One of the questions I get asked a lot is where to start when creating a digital customer journey. It’s one question that I always hesitate to answer because the true answer is “Well, it depends”. It depends on what processes and automation you have in place currently, who your customers are, and what products you are offering. In my opinion, it’s best to first map out the existing customer journey, noting which parts of the experience are manual, and which are automated (or perhaps could be in the future). Once you have that mapped out, look for the low-hanging fruit, the easy wins if you will. This is commonly found in the very first step of your customer journey. The new customer welcome email.
Think about your shopping habits and the experience that come with them. Whether you’re buying a new family car or furniture to be delivered. The person serving you thanks you for your purchase and may provide you with some additional information for you to read until the product is delivered. The experience should be the same when purchasing your product. This is especially true if your product requires training or onboarding and there is a gap between the time the customer purchases and the onboarding kickoff. I like to call this the pre-onboarding stage.
The idea of creating a welcome email may be both simple but also overwhelming at the same time. Whenever creating an engagement such as a new customer welcome email, you want to avoid getting stuck with analysis paralysis, involving different team members and departments. Instead, opt for a more agile mindset (i.e. - fail fast, fail forwards, or my personal favorite, crawl, walk, and run).
Your first email can be simple, plain text, thanking your new customer for purchasing your product with information on what to expect next, and a few links to your customer community, support portal, etc.
After a few iterations, you can turn it into something bigger and better. A full-blown marketing email if you will, designed to be stunning but also valuable to your customers. The goal, after all, is to provide your customers with reassurance that they’ve made the right choice and know what to expect next.
Here’s what I would suggest as a multi-step, iterative, implementation strategy using my favorite approach, crawl, walk, and run:
If you’re interested in learning more about automated welcome gift sends, check out our guide on how you can leverage Gainsight CS’s Journey Orchestrator and Sendoso.
It doesn’t have to be complicated - make a start today, and use this opportunity to create processes and relationships that will help with the future evolution of your overall digital customer success strategy.
About the Author
My name is Aaron Hatton and I’m a Digital Program Manager at Gainsight, helping develop Digital Customer Success strategies to elevate the Gainsight experience for all our customers and products. Follow me for more useful tips and tricks like this in the future.