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Joe is Vice President, Salesforce Technology at Shift7 Digital. As a member of the Shift7 leadership team, Joe works to craft solutions and architectures that meet ambitious client goals using the power of the Salesforce platform, including product ownership for Shift7’s Industry GTM Accelerators. Joe brings more than 20 years of experience implementing Salesforce and other digital platforms including enterprise solutions and complex technology implementations. He sits on the Salesforce B2B Commerce product advisory board. Shift7 Digital is a Salesforce Ventures-backed agency, revolutionizing the digital experience for manufacturers, distributors, and their customers.

If you are reading this article, chances are that you know something about Ryan Deiss and his Customer Value Journey. Ryan literally built a marketing education empire on the concept of this framework.

It’s so important to the DigitalMarketer community that he even has the original napkin version framed like a relic to be viewed like the Mona Lisa.

My name is James Bullis. I am a Marketing Technologist / Webmaster with over 25 years in the industry.
I remember when I first learned about this concept around 15 years ago.

It was originally called Customer Value Optimization and had an entirely different structure. I’m a web designer and when I started working in this industry I started out in marketing.

When I became a web designer, I didn’t understand that a business web design is a part of a business’
marketing plan. After learning more about marketing, I realized how I could put these concepts into the website and use them to create a better website experience for my customers’ website visitors.

Then the along came the Customer Value Journey (CVJ) which was a fundamental upgrade and made the entire foundational framework make more sense. It essentially closed the loop and created an endless flywheel of customers if applied correctly.

It really played well in helping to understand how a business website should be laid out so that the traffic could be funneled through the Customer Value Journey.

The CVJ is not the only part of this foundational framework. It is usually accompanied by an Ideal Client Avatar and the Before & After exercise. Essentially, you need to understand who you want to help and be able to empathize with them to discover how you can bring value by easing their pain.

But there is a real problem when it comes to the CVJ that I have noticed over the years. It seems to me that no one will sit down and do it.

Do I know this for a fact? No. But, I can guess with some authority that most people who have learned this framework skip over it in practice.

This became obvious to me some years ago inside of DigitalMarketer Engage – the Facebook group of people who have spent some time and money with DigitalMarketer to engage with other members to talk about the frameworks, get advice, and learn from each other.

You could always tell when a fresh wave of members would join because the same questions were asked repeatedly.

These were questions that could simply be answered if they took the time to go through the process of completing these exercises for each new campaign or business that they started to work on as marketers.

I don’t know why people skip over these foundational steps. The framework itself along with the worksheets probably make the concept seem simple and insignificant but it is a powerful exercise that will save you a ton of time, money, and resources.

Years ago, DigitalMarketer invited people to a conference in Austin to learn some amazing new concepts that were going to change the way we thought about digital marketing.

I was excited. I packed up. Headed to Texas. Arrived at the event. Sat down. Excited to learn something new when the guys came out and began talking about…the CVJ. The avatar. The before and after exercise.

I was a bit dumbfounded and a little bit angry at myself when I realized that this framework…was the secret. And I realized that I was not taking the time to do these exercises.

I realized that I wanted to spend my time learning about these frameworks and exercises but I myself was not implementing them. I did something drastic when I left that event. I went home and disconnected myself from everything DigitalMarketer and I decided that I wouldn’t invest in learning any new concepts until I started with these fundamentals.

For years, I worked on numerous projects, and I took a stand to make sure that we sat down and did the work. This is what I discovered.

Why the Customer Value Journey Is STILL Essential

The CVJ is essential because it answers the most important questions that everyone who works with a
business needs to know:

1. Who Do You Help?
2. How Do You Help?
3. Why Does It Matter?

It’s also important because it puts this information in a format that can be shared with anyone who works on a business including sales, marketing, and technology. If my clients already had a CVJ for their business when I started designing and building a new website for them, it would be so much easier to create a website that actually gets results.

If the information that is contained in a CVJ were given to a graphic designer, marketing contractor, customer service rep, sales rep, consultant, anyone…this would make working the clients and ensuring their success so much easier. We call it greasing the skids because it makes it outlines everything that needs to be done in a simple to understand and comprehend format.

After using this framework on any new projects, I don’t know how I could realistically provide value to my clients if I didn’t help them create their CVJ.

The CVJ Is an Experiment in Marketing

Everything that we do in marketing is an experiment. Every little decision we make is a series of experiments that lead us to always be optimizing. No matter how far we’ve come, we can always do it better. For that reason, the CVJ is more of a living document that changes over time as the campaigns that you work on. A business can have multiple CVJs.

