Built on ExactTarget’s FUEL platform for the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, Journey Builder will enable marketers to map customer journeys to digital marketing interactions, such as email, mobile, social and Websites, to power personalized customer experiences that dynamically evolve based on consumer or customer engagement. Journey Builder’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to visualize and map the path of each customer’s journey with your brand. Whether your campaigns include online channels such as email and mobile, or an offline channel such as direct mail, Journey Builder enables you to increase campaign performance and drive customer satisfaction.
Journey Builder is another system that is built on top of Contact Builder. In the past, when we set up trigger events for clients, they had to be custom-built by the services implementation team. Journey Builder changes that. Rather than requiring these triggers to be custom-built, this system enables clients to set up their own events that trigger on up to four specific trigger activities. As part of their configuration process, clients choose how long their website will wait for a customer to do something before letting his browsing session expire from inactivity. Most of these triggers are sent soon after a customer’s session expires.
The types of available triggers include:
- Post-Purchase: This event triggers immediately after an order is placed.
- Abandon Browse: When the customer allows the browsing session to expire, this event triggers within five minutes of the session expiration.
- Abandon Cart: If the customer allowed the session to expire while objects were still in the shopping cart, this event triggers within five minutes of the session expiration.
- Affinity Change: If, by the end of the customer’s browsing session, a new attribute/value pair enters into the top first or second affinity slots of the customer’s profile that was not previously in the top five at all, this event triggers within five minutes of the session expiration.
Journey Builder for Apps is the first solution that empowers any company to deliver personalized customer journeys directly from mobile apps, creating interactive experiences that drive brand engagement and loyalty. With Journey Builder for Apps, any company can now unleash the power of the world’s #1 CRM platform to seamlessly connect the customer journey across sales, service, marketing and communities. Companies including FitBit, Sony PlayStation, HSN, SkyMall and Luxury Retreats are making the shift from campaign-focused marketing to personalized 1:1 customer journeys to connect with customers in entirely new ways.
The Seven Stages of Successful App Journeys
To create this relationship, marketers and developers must understand the stages of highly successful app journeys.
#1 Discovery
Most app journeys start with discovery in some form, such as a friend’s recommendation or an advertisement. Generally, brand discovery occurs via a mass medium. This process probably includes personal information, and it might include emails and promotions that include generic preferences. For existing customers, journeys should include activities and products based on personal preferences (such as size and any previous order history) to make new products more easily discoverable.
#2 Start
Journey Builder can help your “getting started” experience become much more personal by establishing an interaction based on how the customer uses the app. For example, a customer uses an app like Trunk Club where personal stylists select clothes. The customer signs up, fills out the basic profile information, and starts using the app. Marketers can use a customized communication to follow up with the customer with personalized messages about the benefits of completing additional profile information, such as favoritecolor. As the app collects more personal preference information, marketers can provide a more personalized journey. In our Trunk Club example, you now know the customer’s favoritecolor and can help the stylist select clothes the customer would more likely select. Marketers can subtly change the communications to include these personal color preferences
#3 First Interaction
The customer’s first engagement with your app represents an important milestone, one worthy of a highly personal interaction in the customer journey. This first interaction may involve placing an order, taking the first ride, downloading a song, or any other initial action. A customer has indicated that they trust your business and your brand. First interactions present an excellent example of the importance of marketers and app developers working closely together. Journey Builder allows marketers to define the journey and app interaction points. It is these app interaction points that developers must implement as part of their app.
#4 Fulfillment
Fulfillment refers to the step in a customer’s app journey when their interaction completes. This step may include when a package is delivered, a ride is completed, a course is finished, or a service case is created. However, fulfillment does not always represent a specific point of time. Fulfillment often covers an extended period of time during which existing business processes complete. Journeys must consider the interactions with the customer during this period. The majority of customer complaints with companies occur due to poor communication during the fulfillment cycle.
#5 Abandonment
Effective marketers can utilize Journey Builder to create multiple journeys for their customers. These journeys may span multiple apps to support the growing trend of smaller, more focused apps, as demonstrated with Facebook Messages, FourSquare Swarm, and SalesforceA. A Journey Builder for Apps strategy, discussed in more detail throughout this book, enables marketers to create a vision for the entire customer engagement lifecycle, and enable the developer to create the killer app for the optimal experience.
#6 Nurture
Marketers can utilize Journey Builder to create independent nurture journeys based on how the customer interacts with the brand. Sticky apps where users regularly log in can nurture users via in-app push notifications. Apps users utilize as required may require email promotions or contextual app notification, such as geo-location triggers.
#7 Share
Just as a customer journey begins prior to ever using an app, customer perception of an organization’s brand continues long after that customer close down the app. Make it easy for customers to share their experiences across social networks. Smart marketers even incent customers to do so by using reward points, leaderboards, badges, and other gamification strategies.
About ExactTarget Marketing Cloud
The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud is a platform for marketers to create, manage, and automate customer journeys. The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud includes a digital marketing platform designed to empower the businesses to listen and engage with customers across every channel, including email, mobile, social media, and the web.
