Customer Journey • Marketing Automation

For years, marketers have spoken about ‘multichannel marketing’ and with good reason: communicating with customers across multiple channels is part and parcel of aligning with their typical customer journey. 

Whether it’s social media and infographics when customers are first becoming aware of a pain point, or video testimonials and case studies at the point of evaluating vendors, our marketing strategy must align with the types of information customers seek throughout their journey from ‘awareness’, to ‘consideration’, ‘evaluation’, ‘purchase’ and ‘loyalty and/or advocacy’.

What’s surprising is that just 29% of enterprise companies rate themselves as effective or very effective at creating a cohesive customer journey, according to Salesforce.

Why could this be?

In my opinion, there are a few potential reasons:

1. They don’t have a clear picture of their customer’s journey and perspective.
2. They’ve made incorrect assumptions about their customers and their journey.
3. They don’t have the technology to create an excellent journey.

Marketing Cloud Engagement users, however, can rest assured that the third reason won’t apply to their business. 

With a suite of studios and modules like ‘Email Studio’, ‘Content Builder’, ‘Journey Builder’, ‘Marketing Cloud Advertising’, and ‘Marketing Cloud Intelligence, marketers can communicate with current and future customers across many channels from a single platform.

This brings us back to reasons one and two. To create a marketing strategy that absolutely aligns with your typical customer’s journey, it’s important to research and plan properly first.

Using intel from team members, hard data and insights from existing marketing tools, and direct customer research, the first step is to create an accurate customer journey map.

It’s about putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and seeing the journey from their perspective. 

Once you have a good customer journey map, building a marketing plan becomes much easier and makes it possible to:

• Select the right channels and products you’ll need in Marketing Cloud.
• Create content that’s relevant and tailored to each stage of the journey.
• Leverage data to validate and improve the journey over time.
• Automate marketing activity so you’re fully aligned with the customer’s timeline.
• Review Marketing Cloud analytics and confidently report on KPIs by stage.

If you’ve invested in software like Marketing Cloud, it’s a surefire way to get more out of your account, and in turn, better ROI.

To help Marketing Cloud users understand and connect with customers throughout their journey, I’ve put together the ultimate handbook: Connecting Customer Journeys with Marketing Cloud Engagement.

What to expect from the handbook

Covering the basics you need to know about crafting customer journeys with Marketing Cloud, the handbook provides all the considerations you need, such as:

• Customer journey vs. customer experience 
• Taking the customer’s perspective
  • Journey mapping
  • Challenging assumptions
  • See, Think, Do, Care
• Marketing Cloud & the single customer view
  • Integration
  • Tracking
  • Omnichannel experiences
• Aligning with the customer journey
  • Channel selection
  • Leveraging data
  • Automating journeys
  • Creating content
  • Journey analytics
  • Einstein for Marketing Cloud

It combines excellent customer journey theory and advice, with know-how on Marketing Cloud and its capabilities. Whether you’re just starting out with a new account, or determined to improve the results you’re already achieving, there will be nuggets of valuable information for you.

Download the handbook here and start connecting your customer journey.

Find yourself stuck or have a question? MarCloud is here to help. Send us a message and we’ll be in touch.