Enhancing customer experience through effective management of digital touchpoints

Digital touch points are an integral part of the customer journey. Touchpoints refer to any form of interaction the customer has with your business that may express interest and present an opportunity to convert. These include several actions that take place throughout the journey, such as product clicks, subscribing to newsletters, signing up for a trial offer, and clicking the call-to-action link.

Identifying these touchpoints is crucial because it enables marketers to create a rich omni-channel experience that leads to higher conversions, loyalty, and customer lifetime value.

Types of digital touch points 

Consider these digital touchpoints from the following platforms.

Website

There are multiple touchpoints that can be gathered from your company website. Examples include product clicks, pages navigated, blog engagement, and more. 

Social media

Social media touchpoints vary considerably depending on the platform. Examples include the number of likes, comments, and shares. If using a video platform like YouTube or Tik Tok, then touchpoints may include view length, clicking the link in the description, etc.

Email 

Touchpoints can also be gathered from your company newsletters. Touchpoints include opening the email and clicking the call-to-action link.

Mobile applications

41.8% of e-commerce transactions were made through a mobile device in 2022. This makes mobile touchpoints increasingly relevant. Measure the above touchpoints and determine whether they were made on a mobile device vs a PC.

Best practices for managing digital touchpoints

Marketers employ these methods for achieving maximum results from their touchpoints.

Consistency in branding

Try to remain consistent with your branding. Make modifications when necessary, but don’t deviate too much from your original platform and marketing. In other words, be consistent with your:

• Logo
• Mission statement
• Frequency of content posting
• Style of writing/videos

Personalization

Elicit greater interaction by personalizing your content. Ways you can customize your content include:

• Digital gifts sent on the customer’s birthday or anniversary of signup
• Blogs or videos catered towards a niche audience
• Product recommendations based on past purchases or browsing history

Integration of touchpoints

Integrate your multiple touchpoints. For example, if a customer expresses product interest via a comment on your social media post, you can respond via private email with a link to an invitation or exclusive offer. Integration is especially important in a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Mobile optimization

Make it easy for your customers to interact with your brand on a mobile device. For instance, if the click-through rate is one of your touchpoints, don’t create multiple links side-by-side, which can lead to unintended clicks.

Measuring digital touchpoint effectiveness

Use an analytics and data integration tool to measure response rates. This will yield metrics and give you a real-time overview of your campaign progress. Set short-term benchmarks and consistently measure results.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Establish KPIs for each of your touchpoints. Example KPIs include:

• Website click rate for various product pages
• Social media likes and comments
• Email click rates based on different subject lines
• Conversion rates from trial signup to purchase

Customer journey mapping

Carefully map out the customer journey to identify patterns and trends. Journey mapping may look like the following:

1. High email signup rate: benchmark achieved? ✔ 
2. High email open rate: benchmark achieved? ✔
3. Low email CTA click-through rate: benchmark achieved? X (12% below benchmark)

Journey mapping will show you where in the journey are customers dropping off. In the above example, customers are signing up and opening the emails, but falling short of clicking the link.

Voice of customer feedback

Customer feedback in the form of surveys and questionnaires is valuable because it produces qualitative feedback, an area data analytics alone can’t always produce.

Challenges in managing digital touchpoints

Managing touchpoints isn’t without its challenges. Here are hurdles that may require some trial and error to work through.

Data integration

Data silos can prove to be problematic. The challenge lies in integrating your data from multiple platforms, such as websites, social media, email, and offline data. Merging varying data points can yield valuable information regarding customer behavior and tendencies.

Technology integration

Do you have a way of recognizing data from various sources coming from the same customer? For instance, let’s say a customer clicks on a product on his PC and later clicks on the same product from his mobile device. Will your analytics tools recognize that as coming from the same person, or will it register it as two separate CTRs?

Resource allocation

Do you have the resources to manage each touchpoint, especially if the touchpoints are in varying areas of the sales funnel? It can be a challenge to determine where to invest your resources. By resource, this means time, money, and staff.

Simplify customer experience management with Lytics

The digital customer experience is highly complex and comprises of checkpoints that represent a transition to the next phase of the customer journey. The above challenges are real, but you can make them more manageable with a marketing automation tool like Lytics.