exercise in rejection. Thankfully, though, customer journey mapping creates a prime platform for successful inbound selling.

With touch points and milestones along the way, you can use your customer journey map as a guide to the most opportune times for your sales team to make contact. These touch points present key decision-making intervals throughout the customer journey. Make sure you’re there when the moment’s right with an irresistible sales pitch.

Content marketing becomes a well-oiled machine

Each milestone throughout the customer journey is also a prime opportunity to share value-adding content with would-be customers. From targeted how-to content that (you guessed it) solves problems to deep dives into the features and benefits of your product range, there’s a time and a place for every piece of persuasive content marketing.

The place is within your automated email marketing campaign. The timing is up for debate, but your customer journey map will certainly help you put your finger on it.

Sales-driven marketing becomes customer-driven marketing

Rather than spending your professional life chasing that next sale, customer journey mapping drives a welcome shift towards customer-centric thinking. You can abandon tired and outdated marketing campaigns that see users bombarded with aimless competing messages. These have no place in the new, more evolved age of digital marketing.

Make way for strategic, sequential marketing that’s all about customer experience – not only removing obstacles to conversions but removing objections.

Keep customer needs and expectations front of mind throughout the mapping process to trade one-off transactions for enduring relationships.

Customer retention rates go through the roof

With problem-solving at the heart of your map, along with targeted sales activity, purposeful content sharing and customer-centric thinking, you can wage war on customer drop-off.

Customers on their journey with your business will be in no doubt that their wish is your command. They’ll be immersed in your brand from customer service to content marketing. They’ll know what your business can do for them and why they should care, and they’ll certainly know how they can convert when the mood strikes.

Automated email marketing campaigns build themselves

Just think of the sheer volume of insightful user data you’ll be able to gather with a spotless customer journey map of your own.

Every resource you can create to learn more about your customers’ browsing and buying habits helps to make automated email marketing child’s play.

Put your Customer journey mapping in place.

Ready to take this email marketing theory and put it to good use? So are we. Get your free 14-day trial of the Websand platform to kick-start your successful first foray into email marketing automation.

We’ll catch up with you next time, when we’ll be putting your newfound customer journey mapping knowledge into practice.