Save the relationship with your customers!

Actually, it's as clear as day: if you've just bought a grill online, you're usually no longer interested in banner ads for grills. If you have a cat at home, you can safely do without discount offers for hamster food - even a daily reminder is of no use. And if you've just bought a new smartphone and a week later you receive a discount offer for smartphones, you won't feel like you've been given a present, you'll feel like you've been had.

Retaining customers and developing them into good customers has become more difficult and is no longer a matter of course. Many companies still have to get used to this. Previously, customers remained loyal without much effort. Marketing was able to focus primarily on acquiring new customers. But one man's new customer is another man's lost customer. At the same time, maintaining existing customers would be much cheaper and therefore more worthwhile. 

If you ask around, you'll quickly notice that many companies are very reticent about communicating with their customers, or don't communicate at all, even though they have data and could easily establish contact. That's a shame, because a cultivated, consistent customer relationship stands and falls with communication.

So it's worth analyzing how you communicate with your existing customers and the data you have. Data can be not only demographic information or personal data, but also decisions such as clicks and purchases.

Once you have an initial overview, you should optimize communication, focusing on relevance: When, how and why do I communicate with whom? Do I offer discounts on hamster food to all customers? Better not! When do I give a discount to whom, for what reason, and on what? With frequent buyers, I might pursue a different goal with a discount than with sleepers. For example, the frequent buyers should try new products, while the sleepers should be awakened with their favorite products.

Segmenting your existing customers and assigning goals to the segments is the biggest step before you can design the detailed customer journey for a segment.

Of course, implementing a customer journey is tied to systems, databases, and software. In most cases, there are more options than you need. If you proceed smartly, you will include the real restrictions in your considerations right from the start. In just a few weeks, you will have taken the first step in the customer journey - and an important step towards optimized customer relationships will have been taken!