Think about it. You can get this process wrong because chances are you and your customer are just guessing about what will work. The more you do it, the easier it will be for you to ensure your customer’s success, but chances are, if you are creating a CVJ for a customer, they probably never completed one before and these concepts are new.

You can get it wrong. In fact, you can get it wrong and waste time, money, and resources by targeting the wrong people. Last year, I did a session with a client where we went through the process of mapping out their Ideal Customer Avatar, Before & After Exercise, and CVJ.

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For months we created content, updated the website, and ran social media campaign. It wasn’t until we expanded on these exercises with AI that we realized that we were targeting the wrong prospect. Now we can avoid that.

The CVJ Is Easier To Create Than Ever with AI

If I were to ask a group of marketers why they did not use a framework to conduct their marketing, I would imagine that the main consensus would be that the act of sitting down with your client and getting a full understanding of these concepts is not something that you or your client really want to do.

In the mind of the client, you should just know this information (by some miracle). The reality is that every business is different and while you may be able to repeat the concepts in these exercises, having the exercises completed and documented will save you a lot of time and heartache in the long run.

I love the quote from Lincoln that says, “If given six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four sharpening my axe.”

This concept is true in so many aspects of business but as I said before, if you take the time to document the CVJ, ICA, and Before and After exercise, you will be so far along that you’ll make your life a lot easier.

Well, now we have this thing called AI. And what I have discovered about AI is that it is really suited to help solve this problem. In fact, now that I have started to use AI to help create this foundation, I can’t help but generate the concepts, expand on them, and make some of the most focused content that speaks directly to the prospect.

The CVJ framework is essential to success as a marketer. Now with the help of AI tools, you can take any framework and inject it with steroids to create comprehensive marketing foundation that can literally transform your marketing campaigns.

Not only can you generate expanded versions of these foundational frameworks, but you can now use them to reference when creating content to build awareness and increase engagement with your audience.

The dawn of AI in digital marketing is an exciting one, offering boundless opportunities to strengthen and streamline the strategies we use. Leveraging the capabilities of AI, the creation and application of foundational frameworks such as the Customer Value Journey (CVJ), Ideal Client Avatar (ICA), and the Before & After exercise, can be profoundly amplified.

Gone are the days where marketers neglect these critical steps due to their time-consuming nature or the perceived complexity. With AI, we are able to enhance these processes, reduce the margin for error, and ultimately deliver more targeted and impactful content.

In my personal journey as a web designer turned marketing technologist, I have seen the value these tools bring to the table, but also witnessed their neglect. Utilizing AI, we can change this trend, ensuring that these valuable resources are used to their fullest potential.

By taking the time to implement these tools properly, we not only provide immense value to our clients but also create a better experience for the end user, leading to more successful marketing campaigns.

As digital marketers, we have an exciting path ahead of us. Armed with the transformative power of AI, we can take the wisdom encapsulated in the CVJ and other frameworks and unleash it on a grander scale than ever before.

In an era where every business decision is becoming data-driven, the advent of AI ensures that the nuances of human insight remain central to our marketing strategies.

It allows us to balance the scales between data and empathy, between efficiency and effectiveness, and, ultimately, between the business and the customer. So, as we step into the future of digital marketing, let us remember to carry these valuable lessons forward, and embrace the tools that AI provides to augment our journey.

Som data privacy concerns and restrictions grow, many brands and advertisers have had to rework their approach and strategies to continue reaching their target audiences and meeting their goals. Some channels have naturally been more heavily impacted than others, but they all have one thing in common: They can benefit from better leveraging their lifecycle marketing data.
 

 
Lifecycle Marketing—which includes e-post, mobile, and onsite messaging—is built on valuable, privacy-compliant zero-party och first-party data. That data enables lifecycle marketers to answer for today’s consumer demands in another key way—it makes the highly personalized communications they prefer possible.

If it’s starting to sound like Lifecycle Marketing’s time to shine has never been more apparent, you’re right. As we explore in greater detail in our 2023 Lifecycle Marketing Guide, the insights it can offer are capable of powering your cross-channel data and audience strategies in the privacy-by-default future. But before we can help others, we have to help ourselves!

We asked our Lifecycle Marketing experts to share a few of their top tips and considerations for crafting the best campaigns in 2023.
 

Pssst: Don’t forget to register for our upcoming FREE 2023 Lifecycle Summit.

1. Don’t Just Collect Information—Use It with Intention

 
As consumers are increasingly bombarded with advertisements across their physical and digital worlds, they have come to expect more from the communications they intentionally agree to receive. It is your responsibility as a marketer to honor that wish by fully leveraging the 0P and opted-in data at your fingertips.

