The Welcome Journey

As marketers, we all know that a strategic customer journey is crucial for building long-term, relevant, and engaging experiences with our base, ultimately driving both retention and loyalty. Advances in data and technology are steering businesses away from one-size-fits-all, towards more personalised, data driven customer journeys – and this increased ‘relevance’ is what customers now expect.

With this in mind, we’re launching an insightful series, where we’ll uncover some key watch-outs across the key phases of the customer lifecycle.

To kick things off, we’ll be focusing on the Welcome journey– where first impressions are often lasting ones. It’s vital that customers feel supported during this phase, shaping the way for long and valuable relationships.

Here are some key Welcome journey principles to follow:

1. Seize the data

 During their first interactions, customers are typically at their highest level of engagement. Make sure you capitalise on this and learn all you can about your customers:

• Investing in your preferences centre capability allows your customer to ‘self-select’ how they want to engage with your brand in the future. The choice becomes theirs.
• Interactive content in the form of incentive-based quizzes/surveys are also great ways to get to know your base, capturing key engagement data.
• Building trust is key within this early stage, so make sure you clearly communicate how you intend to use this information, making sure you’re compliant with the most up to date regulations.

 2. Understand what drives retention – and encourage those behaviours right away

It’s crucial that you have the analytical tools available to understand what behaviours improve key retention KPI’s, such as churn rate. Encouraging customers to return to your content, channels, and website from the get-go can help drive brand habit.

Setting objectives around retention driving behaviours helps to ensure resource is directed in the most impactful way, and should align with broader business goals such as increasing customer volume/revenue (helping to secure senior alignment in the process).

All of this highlights the importance of your Welcome journey – it needs to be a key focus area in your overall retention strategy.

For example

A leading UK Publisher found that customers regularly engaging in content through 2+ platforms such as the website and app (within the last 28 days), were twice as likely to be retained vs those using 1 platform.

Of this cohort, those engaging in the app had the highest retention rate.  

In response, app messaging has been prioritised within the welcome journey. Active days was also crucial – those seen to be active on any platform 2+ days a week, were far more likely to be retained.

3. Testing from the offset is crucial

Testing during the Welcome journey allows you to capitalise on the initial brand interest shown by customers – allowing you to gain statistically valid findings within a short period of time.

 This can include:

• Cadence - which allows you to find the optimal frequency of sending onboarding emails
• Content type – opportunity to experiment with different types of content ie long form vs short form, imagery, video content
• Personalisation – test different types of personalised content based on what the customer has interacted with
• Behavioural decision tree testing – for example, if a customer has already downloaded your app, triggered campaigns can be setup to ensure a customer does not receive an ‘app download’ campaign, instead moving onto the next trigger in the series.

4. Don’t underestimate the role of cross sell

 We often see, across industries and clients, that increased product holding results in reduced churn further down the line. It’s important that the role of cross-sell is considered within the Welcome journey – it shouldn’t just be an In-life strategy.

 Online retailers have had some amazing success with this, for several reasons:

• Placement timing – data-driven recommendations are strategically placed during the checkout process, when customers are already in a buying mindset
• Relevance and personalisation – recommendations are often highly relevant to the customer’s current purchase
• Social proof and reviews – prominently displaying reviews and testimonials provide key reassurance
• Convenience and frictionless experience – a seamless checkout experience makes it all the more easier to add that extra product

When done thoughtfully (aligning with their own needs), cross sell of relevant, complimentary products in this first interaction can enhance a customer’s experience – whilst also improving your product adoption, revenue and retention KPI’s.

5. Make customers feel truly welcomed

Show that you value their investment in your brand, by utilising the data available to deliver a personalised welcome message (remind them of the benefits of your product, what’s to come – a surprise and delight gift can also work well here). Showing genuine appreciation, setting clear next steps and offering exclusive benefits all help to drive warmth at this crucial stage.

It's also a great time to build initial advocacy and encourage word-of-mouth. For example, customers might tell their friends they’ve just discovered a new brand/product, and recommend it to them.

Summary

Focusing on your Welcome journey is the key to establishing strong relationships, product usage and retention from the outset. Therefore, a well-crafted, data-driven onboarding series across multiple touch points is essential - to find out how Loop Horizon can help you transform your onboarding strategy in line with your goals, feel free to get in touch today

P.S Lookout for the next instalment in our CustomerJourney series, where we’ll be sharing some unique insight on the role that a‘re-welcome’ journey can play – including a case study from a leading Travel company that we recently worked with.

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