Customer Journey v/s Customer Experience
In today’s “Customer Age” landscape, customer is more empowered than the marketer. Influx of various channels like Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook & Google they are always connected and have access to loads of information. They trust user reviews and feedback rather than the brand’s ad campaigns. This information overload has led to a dramatic reduction of customer’s attention span.
Customer Journey Now: Shorter and Interactive
We have to do more with less to get their message heard. They need to understand customer’s preferences to market utilizing different channels such as email messages, text messages, auto-voice and push notification with optimization for the “WOW” impact! Shorter, transparent, 2-way journey focused on automation and technology.
Cross-channel marketing automation solutions enables marketers like us to conceptualize, attain, implement, measure and scale.
Customers Expect Personalization & Real-time Marketing
Customers today access information on more devices than ever and their journey is not at all linear. It’s like a maze. They discover a brand on one device, say mobile; engage with them on desktop and finally transact on another device, say tablet. Keeping the message personalized, relevant and contextual across the entire journey is what matters the most. Marketing, today is a mix of art & science for sure. Marketers need to invest in marketing technology solutions that can help them personalize communication in real-time across all touch points.
Data is the Core Vital for Personalization
Customers leave a lot of data through their digital footprints and offline interactions throughout their customer journey. This has led to creation of new positions like Data Scientist, who can help in mining this data to derive actionable insights and profiling. It’s the marriage of marketing and analytics which can help identify gaps in the customer journey. Businesses need to invest in stellar CRM solutions that can help them listen & decipher intelligence from this data to keep enriching for data-driven personalized marketing.
Data Privacy – Where to draw the Line?
Big data available on prospects/customers and aids focus on data-driven marketing, businesses need to be cautionary about invading customer’s privacy and adapt CAN SPAM act. It is the customer’s decision on data sharing. Customers share data with a brand based on the trust that they won’t misuse it. But implicit behavior can take preference over explicit permissions without violating the data privacy. We can ally with others from complementary categories for relevant targeted promotions.
Customer Experience is the Modern Path to the Future
We have to move beyond their traditional role of branding and customer acquisition. They have to own the customer experience as brands are built over time and communications across every touch point needs to be analyzed and optimized for competitive differentiation. We have to embrace the collision of traditional & digital marketing as customers continue to consume information online and transact offline. We have to become the change agent and weave creative ideas with big data to lead this transformation to customer-centric marketing to drive business growth.