Customer mapping is a lesser-known term in the marketer’s handbook. Instead, many marketers focus in on the term customer journey. Read on to learn what the difference is and why it matters.
What is customer mapping?
Customer mapping is the creation of the strategy behind a customer journey. This can also be referred to as customer journey mapping, which is why these two terms are often used interchangeably.
Customer mapping helps marketing teams create content for their audience that’s relevant to their journey through the sales funnel. This helps define what materials will help move the prospect from stage one of the funnel to stage two.
This map includes more than the steps your subscriber will be taking through their journey. It’ll also include what materials you’ll be sending to encourage them through the funnel and what the timeline of sending will look like.
Is customer mapping different than a customer journey?
The simplest way to differentiate these two terms is by visualizing the customer journey as the stages the customer will go through from the beginning to the end of the sales process.
Customer mapping, on the other hand, breaks it down into the “how” you get your prospect from one stage to the next.
While a sample of customer mapping can be seen above, this is what a customer journey looks like:
While they may seem similar visually, notice the big difference between the two: In the first image, we have a timeline, while, in the second, we have triggers.
Remember, the customer journey is the stages of the journey, which will change as they hit specific triggers. Customer mapping is the how and when—the strategy to get the prospect through each stage.
How to measure the success of your customer mapping
The simplest way to measure the success of your customer mapping is to monitor how many individuals make it through your sales funnel. In terms of email marketing, there’s one key performance indicator that can help guide you here, and that’s your overall conversion rate.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of your subscribers who complete a goal action. The goal action will depend on where your subscriber is in their customer journey.
When it comes to finding your conversion rate, you can use the following formula:
Conversion rate = (# of goal actions taken ÷ # of delivered emails) x 100
Once you’ve found your conversion rate, you’ll be able to compare it to the averages of your other channels.
Does customer mapping really matter?
The entire process of customer mapping is to help get your brand the conversions it desires, so you need to have that strategy in place if you expect to get prospects through the customer journey.
During your customer mapping process, there are various things you’ll want to keep in mind, such as list segmentation and personalization. These are two key factors that play a significant role in getting prospects to convert into customers.
What now?
Now that you know just how vital customer mapping is, you’ll want to work on your customer journey. Get started by reading our guide on customer journeys. In this guide, readers will not only learn about the types of customer journeys, but what marketing automation is, why journey maps are so essential, and how to set journeys up with the help of Campaign Monitor’s tools.