Commentary

The Customer Voyage: Firms Are Getting Better At Mapping It

Good work: You’ve sent an email and customers have clicked onto your website. Now what?

Most brands are getting better at that stage of the customer journey, judging by The State Of CJO, a study by Yieldify, a company that specializes in customer journey optimization, or CJO. At least they think so. 

This year,  87.6% are happy with their customer journey across multiple channels, versus 62.1% in 2018.

Moreover, 86.9% have a better understanding of their website’s journeys, up from 70.9% last year. And 86.5% are pleased with that journey, compared to 65.5% the last time around. 

Most importantly, 85.5% are now satisfied with their conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

But satisfaction levels depend on the industry and country.

Of the retailers polled, 38% are very satisfied with their website conversion rate, and 50% are somewhat satisfied. 

In contrast, 45% of travel brands are very satisfied, and 37% are somewhat happy.

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Why are travel brands more upbeat? It may be because 44% are also very satisfied with their ability to put insights into action, versus 36% of retailers.

Travel outfits are more likely to use marketing automation, data analysis (e.g, Google Analytics), data management or CMS, AI/machine learning and A/B testing.

However, retailers are slightly more likely to deploy website personalization, usability testing and customer journey mapping.             

Retailers report strong recovery of their email databases in the aftermath of GDPR — no small thing. Overall, 35.8% of marketers cite having the right data as a major challenge, down from 45% in 2018. 

U.S. brands are more upbeat than their UK counterparts — 47% are satisfied with their grasp of the customer journey across multiple channels, compared with 36% of UK respondents.

And U.S. firms are much more likely to be very contented with their ability to “action insights” from customer journeys — 50% to 32%.

But there are issues in all verticals and countries.

Retailers list their top challenges as:

  • Having the right skills
  • Having the right data 
  • Working across multiple internal silos. 

In comparison, travel marketers are challenged by:

  • Privacy regulations such as GAPD
  • Demonstrating ROI
  • Having the right data, working cross internal silos AND having the right tools.

The challenges also differ by country.

For example, 36.5% U.S. marketers are daunted by GDPR and other privacy rules, whereas only 25% feel that way in the UK. Perhaps that’s because they have had to deal with GDPR up close.

46% are concerned with new privacy regulations such as GDPR,

Overall, 39.1% cite having the right skills, an increase over 33.5% in 2018.

What can we expect?

In 2020, there will be upticks in brands employing marketing automation, customer journey mapping, data management or CMS, website personalization, AI, machine learning and A/B testing.

Yet fewer companies will go for usability testing or customer feedback. 

Customer journeys are no longer the stuff of theory and thought-leadership, but a real practice that’s core to businesses and their technology stacks,” concludes Jay Radia, CEO and founder at Yieldify, in conclusion. 

Yieldify surveyed 200 marketers this year in its second study of this type.

 

 

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