What Are Customer Journey Maps (And Do You Need One)?

Customer journey maps are step-by-step guides to how customers arrive at a purchase decision for your products. Think “road maps” during a vacation. Customer journey maps are graphical representations of the route your customers take as they move through the sales funnel toward the destination (a purchase).

How does this help you? Buyers don’t simply wake up one day and decide to buy a specific product or service, so knowing the route others used helps you move new customers to a purchase, too. In addition, each stage typically uses different types of content delivered through different channels, so understanding how your customers reach each stage helps inform your strategy.

Customer journeys generally include . . .

• discovery of the product,
• education about the product,
• trying the product,
• purchasing the product, and
• using and advocating for the product.

Discovery is how customers find out about your product in the first place. Is it social media? Direct mail ads? Web searches? Here is where you’ll use your widest range of channels: direct mail, print ads, web banner ads, and social media marketing. Know where your customers learn about your products, what types of content they use (social media reviews, blogs, in-store signage), and meet them where they are.

The education stage is how they learn about your product. What information do they need to move them to the next step? This could include drip marketing of product details and tutorials via print and email, QR Codes on packaging, or for more complex products and services, multi-stage mailings of high-quality print collateral.

Next, you want people to move to the try stage. For this, you might provide product samples or allow prospects to register for a trial period.  

Ultimately, you will move the customers to the purchase stage. That should be multichannel, too. It’s not unusual for customers to make a purchase only after the second, third, or even fourth attempt, so make responding as easy as possible. (Don’t assume that delay means no. Be persistent, but not annoying.)

Even once your customer makes a purchase, the journey isn’t over. You want them to move to the advocate stage. You want happy customers to encourage their friends and family to try the product, too. Customer-loyalty and customer-retention marketing pick up where lead nurturing left off.

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Why Invest in Customer Loyalty? 3 Reasons

What’s the value of loyal customers? According to a study by Yotpo, loyal customers offer a brand three key benefits:

• They tell friends and family about the brand (60%)
• They are willing to join the brand’s loyalty or VIP program (52.3%)
• They spend more on a brand’s product even if there are cheaper options elsewhere (39.4%)

Not only this, but HubSpot has found that existing customers spend 67% more than new customers.

Keep your customers, make more money. It’s that simple. Optimove, reporting on the Yotpo study, put it this way: “The power of customer loyalty is so vital, its effects could mean the difference between your business either thriving, just about surviving, or breaking down completely.”[1]

Optimove went on to suggest three ways you can show your appreciation and keep those customers around.

1. Let them know that you reward loyalty.

Regardless how you reward loyalty, it’s critical to let your customers know that you do. Don’t make them wait to find out.  Promote your loyalty program in your direct mail pieces. Create a “loyalty” link on your website. In your print and email newsletters, talk about real people who have saved money and earned free stuff.

2. Create and promote multi-level incentives.

Tier your rewards so that the most loyal customers get the most benefits. The more loyal they are, the more they save, the more they earn, and the more insider benefits they get.  Also consider creating a sense of competition. “Enable your customers to compare their scores, points and/or rankings with other customers,” says Optimove.

3. Re-engage disconnected customers.

Don’t assume that lost customers are gone forever. There can be many reasons they have stopped buying, many of which may have nothing to do with them falling out of love with your products. Sometimes, all it takes is a nudge and an incentive to get them to come back.

You’ve worked hard to gain your customers, and they are worth keeping. Make the investment in your customers and they will invest in you.

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[1] https://postfunnel.com/keep-customers-3-engaging-loyalty-boosters

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Think Great Color Is Easy? Think Again

Think great color is something everyone can do? Think again. Getting accurate, high-quality color takes effort. Here is a peek behind the curtain at what it takes to give you the best color day after day, and job after job, even when projects are months apart.

1. Define independent color space.

Your computer monitors operate in the RGB color space. Our presses operate in CMYK. The two spaces work very differently, and there is a delicate and complex conversion process that must take place between them. Adding to the challenge is that RGB and CMYK are device-dependent. This means that the same colors look different on different devices.

How do we get the two in sync? First we define color by metrics unrelated to the devices themselves — how color looks to the eye. Take the color of a red apple. On your computer monitor, “apple red” is defined by a set of numbers called CIE L*a*b, which is an objective, device-independent measurement what the eye sees. That CIE L*a*b value corresponds to an ICC color profile, which is an objective measurement of how that monitor “sees” and outputs color.  

2. Translate to “press language.”

Now that we have an ICC profile that translates color accurately from the eye to the monitor, we need to be able to reproduce that color on press. Every press is unique, so the ICC color profile for the RGB monitor is translated into an ICC profile for the CYMK press.

3. Workflow steps to make it happen.

Next is to get that color onto paper. This starts with making choices at the RIP (the equipment that processes the job before it is sent to the press) to ensure that the settings match the ones in the software used by your designer. It also requires regular calibration of our presses to make sure that the color is not only accurate but repeatable.

Getting great color is not a magic trick. It requires a lot of craft, science, and hard work. That’s why you don't want to trust your color to just anyone. We hope you continue to trust us with your most color-critical jobs.

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
Or visit our website here for more information.

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