What is The Consumer Journey?
The term “Consumer Journey” is constantly referenced in the B2C/eCommerce world, but what exactly does it mean? And how does it translate into the world of email marketing? How can Email Marketers integrate this into their email strategy? Is your head feeling a bit frazzled? Absolutely no worries. We’re going to be solving all of your consumer journey qualms in this blog, as well as offering some practical examples behind the concept of an Email Consumer Journey. And, as always, we’ll be sprinkling a little dmt on it.
How the Consumer Journey Began
Quick history lesson (not boring, we promise): consumer experience expert Colin Shaw introduced the concept of “mapping” in 2002, which separates the customer’s experience into phases in order to help businesses elevate the experience. However, since then, the journey has evolved with the times – social media, eCommerce, email marketing have been added to the mix. Now we have to wonder, does each medium have its own consumer journey?
Why We Use Klaviyo
If you’ve read any of our other email blogs, you know we LOVE to natter on about Klaviyo – and for good reason! The integrations and rich data of Klaviyo enables marketers to set up powerful automations within the “Flows” section. The concept of a Klaviyo Flow is to generate purchases and create extra revenue through a series of automated emails dependent on consumer behaviour. We can trigger and filter emails to ensure audiences only receive the most relevant and targeted mailing. The “Smartsend” feature stops users from receiving too many emails within a limited time period, too. It’s all good stuff that we love to see!
How to Structure an Email Consumer Journey:
The consumer journey has been analysed and deconstructed to death, but to put it into basic terms once more, it usually follows this pattern: Attention ➡️ Consideration ➡️ Purchase ➡️ Retention ➡️ Loyalty/Advocacy. Each stage can be broken down and we can assign an email series that targets consumers at each point.
Attention: Pop up and Welcome Series
Step one is when a consumer is first shown that website pop-up. In return for their email address, the customer is given an incentive – be this a discount, promise of early access to promos, or something completely different. This is your brand’s first chance to impress with an interesting tone of voice and identity, and the first step to getting them loyal to your brand.
Once a “Welcome Series” email has been built, this will go out to the customer as confirmation of a sign-up. These emails are so important that they result in “four times more open rates and five times more clicks”, due to the relevancy of the content and when the consumer is “psychologically ready for you”, according to Invespcro.
Consideration: Browse Abandonment and Abandoned Cart
Abandoned cart emails are strategic follow-up emails, sent out to the shoppers who left items in their cart and, literally, abandoned them. The aim is to seize the opportunity and get the consumer back on track, regaining the potential revenue. For many busy shoppers, it’s easy to forget that they never checked out, so this often strengthens the existing relationship between a seller and their subscriber!
One great example of Klaviyo’s smart features is its ready-mate, automated flow templates. With seamless integration to Shopify, making an abandoned cart email can be super simple. The email can instantly connect the shopper back to their item with minimal effort from the business, and paving the way for an increase of ROI, revenue and that all-important engagement.
Similarly, browse abandonment emails focus on items customers didn’t buy, except this time the customer didn’t drop it into their cart. These emails can be less direct, a “light touchpoint” – the consumer didn’t want the item enough to take the step towards the purchase, but perhaps they’re interested in *these* items instead?
Purchase:
The point of purchase is the payoff from all those marketing campaigns you’ve worked so hard on. Transactional emails planned and sent for the point of purchase, such as email confirmations, delivery and shipping information, and the like. These emails don’t have to be set up in Klaviyo, but they can be!
Pre-Purchase Emails
- Welcome Series
- Browse Abandonment
- Abandoned Cart
Post-Purchase Emails
- Post Purchase Flow
- Review Flow
- Social Follow Flow
Retention and Advocacy
The final email in this short cycle is often a review/cross-selling email. These emails get the consumer to become an advocate of the brand. They can leave a review, share their experience, and the brand can keep their attention focused.
This can sometimes even start the cycle over again. Living in the world of ‘fast fashion’, the cycle tends to repeat very quickly. Within days, new drops and products are released, and it can be only a matter of days before consumers are back to receiving abandoned cart emails.
Klaviyo Flows help brands leverage the data into automated email series, generating and maximising revenue. A huge recommendation we have for this is making sure the consumer is receiving the absolute most relevant emails.
Taking the steps to assure this comes in the form of filters, triggers, and splits. These features allow maximum segmentation of behaviour and consumer profiles.
- Triggers – These ensure the automated emails are triggered through specific actions, such as an item purchase (in this case, a post-purchase flow is triggered). Triggers can also be used when a customer is added to a Klaviyo list, or on a date attached to their profile (think: birthday!)
- Filters – While triggers can be generic, flow and trigger filters aim to make the messages more targeted.
A trigger filter narrows down the metric, such as filtering high-value items in the abandoned cart series. They can also be used to personalise an experience, such as by sending out specific details or instructions about one product on a “post-purchase flow”.
Flow filters are utilised when targeting a consumer’s attributes or behaviours. This means that Klaviyo will filter a user in or out depending on the actions they have taken, traits they may or may not have, or something else. Ideal for sending products to a specific gender, or to customers with an interest in one type of item or a single brand. - Conditional Splits – This is when we create two distinct paths in a flow, branching out based on defined characteristics of the recipients. These features allow email marketers to make in-depth, specific flows with many variations.
Conditional splits create pathways that distinctly acknowledge the consumer journey. For example, there would be a distinct difference between the messaging on a post-purchase flow for someone who is a customer versus someone who isn’t. The email being sent to a prospective customer who is yet to purchase may be more persuasive, incentivising them to become loyal to the brand. The messaging to existing customers may contain elements of cross-selling, or even try to capitalize on existing loyalty by asking to leave a review or follow other social media.
Clearly, there are so many ways that your brand can use email marketing to intervene at each key point of the consumer journey. Even better, Klaviyo makes it all automated for you. We’re mapping out the journey of the customer from A to B, realising the milestones and making each one as polished and successful as possible. Email marketing, when partnered with the powerful tools Klaviyo gives you, has the power to unlock relevant, specific, dynamic and effective emails and infinitely improve your eCommerce marketing.
Sound good? Think you need more assistance with Klaviyo, your email marketing, or something else? Don’t panic – dmt has got you covered. Give us a shout on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or you can shoot us an email over at hello@digitalmediateam.co.uk 💌
