Lifecycle Marketing and Touchpoints: The Customer Map

In this simple example, we have just six channels.

And, clearly, there are three channels that form a "triangle" of customer behavior.

• Customers who order via the Telephone.
• Customers who order via the Website.
• Customers who order via E-Mail Marketing.

Because the "newbies" label is near "website", we can surmise that the website is generally most responsible for the acquisition of new customers. 

Because the "loyalists" label is near "search", "mobile", and "social", we can safely surmise that the best customers are focused on hip, new marketing channels.

Telephone shoppers are off on their own island, aren't they? 

And while email customers are reasonably close to loyalists, there is a bit of distance between email and hip, new marketing channels.  This happens, especially when email marketing is viewed as a discount/promotion channel ... you end up customers who adore discounts/promos, and as a result, you have customers who don't participate in the entire ecosystem. 

It is interesting that search is near mobile/social, and is generally near the loyalist customer.  For this business, search is a tool used by experienced customers.  It's quite likely that loyal customers are doing a lot of comparison shopping.  Strategically, this is important, because loyal customers clearly aren't as loyal as one might hope ... the customer is obviously looking for the best deals.

Mobile/Social, in this case, are aligned with loyal customers.  This is important from an attribution standpoint.  It likely means that these channels are cannibalizing existing channels, and are not causing incremental orders.  You want to look at your customer metrics, to understand if customers are placing incremental orders or not.  If customer order frequency is not increasing, it is quite likely that Mobile/Social are being given too much credit.  More important, these channels matter, because best customers are using them.  Management should not expect a boatload of new customers from either channel. 

In general, the customer is acquired via the website, then migrates toward search/mobile/social, and to some extent, to email marketing.

Obviously, this is a simple example, with just six generic channels.  Your business has considerable complexity, with many channels.  Use this methodology to understand how your customers migrate through the lifecycle. 

Contact me for your own customized Lifecycle Marketing and Touchpoints analysis!