In today’s digital age, more website traffic than ever is coming from mobile devices. In fact, Statista shows exponential growth in that arena from 2015-2023, with more than half of site traffic hailing from mobile devices last year. 

As a result, mobile marketing has quickly become an effective and cost-efficient way to target consumers. Mobile marketing can be done through a variety of channels, but in this blog post, we’re focusing on email marketing using customer journeys.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is a stream of interactions a customer has with your brand before performing a desirable action like signing up for a service or making a purchase. A customer journey follows a user throughout the customer lifecycle, moving each person onto a specific track based on their interactions with previously received content.

The definition is a bit confusing, so follow me here on this journey. Imagine you’re a restaurant owner wanting to drum up repeat catering business. Each time a customer places a catering order, they get added to your email marketing contact list housed in a program like Mailchimp, and begin a unique customer journey built out by you (or a PR pro at Obsidian!). This journey includes a series of emails sent to customers who interact with your outreach in specific ways.

For example, eight weeks after the customer receives their catering order, you may send a follow-up email highlighting your offerings in an effort to entice them to reorder. If they open your email, but do not click the call-to-action link you included, another email with different offerings that may appeal to them more is automatically sent. You can set the time duration you wish to see between the first and second email. For this, you may set it at one week. On the contrary, if they do open the original email and click the call-to-action link but do not place an order, an email enticing them to revisit the checkout page is automatically distributed – say 24 hours later. Each interaction they make or do not make with your emails triggers another step in the journey.

What are the benefits of a customer journey?

When used correctly, customer journeys are immensely valuable. They allow you to better understand customers – their behaviors, purchase patterns and top interests. Moreover, with email marketing comes immediacy and shareability. Recipients likely get push notifications to their mobile device when an email is received, meaning your outreach is always at their fingertips. With the use of the handy dandy forward button, your communication is easily shareable, too. 
If all this sounds Greek to you, you’re not alone. Customer journeys are complex, but oh-so-worth-it to learn valuable insight about your audience. Contact us at insight@obsidianpr.com to learn how we can help.