Introduction – What are the challenges faced by Marketing Professionals?
Marketing professionals often spend too much of their time collecting data and sorting through it to create just one campaign. Such journeys include onboarding, re-engagement, or client loyalty programs, but what if you want to stop wasting time blasting your entire email customer list with the same campaign and eventually miss the opportunity of turning Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) into Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)?
The best companies in the world not only recognize their customers’ digital behavior, they anticipate it. Any step taken when shopping online (such as dropping an item from your cart), programs like Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder picks up on the queues and marketing teams use that information to figure out ways to boost conversions, improve engagement, and ensure client satisfaction.
Any organization’s email marketing goals should be: increased opens and click rates, low number of bounced and unopened emails, and the crown jewel: conversions! The main objective should be turning customers from prospective clients into actual clients. Turn an interest in a product to an actual purchase of the product. Through it all, you’ll want to respect your customers’ interests by targeting them with campaigns they’ll actually care for– I mean, why wouldn’t you? A happy customer is a returning customer.
What is Salesforce Journey Builder and Customer Journey Mapping?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder should be the go-to tool in every marketer’s back pocket. In very simple terms, it’s the tool used by marketing teams to design the steps a customer takes when interacting with a company.
Check out the Consumer Journey Map below— the visual representation of the steps a consumer has taken with a company is a great way for marketers to target the client with a more personalized experience and therefore improve conversion rates. More importantly, the consumer will be happy and their loyalty to the company will be boosted.
Why is it important to create Customer Journeys?
1. Take customers on customized journeys based on their actions: Focus your marketing efforts on factors such as engagement levels, clients’ shopping habits, and more.
2. Create loyalty with 1-1 targeting: Don’t bombard customers with campaigns that don’t pertain to their interests or experience. Identify their wants and needs to maintain their loyalty.
3. Review your customers’ experience with journey mapping: The visual aid will help any marketing professional identify opportunities and pain points to improve customer experience throughout every touchpoint.
3 Useful Customer Journeys
There are so many different paths customers take when engaging with your company, it can become difficult to track manually. They take so many steps starting the second they click on an ad you posted on Facebook or an email you sent them when they submitted a form signing up for your weekly email newsletters, it’s hard to keep up!
Keeping Salesforce Journey Builder in mind, we’ll create an example use case with Zara as the hypothetical company. We’ll call the customer Lisa– she’s a single, professional woman who, in her spare time, handles her fashion Instagram account. Let’s walk through three different journeys she may embark with a company.
1. From Stranger to Friend
Spring has sprung, and Lisa needs to fill her closet with new outfits to populate her social media fashion account. Her budget isn’t too high and Lisa knows Zara releases great new articles every week. She has registered her interest in Zara by following their Instagram account, signing up for their emails, and getting a discount code for her first purchase by doing so. Lisa has shown interest, provided them with her information, and her journey with Zara has officially begun.
Zara’s Journey Builder has started working on Lisa’s experience with the company. The marketing team has opened up her Map on Marketing Cloud and can begin to understand why she’s signing up for their emails and Instagram account. So, how do they turn her from an MQL into an SQL? Tracking her “likes” on their social media account is a very efficient way to determine her style. After that, sending her emails promoting the same/similar clothes is a good way to go. Reminding her she still has that discount code applied to her account doesn’t hurt either!
Once Lisa has opened the email, the Journey Builder will begin tracking her clicks, purchases (10 items!), and even the items she has removed from her virtual shopping cart. A smart marketing professional would go one step further and check that article’s drop trends and try to understand why it’s not being bought.
Now that Lisa has bought all the necessities for her fashion account, she may not be active with Zara for a while. But that doesn’t mean her journey with the retailer is over– not at all. Now, it’s up to Zara to ensure their happy customer stays happy and engaged.
2. Get to Know your Customers All Over Again
There are many other customers with the same interests as Lisa. They may not be identical, but based on their digital behavior, they have all been segmented into specific audiences by Marketing Cloud. Like Lisa, they provided their email to the retailer to receive a discount code, used the code on a purchase, and have been disengaged since then. So what can Zara’s marketing team do? They need to reacquaint themselves with their customers.
Checking Lisa’s past behavior is a good way to go. She made a large order the first time around, and she was prompted to do so with a discount code and targeted email campaigns. However, she hasn’t opened the last ten emails and has unfollowed Zara’s Instagram. How can the retailer ask their customer back? An effective method is a survey sent via email. Check her Map and see when and where she started to show a lack of interest and ask her about it. Is she getting too many emails and would like to cut down from weekly to monthly? Is the Instagram account too boring and predictable? Zara’s marketing team can encourage survey participation by providing discount codes too!
Before social media and emails, maintaining customers’ attention was a much easier task. But with the rise of new technologies and emerging competitors showing up left and right, the stakes are higher and showing loyalty to customers is essential. Zara should use the Journey Builder to show customers like Lisa that they are valued, their opinion matters, and their satisfaction is the retailer’s number one goal.
3. Assist and Convert
Okay, we have gone through the basic, “easier” Journeys, let’s take it a step further and study a more complex case.
After Zara’s re-engagement efforts, Lisa has become incredibly active with their content– she has re-followed their Instagram, likes all their posts, has a high level of engagement with email marketing, and even goes so far as to leave reviews on purchases she has made. Lisa’s Journey Map on Salesforce Marketing Cloud is lit up like a Christmas tree! There is so much useful information that the marketing team cannot process alone, so they will enlist help from their Journey Builder.
The latest form Lisa has submitted is an interest in the retailer’s upcoming Christmas sale. It’s still a few months away, but why not launch her engagement efforts now? She has taken the time to investigate Zara’s site and navigate the digital content, has made many purchases, and now it’s the retailer’s turn to keep her interest and show why the sale is worth the wait. Sending her a reminder email sin November– then go ahead and target her with a specialized Instagram campaign designed with a first preview of clothes and accessories that will be available in the sale – everybody loves exclusive access to anything and makes them feel appreciated and seen!
Lisa’s hooked, now it’s time to reel her in – sending her a final email with testimonials of how great last year’s Christmas sale went and one day-early access to the sale. There is no reason why Lisa shouldn’t be the first person to “walk” into Zara’s online store during the Christmas sale.
Summary
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder, as I said earlier, is a tool marketers should always have in their back pocket. Getting to know your customers is the secret to a successful business, because as your customer grows, you can grow with them. Interests and attention are shifting faster than ever before. As marketers, our job is to be one step ahead and anticipate these changes.
Customize every step your audience in their digital journeys with you. Be sure every new campaign they’re privy to is relevant to their interests, and erase any chances of them clicking that “unsubscribe” button.
