Email marketing customer journey is the foundation of your email marketing success. Having the right customer journey map is essential. It’s a strategic approach to nurture and convert potential customers via suitable targeted email communications. It entails a personalized experience that leads recipients from initial awareness to devoted advocacy. Businesses that understand and map the email customer journey by customer preferences can build solid and sustainable business growth.
In 2023, 52% of customers purchased directly from emails. Isn’t that huge? Do you think it’s easy to achieve? Trust me, it doesn’t happen if you don’t provide your customers with a seamless journey. So, think about how you can map your customer journey properly to boost conversions and business growth. It isn’t an easy-peasy linear task to do. Want some guidance on the email customer journey? You’re on the right page!
In this blog, I will assist you in planning an ideal email marketing customer journey. Buckle up and go through this discussion attentively to develop a good email customer journey map that will help elevate your business growth.
Table of Contents
- What is Email Marketing Customer Journey?
- Why Email Marketing Customer Journey Matters?
- 5 Paths of Email Customer Journey Map
- Customer Journey Email Examples
- Email Customer Journey Tips
- Wrap Up
What is Email Marketing Customer Journey?
So, what is a customer journey in email marketing? Email marketing customer journey is a framework for tracking customers’ interactions with the business, from initial contact to conversions, and far more to send targeted emails. Simply put, it’s a journey of your customers with your emails. You notice how your customers interact with your emails and how they respond and plan your marketing moves according to their buyer personas. The email customer journey is essential for email marketing success and healthy business growth.
Also, based on the email customer journey framework, you set triggers and send automated emails. This concept is to nurture your leads with targeted emails that are sent out based on allocated triggers.
Why Email Marketing Customer Journey Matters?
Let’s briefly go over some points to clarify why the email marketing customer journey needs your focus. Email customer journey matters for various reasons:
- Email marketing is still the most effective means for marketers to increase leads, engagement, conversions, and customer retention. Hence, to nail email marketing, you have to focus on your customer journey with your emails.
- It can be an immense help to shape customer experiences along with your brand values.
- You must work on the email customer journey map to maintain and deliver a smooth email marketing experience and sustain business growth.
Moreover, segmented emails generate 36% of total email revenue, and triggered or automated emails generate more than 306% click-throughs. And the basis of what these two need for functioning is- email marketing customer journey! You can’t segment your customers and set required triggers for automated emails if you don’t know which customer interacts which way with your business newsletters and marketing emails. So, yes, focusing on the email customer journey is core to your email marketing success.
5 Paths of Email Customer Journey Map
Everything needs a bit of care to flourish. Do you think just adding people to your email list is enough to nail email marketing? No, it’s not enough! Hence, you need to set your email customer journey map to determine who and when you should send certain email campaigns. Let’s discuss 5 basic paths to develop an email customer journey mapping.
Awareness
The path of your email customer journey map starts with the Awareness stage. You simply spread awareness about your business to catch leads and make people hear about your brand and products. Research your customers’ buyer personas, discover their preferences and pain points, and draft email content accordingly. Send lead magnet emails to increase leads and potential customers. Send business newsletters to whoever visits your website or signs up for your email newsletters through the newsletter landing page. For example, welcome emails are also great for welcome journey email marketing. You can also send event invitations to familiarize people with your business, which is also effective for boosting engagement.
Also, by applying behavioral targeting techniques, you can find out who might be interested in brands similar to yours and can send them emails to introduce your brand. And event invitation emails are great for this purpose. Send lead magnet emails- plan email campaigns that will attract your leads like a magnet. Provide informational content in your emails, showing how your brand or products can help them out or fulfill their needs.
However, send bulk emails without spamming. Avoid spamming people with unsolicited emails, and always adhere to email compliance regulations. Don’t bother people with your emails if they don’t interact with your emails. See who opens your emails, keep them in your email list, and transfer them to the next path of the customer journey map- plan your next marketing moves with them. And remove the ones who don’t interact with your emails from the list.
