Three Essential Steps for Customer Journey Optimization

Orchestrating successful customer journeys that deliver leads, conversions, brand loyalty, and customer long-term value should be like watching a well-choreographed ballet or football match. Optimizing journeys takes more than having the right data, knowing your audience, or creating a flashy campaign. Each stage- Acquisition, Activation, Retention, and Loyalty is structured around a strategy, execution, and insight plan that takes into consideration everything from the quality of your data to the technology you leverage to analyze and communicate while moving your customer through the funnel. Let’s take a look at each of the stages and why they are so important. 

Strategy, Execution, Insights

STRATEGY 

Strategies are built around solving each of the stage objectives and overcoming the pain points that get in the way of your customers taking action. Identifying what the objectives and pain points are and then designing a plan for how to meet them provides a guiding light for teams. Key points to identify along each of the stages include: 

1. Are your martech platforms optimized and do they sync and work well together?  

2. Do you have problems with data capture, and can you identify where the gaps exist? 

3. How are your conversion rates? 

4. Is there a cross-selling revenue plan in place? 

5. What do your customer sentiment levels look like? 

6. Have you been experiencing a decline in renewals?  

EXECUTION 

It may seem obvious, but how well you implement your strategy will influence whether you reach your goals. Putting a plan into action often requires a buy-in from the data, tech, and analytics teams with a clear understanding of what resources and budgets you have to work with and the expectations that actions will deliver. Some questions to consider:  

1. Have you assessed your organizational process to ingest, organize, and consolidate data capture? 

2. Are you capturing first-party data, consent, and preferences from your customers to open more channels to communicate and transact? 

3. Will you design predictive, responsive, and look-alike modeling to identify your most likely and highly valued customers? 

4. What do your omni-channel onboarding journeys look like?  

5. Have you identified the next best actions and how to optimize? 

6. Do you provide adaptive, personalized experiences, promotions, and product recommendations based on individual customer preferences?  

INSIGHTS 

As with any campaign you would run, looking at the results of your execution plan tells you what is working and where you need to adjust. Are you meeting/exceeding your KPIs and goals? Do you need to realign your strategy, or do you see a gap in your implementation plan? Taking a closer look at each stage monitors how well you are moving your audience through the funnel, whether a first-time visitor or brand advocate. Here’s what to consider: 

1. Do you convert more leads into activations? 

2. Have you reduced attrition rates? 

3. Are top-line revenues and purchases increasing?  

4. Did you see an increase in brand loyalty advocacy and loyalty program adoption? 

5. Have unsubscribe rates decreased? 

6. Are customer satisfaction and mindshare levels increasing?  

Because each stage along the customer journey is reliant on the effectiveness of the previous one, developing a template for success includes a well-defined strategy and execution plan that leverages insights along the way. This relies on communication between marketing, data, analytics and IT to determine what internal resources and capabilities are available and where there is a need to outsource reliable resources.  

See how Allant manages customer journey orchestration and how we leverage data, analytics, and technology by incorporating insights to improve and maximize results that drive revenue for our clients.