Getting in the right lane

There are certain pluses that make a car journey more enjoyable; sunny, clear skies or a nifty shotgun passenger who is on music. Most of the time, we really don’t notice these pluses, but we always notice a poor car journey. What is the one thing that makes car journey’s shaky, uncomfortable and overall, a bad experience? Two words: poor roads. And what can digital marketers compare poor online customer journeys to? That’s right: poor roads. Stick with me, it’ll make sense a bit further down.

Every part of a customer’s digital journey has three sections: the acquisition, conversion and retention stages. A brand may have a great acquisition stage in their online journey, however, when it comes to converting or retaining a customer, they can’t get them to commit or follow through on the process. This means, the end2end digital journey is only being partially optimized. Similarly, in road resurfacing, it is only specific sections of a road that get resurfaced. By doing this, it optimizes one section of the road over the other, making it easy to distinguish the good parts over the bad.

Global Reviews looks at a brand’s full end2end digital journey and analyses what they are doing well, and where they could improve. To explain this a bit more, we go back to the road surfacing analogy.

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Now, onwards with the blog.

Stop, look and listen: the road surface analogy

There are three roads for the car journey, let’s give them specific names; Acquisition Motorway, Conversion Road and Retention Alley (fitting, right). Each were laid by three different groups of road surfacers (keep this in mind for later).

You begin your journey on the Acquisition Motorway. It’s smooth, freshly surfaced, no bumps, no traffic or bends. We now have high expectations for how the rest of the journey will go.

Now, you must come off the motorway and go onto a National road, Conversion Road. It’s not the same experience as the motorway, it’s a bit bumpier and there’s traffic. Our expectations have dipped from the previous part of the journey.

For the last leg, we take a turn off onto a narrow, poorly surfaced road with twists and turns. Retention Alley hasn’t been resurfaced or taken care of for decades. As a result, we finish our journey with poor expectations. Our perception of the journey has gone from being a 10/10 experience to a solid 2/10 in a matter of minutes. We probably won’t be recommending this route to a friend.

It is clear the 3 groups of road surfacers didn’t communicate at all. They all just stayed in their own lane (pun intended) and did what they thought was appropriate for their road only. The journey can be separated into 3 distinct sections, when really, each route should blend into one end2end journey, giving the driver an optimal experience. Now, let’s pivot this analogy and input the digital journey for online customers.

The road not taken: the end2end digital journey view

Brands need to look at the digital journey from an end2end perspective. If you’re only focusing on one process or route, how can the journey ensure a smooth end2endprocess. There is no continuity or flow in the journey if the sections do not communicate.

The road surfacers symbolize three departments in a company. To create an optimal digital experience for their customers, they need to communicate and work together. It is crucial for brands to break down internal silos in the business and push for integration between departments. How are you to know how the full digital journey is performing if you don’t all work together? Brand’s need to create that single minded view of the end2end customer experience.

A brand can make promises at the beginning of the journey (e.g., promises in strong returns), but as the journey continues, a lot of brands fail to keep up this promise in the conversion and retention stages. We need to show the whole story across the 3 stages, giving the full perspective.

Brands who are on the right track

Here are three motor insurance brands with the specific stage they perform well in:

·       Marshmallow – Great quote journey (conversion)

·       Geico – retention

·       123.ie - acquisition

Using our new end2end digital intelligence solution, it showed us that none of these brands are delivering the full digital customer journey experience. We will discuss more on these brands in our upcoming webinar, among other motor insurance providers, globally.

Take the next exit to our webinar

If you want to learn more about end2end digital journeys, come along to our UK/IRE Motor Insurance Webinar on April 7th from 11am-12pm GMT. We will be talking about global best practice and who are the global leaders we identified from a digital point of view in the end2end digital customer journey (acquisition, conversion and retention). Note: we will not be talking about types of road surfacing materials in the webinar.

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