A lot of marketers would rather take the most bare-bones approach to moving prospects down the funnel. As long as users become leads and leads become customers, it doesn’t matter if they forget their experience by morning.
If you want your business to thrive in a competitive market, that’s not the way to go.
Your goal should be to turn dull marketing experiences into memorable ones. You should delight potential customers at every stage of their journey – even if they don’t end up converting in the end.
You can do that by creating what we call “happiness touchpoints” across your marketing funnel. But first, let’s understand what customer touchpoints are.
What are Customer Touchpoints?
In essence, touchpoints refer to all points of contact you have with customers throughout their cycle. They range from a customer’s first visit to your website to a “thank you” message they see after completing a purchase.
Every marketing funnel has touchpoints – but not every marketing funnel has happiness touchpoints.
So, what’s the difference?
Creating happiness touchpoints across your marketing is like leaving a thoughtful gift at every corner. Such “gifts” could be anything from a smooth browsing experience to an unexpected juicy offer. This way, your brand stands a higher chance of lingering in their minds long after they’ve made a purchase.
Let’s go through some examples of touchpoints you can optimise to improve the customer journey.
Where and How to Create Happiness Touchpoints
Your Homepage
When you offer an instantly positive experience on your homepage, your visitors are thankful.
After all, a homepage is like an airport terminal: each visitor just wants to get to their respective gates. They don’t want to be nagged by a salesperson or be stuck in airport traffic. It’s the same thing with the homepage experience you give them.
They’ll love that they’re not troubled with an unwelcome pop-up that ruins their browsing from the start.
They’ll enjoy seamless scrolling inside a website design that’s easy to navigate. They’ll feel comfortable reading clear copy that smoothly guides them through your solution.
And they won’t complain about not knowing where to go next, because your clear CTAs show them what to expect from each click.
Blog Posts
Nothing ruins an experience quicker than an outdated blog with expired data. Besides making your content less credible, SEO crawlers will frown upon stale information and stop ranking your pages.
Want to increase top-of-funnel happiness? Keep your blog content fresh and informative. While you’re at it, create opportunities for readers to dig deeper into your site to find additional resources.
Emails
Some marketers make email painful when it could be one of the most delightful customer touchpoints. Not to mention, it could drive insane ROI if done thoughtfully.
The key here is – you guessed it – email segmentation. Regardless if you’ve written a Pulitzer-worthy newsletter, the wrong people will just look at it as “yet another annoying email from that same annoying brand. I should just unsubscribe, already.”
By personalising customers’ email experience, you can keep your brand top-of-mind by delivering the right messages to the right people inside your email list. Because what makes one person happy can bore another person to tears.
Customer Service
There’s a reason why 93% of customers are more likely to repeat their purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service. When customers reach the phone or chat for support, they’ve likely exhausted their self-servicing options and need their problems solved, pronto.
That’s why customer service is a crucial touchpoint for any customer. It’s when people most need your representatives to answer pressing questions or complaints in the most helpful way.
Even if they’ve had a pleasant experience before, a customer’s view of your brand can entirely change based on one bad interaction with customer service. So make their contact worthwhile.
Social Media
Being active on social media is the perfect way to show your brand’s personality and get closer to your audience. Customers love to be a part of a like-minded community— so much so that 64% of consumers want brands to engage with them on a regular basis.
Don’t just ask your followers questions, but do your best to answer them. Reply to comments. Repost user-generated content (UGC). Most importantly, don’t underestimate the happiness of customers when finding that a brand has noticed them. This just makes them happier and more certain that choosing you was the right decision.
Don’t spread yourself too thin here, make sure you are really good on any platform you decide to work on. We focus on YouTube as that is where we get the most engagement for our content. This is better than being half arsed on multiple platforms.
Don’t Forget After-Conversion Touchpoints
Few touchpoints are more exciting than a purchase confirmation. So why not harness this opportunity to say a massive “thank you”? This shows you’ve taken enough time to appreciate their preference.
As a pro tip, you can embed a form inside your “thank you” pages to ask for useful feedback. It could be as simple as asking what made a customer choose you, which will drum up invaluable insights.
If you want to go the extra mile, remembering important dates, such as birthdays, and dropping off surprise coupons for loyal customers are fantastic ways of keeping your brand on their minds.
Wrapping Up
As a marketer, you want to nurture lasting relationships that result in repeat purchases.
Your customers are the bedrock of your business, so they need first-class treatment across the board. Keep in mind that even the slightest positive surprise can make an experience unforgettable.