Consideration
The second step of the email customer journey map is Consideration- the aim is to convince your customers/clients that your brand could be the right choice for their requirements. Ensure your customers that your brand will be the best fit for their priorities, and check mainly in terms of reasonable pricing, fast delivery, and standard quality. If they’re convinced you can meet all these criteria, then they’ll be at ease when considering purchasing from your brand.
Furthermore, a super quick and effective technique to earn trust is by showing testimonials. You can send testimonial emails to earn your potential customer’s trust. Seeing other customers’ positive views on your products and service, they’ll feel more confident and relaxed in trusting your brand and making purchases. Apart from that, you can also send case studies and related newsletters.
Purchase
The third road of the email customer journey map goes to the Purchase. Here, you work on conversions. Once you have convinced your customers and earned their trust to consider your brand, especially in terms of authenticity and quality- now it’s time to prompt them to purchase.
Send purchase sales email campaigns. Give discounts and limited-time offers so they’ll be intrigued to buy from your brand. Send abandoned cart emails, up-selling, and cross-selling emails. You can also send product comparison newsletters and show them why your product could be the best choice. Moreover, placing proper CTA (call-to-action) buttons is essential. Why is it important to map out the conversion path of a smart CTA for each segment? Because suitably placed clear CTA buttons are necessary to deliver an easy purchasing experience to your customers.
Retention
The fourth path in the email marketing customer journey map goes to Retention. Email marketing customer journey goes beyond the conversions. It’s important to continue engaging with the customers/consumers to build a solid relationship.
Here, you work to keep in touch with your valuable customers. Keep in touch even after the conversions by sending them follow-up emails and business newsletters. Using behavioral targeting techniques and observing buyer persona, you can segment your customers and send relevant, personalized emails. For example, you can send relevant blogs/articles with newsletters. You can also send seasonal email campaigns.
Plan to send newsletters at least twice a month or at least once a month so your customers don’t forget about your brand. You know the saying, out of sight, out of mind, right? Yeah, that goes for every business, too. Don’t let that happen, okay? Always keep your customers in touch with relevant business newsletters regularly.
Advocacy
The 5th and last path in the email customer journey map is Advocacy. This road is to make your loyal customers advocates for your brand. Here, you have to work to build credibility. We discussed sending testimonials to earn consumers’ trust in the consideration step.
So, how will you send testimonials if you don’t have any? It’s always a bonus if some customers give reviews on their own, but you cannot wait for that every time. Therefore, you have to send feedback requests or review request emails to your customers and urge them to share their valuable thoughts on your products and overall purchasing experience. After that, when they share their feedback, you collect all the testimonials and keep them for further marketing.
In addition, send referral emails. Provide discounts or rewards to your customers in exchange for referring your brand to their friends and family. Referral email campaigns are another effective technique for growing your business!
Customer Journey Email Examples
Let’s go over some of the best customer journey email examples from which you can take ideas and inspiration and use them with the customer journey map.
Event invitation emails for the awareness stage
AWS’ livestream event invitation email is a great customer journey email example for the awareness stage. They sent this Livestream event email to urge the recipient to register to join their livestream broadcast on “innovation talks.”
Look, they crafted the email template in such an engaging style. All the CTAs are clear and suitably placed. Plus, they attached speakers’ images in email so the recipients would know who would talk at the event. Not to mention, making this free to join will certainly work as a lead magnet. Although the event is hosted in Las Vegas, being a livestream, anyone can join virtually—making it an excellent opportunity to engage potential leads from around the world.
Testimonial emails for the consideration stage
See Bite’s testimonial email example for the email customer journey’s consideration step that you can use for inspiration. This testimonial email template is full of reviews both from brands and customers.
They’re urging the potential customer not to take their word but rather see others’ reviews first and then consider them for purchase. All these reviews strongly work in building trust. Seeing multiple product reviews, customers will be highly enticed to at least try the said products.
Also, CTAs are all suitably attached, prompting customers to see more reviews and purchase options. Plus, the discount offer is just like a cherry on top; customers will be more intrigued to buy, no doubt.
