Behavioral Marketing: Delivering Personalized Experiences At Scale

7Customer Journey MappingPutting Yourself in the Customer's Shoes

When a company truly embraces behavioral marketing, the most fundamental shift is to reorient the entire effort around the customer. This might seem obvious, but walking that proverbial walk can be tough work for even the most progressive marketers.

The litmus test is no longer which product the business wants to push this quarter. The most popular—or highest margin—product isn't featured in every email in a given week or month. The marketer's job is to optimize the customer's buying journey, in whatever form that takes. Some days it'll be inspiring a prospect to become a first-time customer; other days it'll be perfecting the repeat buying behavior among your best customers that drives long-term, meaningful revenue growth.

The Current State of Customer Journey Mapping

Although there are some very advanced (and developing) concepts and tactics around customer journey mapping, I'm going to discuss it from the position of the typical digital marketer whose primary job is designing and delivering customer-facing campaigns. I make that distinction because there are increasingly important disciplines such as customer experience management that are still growing into a function that's common across industries and are housed within marketing departments.

Many of today's brands that are defining the best practices rise from industries such as financial services, consumer product goods, and automotive. And the reality ...