“We need to be targeting subscribers to the degree they want and expect; otherwise, they’re going to pass over your messages. You not only have the information they provided when they signed up, but also behavior learnings along their customer journey. You know what they’re interested in, what they’ve been browsing and clicking on, and what they’ve ordered—all of that ties into the data that we’re collecting for our audience communication strategy. With that valuable information at our fingertips, we have to be utilizing it in every communication we send.”

— Emily Clarkson, Sr. Director, CRM & Email at Tinuiti
 

2. Personalization Expectations will Heighten

 
Keep your advertising goals at the forefront of every data point you collect, pre-considering how you’ll leverage any insights that you expressly ask for, as well as insights you have thanks to the opted-in nature of lifecycle marketing.

“Your customers will continue to expect more and more personalized experiences. Marketers need to become an advocate for their own customers while looking at their own marketing goals by finding the balance between their customer’s need for privacy and ensuring there is value in the communications they receive. Don’t be invasive. Don’t be one-sided in your goals. Respecting these needs will drive loyalty.”

— Leah Lloyd, Group Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
 

3. Be Mindful of Overflowing Inboxes and Send Messages that Matter

Image Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/456500/daily-number-of-e-mails-worldwide/

A staggering 333 billion emails were sent and received daily throughout 2022, and that number is expected to steadily climb for at least the next several years. Aim to be the email that stands out in a sea of general subject lines and content, providing customers with relevance and value in every communication.

“Consider quality over quantity when planning your email strategy. Now is not the time to send just for the sake of sending. Inboxes are flooded with emails and you can stand out by targeting your audience with thoughtful segmentation and by using sophisticated personalization. Send relevant emails and increase the value of your content by altering it to fit subscriber’s interests with the utilization of data; consider purchases, location, browsing history, and even past email engagement.”

— Kristin Feliciano, Associate Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
 

4. Invest in Technology with Multichannel Capabilities

 
The consumer journey is more multipathed than ever before, and technologies with multichannel capabilities baked in can help in future-proofing messaging options.

“Multichannel awareness in your martech stack is no longer a nice-to-have, it is quickly becoming a need-to-have. We’re seeing more and more technologies leaning toward multi-channel capabilities in their features and releases. Having this allows the marketer to adapt to trends in real-time, utilizing metrics and insights from their platforms to target the right audience members at the right time.”

— Diana Mitchell, Associate Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
 

5. Elevating Your Campaigns is Table Stakes

 
Email marketing will always be the oldest member of the Lifecycle Marketing crew, but onsite and mobile messaging aren’t youngsters anymore, either! Today, fully integrated campaigns are an absolute must, with all elements upping their game individually, and as a team.

“When we look to 2023, all of the nice-to-have components of programs become need-to-have components. These include using SMS alongside email, implementing on-site pop ups and banners, hyper-personalization and key data collection and usage strategies within lifecycle as well as to fuel cross channels marketing efforts.”

— Emily Clarkson, Senior Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
 

6. Don’t Forget Your Foundation

 
No matter how experienced the marketer, or elevated the strategy they’re applying, the essentials will always be just that—essential.

“In the growing world of digital marketing, it’s more important than ever to make sure you have your basics covered. It’s amazing how many companies let the basics slide. Do you have (and honor) permission? Are you sending relevant and timely messaging? Are you planning cross-channel to ensure your customers are receiving the same, cohesive message across all channels? Are you considering the context of the subscriber with each message you send? If you answer each of those questions with “yes”, then you will have a leg up on many companies out there. “

— Eric Miller, Director, Lifecycle Marketing at Tinuiti
 

Want to Learn More?

Last Chance To Register For 2023 Lifecycle Marketing Summit

 
You don’t want to miss out on our upcoming “2023 Lifecycle Marketing Summit”. This year, we’re hosting 2 days’ worth of incredible insights and strategy you can put to use immediately.
 

Hype-worthy sessions on topics such as:

• The Most Important KPIs to Really Drive Your Lifecycle Program
• Lifecycle as an Engine to Power Other Channels
• Lifecycle and AI: Where We’re At and Where We’re Going
• How to Keep Up Your Creative Testing After Budget Cuts
• Leveraging Your Tech Stack – Migration Execution: Best Practices for Both
• And more!

Featuring Lifecycle and Marketing Brand Experts including:

• Sandcloud
• Marigold
• Iterable
• JustUno
• Blotout
• Yotpo
• Wellby Financial
• Tinuiti

Limited Space Available – Register Today!