Regardless of the industry, the future of any brand depends on the customer experience. In order to direct customers and prospects into the correct parts of the funnel, brands must ensure customer journeys are as relevant and accurate as possible.
Brands must find cost-effective ways to keep existing customers and attract new ones since consumers have more ways than ever to interact with a brand, and these consumers are more digitally savvy than ever before.
If they have a negative or unsatisfactory experience during their customer journey, these digital-first customers are not hesitant to transfer to other brands. In fact, most customers will stop buying from a brand they were loyal to after just two to three bad experiences.
To direct customers and prospects into the right parts of the funnel, businesses must ensure their customer journeys are as relevant as possible. Additionally, organizations must offer the most personalized and relevant customer experience possible as consumers progress through that funnel.
A Data-Driven Approach to the Customer Journey
Understanding consumers and where they are interacting with the brand is necessary before adding more data-driven practices to the customer journey. A 2022 Salesforce report, “State of the Connected Customer,” found that 66% of customers expect businesses to understand their needs.
To gain insights into their consumer base, businesses use several data-management software platforms and tools. These platforms, which include digital monitoring products, Customer Data Platforms (CDP), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) collect and integrate various customer data so it can be utilized to personalize the customer experience.
Customer Journey Orchestration
Customer journey orchestration enables marketers to monitor customer interactions throughout the entire customer journey while delivering relevant messaging and content wherever those customers may be leveraging data management platforms to become more data-driven. Marketers can utilize data-driven customer journey maps to gain actionable insights from the awareness stage to acquisition, engagement, onboarding, and advocacy.
Also Read: Convergence of MarTech and AdTech for a Better Customer Journey
Marketers can see how consumers interact with a brand by creating these stages of the customer journey. This allows them to gain insight into the channels customers use and the messages that engage at each stage.
To be truly valuable, the customer journey must be documented and mapped. This way, all internal stakeholders can embrace the ideal purchase journey. It would simply be too much work to do this manually; hence the only way a business can truly orchestrate a customer journey is to be data-driven.
Making It Happen with Technology
Marketing can use more intelligent and advanced data management platforms to automate customer journey management by integrating them with AI to execute customer journey orchestration and customer segmentation. Marketers can obtain the technical foundation they need to manage the entire customer journey across both physical and digital channels with the right capabilities and tools.
Marketers can scan massive volumes of data, recognize trends and patterns, and suggest the best next steps with Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, which can be integrated into a larger all-in-one software platform or used independently. As a result, the customer journey is more accurately portrayed than marketers could by manually analyzing all the data.
AI can help businesses create more precise customer profiles and provide suggestions that can really be implemented to improve performance. They can use AI to identify the characteristics of their most loyal consumers, identify those who are most likely to leave them, and receive suggestions for upselling and cross-selling.
Also Read: How to Optimize Customer Journeys to Generate Profit
Data Solutions Should Be a Priority for CIOs and CMOs
Data-driven-centric processes are necessary for tracking, customizing, and orchestrating the entire customer journey and for making the necessary investments in infrastructure and technology. As marketers will be unable to manually program messaging and campaigns to influence each stage of the modern customer journey, using the right technology tools and platforms is essential for success.
As part of their digital transformation, CMOs and CIOs should look to invest in a centralized data management solution, and CEOs should ensure they have the funding required to execute successfully.
Businesses can only fully transform their customer journeys into data-driven experiences and journeys informed by customer data with the help of a unified data management strategy and the technology to support it.
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