“Customer journey” is a cornerstone of sleep industry marketing, as the process of understanding your customer’s journey will help you define your goals — and reap the revenues.
In essence, the customer journey is a detailed map that shows the full experience a customer has with your business. You will see every interaction a customer has with your sleep company — including before and after they engage with you.
Phases in the customer journey
Each phase in the customer journey is a distinct stage a customer passes through as they’re guided to take specific actions. The phases you include will depend on your business goals.
Do you want a user to add a humidifier to their CPAP? Or — try a positional pillow? Or consider replacing their full-face mask with a potentially more comfortable nasal mask? Do you need inactive newsletter subscribers to read your emails? Or turn one-time shoppers into regular, loyal customers?
These are marketing paths requiring a strategy to prompt customers to move from Stage One to Stage 2.
In most cases, the customer journey involves these stages:
#1 – Awareness: A potential customer discovers your sleep-focused company, typically via a search engine, paid advertising, or social media. Maybe it’s a social media post — one that teases a blog about sleep apnea. They click through to your website — and learn more about your brand and products. Your sleep industry company is now in their memory.
#2 – Acquisition: They’ve made a purchase — and you’ve got yourself a new customer. They ordered the CPAP or the humidifier or the mask. They also signed up for your email list through a form on your site — so you can stay in touch with them regarding special offers.
#3 – Onboarding: This begins the Welcome journey. You can now set them up to receive a series of emails to make them feel welcome, showcase other items in your e-commerce site — and create a future with them.
#4 – Engagement: Email, social media, and other communications will prompt your customers to regularly use your sleep products, shop at your e-commerce store, or read your content.
#5 – Advocacy: Happy customers will recommend your brand to others — considered the best way to get new customers. .
Marketing automation and the customer journey
“Marketing automation” refers to technolgies that send your emails (and execute other marketing efforts) with your intervention. You create the messages, then set up the automation to execute the plan. It’s just that simple. Emails are sent on time to the list you’ve created.
You can set up multiple template emails to reach your customers at every point in their customer journey. The automations will match the individual paths your customers take.
A typical customer will review your sleep website, visit your sleep e-commerce site, search for the product they want, review it, sleep on it — then potentially return to buy it. Your automated emails will use logic to note when the customer has wandered away before buying — and generate an email to remind them of that item, and perhaps make a special offer.
How automation can help build lasting relationships with your customers:
Connect with new sleep fans: When someone expresses interest in what you have to offer and enters their email address in a subscriber pop-up form on your site, you can send them a welcome email to introduce yourself—and give them a reason to stick around.
Sell more sleep products: When there’s been a move toward a purchase — something in the cart without checking out — an email about “abandoned cart” will automatically be sent to them. Also, consider sending reminders to prospects that haven’t interacted with you in a while. Retargeting ads and emails remind people about the produces they saw on your sleep-focused site. Many potential customers will still interested and will take action; they just need a push from you.
Create trust: Delivering relevant content to your customers shows you care about them. The more you target your communications, the more they will trust you to keep providing high-quality sleep products. You can even use automation to send coupons or other discounts to people that meet certain criteria for loyalty or spending.
How do automated Customer Journeys work?
Customer Journeys are composed of starting points, rules, and actions, which you’ll arrange on a journey map. This map will show all the possible paths your sleep customers can take — and outlines where they are and where they’re going. Stats will show each interaction you’ve included in your map — like how many chose a product, but didn’t purchase it..
After you design your map and activate it, sleep customers will be added through a starting point. When customers reach the actions and rules you’ve set up, an email will be sent at the appropriate point.
For example, you may want to “delay for 1 week” after a customer purchases a sleep product, then send an email to follow-up.
Potential elements in your Customer Journey maps:
Starting points: Each journey map can have up to 3 starting points, but only 1 per customer.
Rules: An interaction point that defines when a customer moves along a set path.
Actions: An interaction point that tells the system to perform a task, like sending an email.
Branching points: A rule that splits customers down 1 of 2 paths based on the conditions you choose.
Waits: A rule to prevent customers from continuing down a path — until they take a specific action or an event occurs.
Delays: A rule to prevent customers from continuing down a path for a period of time that you specify.
Send emails: Automatic action to send customers an email that you’ve designed.
5 Essential Customer Journeys
Your needs for automated Customer Journeys will vary based on the needs and scale of your sleep e-commerce business. However, there are a few key workflows that can help any sleep business build and maintain relationships with their customers.
Create Customer Journeys to:
- Greet new customers & introduce your brand.
- Reunite shoppers with their carts.
- Re-engage customers who have lost interest.
- Organize your contacts based on their interests and levels of engagement.
Overwhelmed? Let us handle the details
Somnowell Marketing has a team in place to professionally create and execute your marketing and customer communications campaigns. Email, social media, website content & design, SEO, landing pages, blogs, messaging — they can handle it all, taking the burden off your shoulders. The information is always from respected sources, and will dispel any misinformation. Your online content and social media posts are an investment in your sleep company’s reputation — and that’s undeniably priceless.