Simple testimonial emails for the consideration stage
Let’s go over another one for consideration step, a simple testimonial email for customer journey email example. As you can see, this one is simpler than the previous one. Judy only shared one positive feedback as a testimonial.
If you don’t have many reviews and want to craft simple testimonial emails, then take this one as inspiration. Give your testimonial email template a compelling look, attach the review at the center of it, and place the CTA properly.
Sales newsletters for the purchase stage
The purchase is the road to work for conversions. Shower your potential customers with discounts and enticing sales and offers. Make them unable to resist buying from you. Check out this Stitches N Giggles’ sales newsletter email.
They provided limited-time offers on two of their products. They mentioned the offer details precisely and placed all the CTAs properly. Each product has a suitable separate CTA. They also mentioned the offer’s validity, so all the essential information is available in the email template. In addition, they added a sweet thank you message at the end, appreciating the customer’s support. The customer will surely feel valued reading it.
Follow-up email for retention stage
Follow-up emails work effectively for the retention stage and are great for keeping in touch with the customers. See this upgrading follow up email from Loom.
The user has used their free trial, so now they are following up with an upgrade newsletter- urging the customer to go for their Loom AI plan. The email template is neatly organized, and CTAs are well-placed. Take inspiration from this customer journey email example and plan follow up email campaigns for your customers.
Review request email for the advocacy stage
For the advocacy stage in the email marketing customer journey map, let’s go over a feedback or review request email example. You already know that testimonials are a great asset for building credibility. Hence, you have to send feedback request emails to collect authentic testimonials from your loyal customers. Check out this review request email from Charlie Hustle. They sent this review request email to the customer after successfully moving him toward conversion.
Now, they’re urging the customer to share his buying experience and review their product. The feedback email template starts with a good email opening line and is very engagingly organized, as they provided both rating and short review sections. Use this review request email example for inspiration. Don’t make them dull; rather, create them in a way that will make the customer interested enough to share their thoughts.
Referral email for advocacy stage
Another great means of building credibility and gaining customers fast is by sending referral emails. Let’s check out Postable’s referral email.
The email template design is catchy, providing a happy vibe. The email heading announces the referral offer, getting $5 of credit for each friend the customer refers to for their brand/service. You can plan such referral rewards so your customers will be intrigued to refer your brand to their friends and family.
Email Customer Journey Tips
Wondering about email journey best practices? Let’s get some tips for your email customer journey! For sustaining a smooth email customer journey, keep in check-
- All the key email marketing metrics or email analytics that are essential in measuring email marketing success.
- Segmenting your leads is necessary, but how do you do it? Segment your leads mostly based on email marketing metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversion rate. Plus, with our handy MailBluster segmentation feature, you’ll only need to determine your customers’ interactions with your business. See what they do with your emails. For example, check who opens your emails and who doesn’t and segment based on that report.
- Use behavioral targeting techniques for further research. And segment your leads based on user behavior, age, gender, and location data. Thus, you’ll have a more curated email list and can deliver more relevant email content.
- A well-crafted email is essential for a seamless email journey. Make sure all the parts of an email are well crafted. Especially, to grab your customers’ attention, write catchy and relevant email subject lines.
- In the email body, hook your customers with an engaging email opening line to boost their interest and prolong their engagement through the end of the email content. And don’t forget to shape your brand value with proper email sign offs.
- Attach proper CTAs. Make the CTAs suitable and easy to understand so your customers can take the desired action without any hassle. Thus, ensure them an easy, quality email journey.
Wrap Up
Maintaining a seamless email marketing customer journey is a must to keep your email marketing healthy and successful. By reading this discussion, you’re now well aware of its importance and how to plan a proper email customer journey map suitably for your business style. Focus on understanding your buyer personas and their interactions with your business. And maintain the email customer journey seamlessly with MailBluster, our highly effective email marketing platform. Be a pro member and give your customers a smooth email journey with personalized, engaging emails according to your email customer journey map.
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