How to map the buyer’s journey.

Email Journeys & Automations

Curtis Biggs
Jul 30, 2017 · 4 min read

Hello group! Our company is in the process of using triggered emails and journey building with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I am looking for insights on the best way to tackle customer journeys. Some technical questions that we have are: Do we base email journeys off of what whats clicked on a previous email? Should we base journeys off of open rate of the whole email? Do you take into consideration what the subscriber views or visits from email to website for the next journey? Basically, how do you deliver the most relative content to the subscriber and what do you base it off of?

Hoping someone can give me some more information!

Hi Errol,

Before answering your immediate questions… The first part of the answer is: Track everything.

In the early stages, you don’t know what you don’t know. By tracking everything, when a light bulb does go on (or that V8 moment, your choice), you’ll already have raw data to work with. The alternative is to start flat footed when you realize there’s something else you want to know and only then begin to gather data.

Your customer journey is like an iceberg. The parts you can see and the much larger parts that you can’t.

You are trying to lure a skittish prospect out of their comfort zone. Think small steps.

Your direct sales leaders can tell you about the part that is near and above the surface, the parts you can see. They will have some great insights for you about how you can support nurturing of Sales Qualified leads. Wouldn’t it be great if your sales teams could close the deal on the first contact? These days even sales of basic business commodities rarely close that fast.

It’s more likely that the decision process takes at least a few weeks. Depending on the size of the investment, it may include two or more layers of decision makers. Work with your sales leaders to determine the best ways to nurture SQLs. Those using a consultative approach will know a bit more about what lies beneath. They’ll know the issues that drive your prospect on their journey of discovery.

You’ll also want to know how prospects are interacting with your website. Look at the stats related to the content on your website, blog posts, triggered and drip emails, downloadables and gated content . Does your analytic data give you any insights on an optimal path to conversion? Does it at least hint at things that you can test?

Finally, what are your market leading competitors saying that you are not? How can you use that to your advantage?

These insights will help you develop a plan to educate visitors. Educating visitors helps you develop their impression of your expertise. This sets in motion the development of authority in the industry and trustworthiness.

With all this data in hand, the big question becomes what holes do you need to fill in the path to conversion for each of your customers (personas). Your answer will be different than the answer for your competitors.

Clicks on the content of one email definitely signal an interest. In that regard it is very much like a flow chart. Email click through? If yes, continue to step 2. If no, then continue to email B.

If email B click-through leads to download of gated content “G,” then follow up with email 5 — that picks up where the content of content “G” leaves off… and so on.

Open rate tells you there was an interest in what your subject line promised. If that lead to no click throughs, then your email did not deliver on the promise of the subject line. The problem could be your subject line or the content of the email. Rather than an answer, you now have more questions.

Imagine you are trying to lure a skittish prospect out from the bushes. You leave a little treat right at the edge of the bushes. Then another treat a little further into the open. With enough steps like that you build up trust and, after some number of interactions, you will have them eating out of your hand.

Now you have some benchmarks. Then you see what you can do to reduce the number of interactions to get to the same amount of trust. Marketing and research never ends. At some point maybe the treats have become stale. Or they discover some other place to get the same treats without having to venture so far out of their comfort zone.

Track everything.

Test always

Good luck prospect whisperer.

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