Customers interact with your business through countless touchpoints like websites, social media, ads, and physical stores, leaving scattered data across various channels. The fragmented data makes it difficult for marketers to understand the customer journey, motivations, preferences, and overall experience.

How can marketers solve this problem?

Customer Data Platform is the one-stop solution for marketers to understand how customers interact with their brand. This software helps the marketer to map the entire customer journey across multiple touchpoints and build a single, coherent, complete view of each customer.

Let us see how a CDP helps marketers map the customer journey and offer a personalized experience for customers.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping is a technique businesses use to visualize the entire customer journey. Mapping every touchpoint and interaction of a customer with a brand will help the business identify the customer’s pain points and opportunities for improvement, ultimately creating a more seamless and satisfying experience for their customers.

Customer Journey Mapping using CustomerLabs CDP

Let’s consider a fictional story of how Lisa, the founder of a small startup named “Ecotrend,” used the customer data platform (CDP) to map their entire customer journey.

EcoTrend offers a variety of eco-friendly products ranging from reusable water bottles to solar-powered gadgets.

As Ecotrend expanded its reach, Lisa recognized the importance of mapping both online and offline interactions to provide a seamless customer experience. With this in mind, she turned to a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to integrate data from both online and offline interactions in one place.

Through the CDP, EcoTrend began collecting users’ first-party data like name, phone number, email ID, etc, from only their website, mobile app, online display ads, physical store interactions, etc. 

Whenever a customer made a purchase in-store or attended one of EcoTrend’s sustainability workshops, the CDP captured the data and combined it with their online interaction (online browsing behavior, offline purchase history, and even feedback from in-store conversations) using an identity resolution technique resulting in the formation of a 360-degree profile.  

This 360-degree profile, built by the CDP, lets marketers analyze how a customer interacts with a brand through various touchpoints and identify their patterns and trends.

This analysis will help marketers to segment the audience based on demographics, preferences, behavior, etc. 

For example, the segments can be based on 

• Customers who belong to the same age group, gender, and location 
• Customers who have viewed a specific product or abandoned their cart for a very long time 
• Customer purchase history etc

After segmenting the audience, EcoTrend activated these audience segments across various ad platforms like Meta, Google, Linkedin, etc, and targeted them with tailored product recommendations based on past purchases, offered exclusive discounts on preferred product categories, and even customized website content based on browsing history.

This, in essence, is the power of customer journey mapping using CDPs – they transform scattered data points into a symphony of personalized experiences, fostering deeper connections and driving business success.

Benefits of Mapping Your Customer Journey with a CDP

Avoid Data Silos

Mapping the entire customer journey using CDPs allows marketers to aggregate and consolidate customer data from multiple sources into a single, unified platform. This integration eliminates data silos and provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey. By having a complete understanding of customer interactions, marketers can identify patterns, trends, and opportunities for optimization.

One User – One Profile

Connecting all the user information like email address, phone number, device ID, age, google click ID, etc. in one 360-degree profile enables marketers to understand customer preferences, behaviors, and brand interactions. The 360-degree profile allows marketers to segment the audience based on their behavior and target them with personalized messages.

Analyze Customer Behavioral Patterns and Predict Customer Journeys

Mapping the entire customer journey using a CDP will help marketers analyze how a user interacts with the business across multiple touchpoints, allowing the markets to predict the future move of the customer. This predictive capability allows marketers to enhance their marketing efforts and personalized customer experiences.

Real-world Examples of How Marketers use CDPs to Map their Customer Journeys

Let’s see a few real-time examples of how marketers use CDPs to map their customer journey in different industries:

Retail industry

A clothing brand used CDP to increase the conversion rate by 20%

Problem: Customers were browsing and showing interest in a specific pair of shoes but did not complete their purchase. This could be due to various reasons, but the main reason was high product prices.

Solution: The brand used CDP to collect and analyze customer data across various touchpoints (email interactions, browsing history, and purchase history). This data helped the marketers to segment the audience who failed to purchase due to the high price and targeted them across various ad platforms with personalized messages saying “Hey customers the sneakers are on 50% sale grab now!”.

Result: The brand experienced a 20% increase in conversion rate because of personalized targeting.

Travel industry

A hotel chain increases its revenue by 10% using CDP

Problem: A hotel chain observed that many potential guests inquired about their hotel via the app, website, and customer support team, but ultimately did not check in because the hotel did not offer a shuttle service 

Solution: The hotel chain leveraged the CDP to map its entire customer journey and has identified that a specific segment of guests refused to check in because the hotel did not offer shuttle service to their guests. 

Marketers targeted these guests on ad platforms with personalized messages saying “We are located at the heart of the city, but considering our guests in mind, we are offering shuttle service for our guests to the airport and other prime locations”.

Result: This helped the hotel to gain a 10% increase in revenue. 

Finance Industry 

A nationalized bank reduces churn rate by 25% using a CDP

Problem:  A nationalized bank faces a constant battle against customer churn, where the customers jump to their competitors due to various reasons like dissatisfaction and better offers, leading to a decrease in revenue and a negative reputation for the bank.

Solution: The bank implemented a CDP and gathered user data from various touchpoints such as transactions, account activity, and interaction with customer service. Marketers analyzed the data and identified the patterns & trends associated with customer churn, allowing the bank to segment customers who were at high risk of churning and targeted them with personalized ads across various channels saying “Get personal loans with just 3% interest rate”. 

Result: The churn rate was reduced by 25% after targeting the customers with personalized offers.