The majority of new business ventures begin small. The founder sees an opportunity to service a specific customer in a unique way and seizes it. More clients, a larger team, and new prospects follow one delighted customer. What began as a small operation has grown into a much larger operation with many moving parts—and a vast number of clients who all want the same quality of service. That’s how customer journeys start.
A customer journey is a narrative about getting to know your users, how they act while on your website, and what you can do to improve their experience so they return. With continual technological advancements and new ways for individuals to acquire items or services online, it’s critical to prepare and predict how a client will behave at every stage.
Businesses are looking to automated technologies to help them find a better balance between growth and personalization in order to scale in a way that supports the customer journey. Marketing automation systems like RisePath’s free marketing software, for example, can be very beneficial when used intelligently and strategically.
Let’s take a closer look at some customer journey automation best practices.
Why do marketing automation and customer journeys complement one another?
Your customer journey map is a visual representation of the process that your consumer goes through from awareness to delighted client. A well-designed customer journey map should aid team members in comprehending your buyer personas, their internal motivations, and interactions with your company.
Journey mapping can also help you improve the client experience and eliminate inefficiencies within your company. For instance, you could find it easier to recognise:
- Content gaps: Articles, eBooks, technical instructions, and other resources that may assist the customer in achieving his or her goal more quickly.
- Unnecessary friction: Points in the trip that make customers’ lives harder, such as ambiguous calls to action or repetitive tasks.
- Time-consuming, manual processes: Steps like appointment confirmations that, if automated, would benefit both the customer and your team.
When you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of contact records, solving these problems is difficult. Marketing automation is extremely useful in this situation. Marketing automation technologies, unlike batch-and-blast email platforms with limited configuration choices, are designed to enable highly personalised, rule-based journeys that correspond with the customer and corporate goals.
Marketing automation allows your organisation to automate and scale its processes to keep up with its development. What’s the end result? Improved productivity, better-informed clients, and reduced friction in the purchasing process. Consider implementing a free marketing software if you haven’t joined the marketing automation bandwagon already.
4 customer journey optimization marketing automation tips
So, how can you make marketing automation work for your customer journey? Consider the following four suggestions.
1. Gather ideas and plan your automation strategy.
Don’t give in to the urge to start “doing.” Rather, devote time to the process and create a strategy. Return to your customer journey map and make a note of any content gaps, broken procedures, and possibilities for development, such as:
- Using auto-responder emails to handle form submissions
- Automating blog content distribution to subscribers
- Following up with leads who have requested pricing but have not purchased
- Increasing the speed with which new customers are onboarded
- Asking customers to leave feedback on social media and review sites.
Request input from key stakeholders in sales, support, marketing, and other departments. Determine how much time and effort goes into sustaining current procedures and workflows. Calculate the potential for automation to have a positive influence on your business.
2. Organize your work.
Gather all of your automation ideas and organise them in one place. Kanban boards are visually appealing and make it simple to organise projects into a sequential sequence for implementation. Begin with the project that has the highest value and requires the least work. Alternatively, if you’re brand new to automation, you might want to start with a tiny, low-impact project. This way, you can get a better understanding of the marketing automation software and avoid any unforeseen delays.
A final word about sequencing: If everything is in progress, nothing is progressing. As a result, it’s ideal to focus on a single automation project at a time. Rather than maximising the amount of work, focus on leveraging automation to bring value to the client journey.
3. Become familiar with your marketing automation software.
There are numerous marketing automation platforms available today. Some have visually intuitive user interfaces, while others are dated and difficult to use. Some CRM integrations are native, while others require third-party integration. It’s critical to read support material and become comfortable with the platform, UI, and vocabulary, regardless of the technology you want to utilise. (Check out RisePath’s marketing automation checklist if you haven’t chosen a marketing automation system yet.)
4. Analyze data to assess impact, identify problems, and inform future decisions
Make frequent use of your marketing automation system for data and insights as you automate various portions of the client experience. Drill down into key steps in the trip in addition to top-level campaign metrics. It should be simple to grasp in your system:
- Total number of emails delivered, opened, and clicked
- Steps in the trip that are both successful and unsuccessful
- Possibilities to improve the voyage through time
One final note: Both your business and the client journey are always changing. As a result, you must update your automation rules on a frequent basis as things change. Make it a mission to look over all of your active automations on a regular basis. Depending on the degree of automation, a monthly or quarterly cycle is definitely a suitable choice. Examine any automated workflows that may conflict with or detract from the client experience. Look for ways to simplify and consolidate.
Automate your customer journeys, one step at a time
The client journey can benefit greatly from automation. It can also be daunting, particularly if your organisation has been hesitant to adopt new technologies. Don’t try to do too many things at once when developing your automation plan. Remember that each small improvement will benefit both your consumers and your employees.
Keep things basic, prioritise value, and iterate.
Visit the RisePath website to learn more about RisePath’s free marketing software.
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