Many marketing departments are currently prioritizing attracting new customers and clients with interesting marketing campaigns across influential channels. The metrics of the Marketing Automation Tools show exactly when interested parties decide in favor of the product or company in the course of the buyer's journey. However, it is just as important for marketing departments to also Keeping the focus on existing customers. After all, loyal existing customers are important for the development of your brand, but above all, repeated sales to them are also significantly cheaper than acquiring new customers.
An important tool for gaining better insight into prospect behavior is the Customer Journey. With a precise customer journey mapping you get the step-by-step insight into the customer journey that shows you when they leave the sales funnel. And that way, you'll also get a better understanding of how you can Prevent customer churn.
Detect, analyze and prevent customer churn
One measure of customer churn is the so-called churn rate. "Churn" means "to stir up" or "to expel"; the telecommunications industry coined the term as a combination of "change" and "turn" for the fact that interested parties or existing customers want to change providers.
The churn rate indicates the percentage of your customers who have not placed new orders or, most importantly, canceled existing contracts over a certain period of time. How can such churn be prevented? In many cases, you can identify the most important reasons at an early stage.
Less communication - lower click-through rate
The first warning signal is a lack of feedback. In closer B2B relationships, it is usually a lack of communication, with B2C customers you are more likely to recognize the first signs of potential churn through a Low click-through rate.
For large B2B customers, it often pays to have a direct channel to and from your sales department.
If your mails are no longer opened, your posts are no longer seen, and the links are no longer used, you should consider other Incentives put
Changes in purchasing behavior
Customer churn in the customer journey often sounds like a conscious decision. Yet the signs often multiply rather slowly. For example, are customers reducing the number or quantity of goods? Do they order less frequently from your online store? All of these can be signs of lost interest or a tougher competitive situation be
Changed competitive situation
One of the most frequently cited examples of customer churn in the context of the E-commerce are the Amazon Basics. With its generic brand, Amazon creates a monolithic competitor that is favored in the search results of its own platform and also offers very favorable prices.
Many companies have already had negative experiences with this; the mere existence of an Amazon Basics product can lead to the exodus of their own customers. Of course, your company may also face competition from other providers of a similar size. In both cases, it may be worthwhile to Reorientation on the market and the Sharpening your own profile.
Complaints, returns, negative reviews
In addition to factors such as incorrectly adjusted target groups, an advertising budget that is too low or a small RoI for influencer campaigns, the core product itself can unfortunately also be significantly responsible for customers leaving. Declining or stagnating quality, costs above the customer's pain threshold, changes in the sales model, or a lack of service can all have undesirable consequences.
The consequences become apparent at an early stage, e.g. trends in ratings and complaints can be identified quickly. It is important to Feedback also in terms of content and sentiment. analyze.
Customer Journey Mapping as a tool for sustainable customer loyalty
Customer Journey Mapping (i.e., creating the map) refers to the process of recording the customer journey step by step as a matrix and thus preparing it visually. This can enable you to identify the above-mentioned sensitive points in the Customer loyalty separately. This allows the overall experience with your company to be broken down into many partial experiences.
Essential for the customer journey map is the Change of perspective, of the point of view. Instead of thinking from marketing to the customer, you take the customer's position and interests and go through the touchpoints to conversion.
However, if we think about customer churn, we have to go even much further. The path from qualified lead to conversion should ideally lead further to the Brand Ambassador - such customers generate new clientele through their publicized satisfaction.
If we divide a Customer Journey Map (roughly) into five parts, you can also quickly see that the experience is linear from the point of view of the individual, but becomes cyclical when viewed as a whole.
Five stages of the Customer Journey Map
- Awareness - Interested people receive information about your company, for example, through advertisements, sponsored posts, influencers, or even friends.
- Interest - After your company/product is in the awareness of potential customers, information is obtained and external expertise is researched. Price comparisons and discounts are also an important part of the customer journey at this point.
- Conversion - Purchase decisions are made in this phase. Shortly before the conversion, digital retargeting and reminders play a role, triggers can also be set by offers and, of course, a follow-up follows.
- Experience - This includes reviews as well as suggestions from your company on related products and, of course, support.
- Loyalty - In the last step, you have loyal existing customers and clients who give positive feedback and thus brand your company through word of mouth. Through high quality, excellent service, and a sociable social media experience, you can incentivize this step into the final phase of the customer journey.
More satisfaction and more loyalty
In principle, classic customer journey mapping also follows the AIDA principle of awareness, interest, desire, and action. However, what was once only a rough overview is now turned into a clear recommendation for action for you with the help of data and analysis in real time. Through modern analysis tools it is always possible for you to identify weaknesses in the customer journey map and thus retain existing customers in a cost-saving manner.
