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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Using the buyer’s journey

Before writing, designing, and sending an email copy, it is important to know who your audience is and ensure you're sending the right message to the right person.

You may have seen the buyer's journey in previous modules. So, let's refresh it. The buyer's journey is the research a buyer goes through before purchasing. There are multiple stages the buyer goes through before and after a purchase.

Awareness and interest

First, we have the awareness and interest stage. The buyer becomes aware of their need for a product or service and begins to look for products that would fulfill it.

Consideration

Next, is consideration stage. The buyer has researched solutions and is considering the options. They have developed a certain view on the products available on the market and are aware of their personal preferences.

Conversion

The buyer has selected the product they want and made a decision to buy.

Retention

Buyer and brand build a strong relationship. The customer receives valuable information that turn a satisfied customer into a true fan or evangelist of your brand.

The buyer’s journey and email

So, what does the buyer's journey have to do with the email and your audience?

Identifying the stages your recipients are at the buyer's journey will help you align the type of email and message you want to send. Again, the right person, the right time, the right content. For a new customer at the awareness or interest stages, you may send a welcome email within the first 24 hours of subscribing and thank them for signing up and letting them know what they can expect from you.

Next, you may consider regular newsletters, event invitations, or seasonal emails in order to move them down the buyer's journey.

And finally, at the retention stage, product or content updates, downloadable content, and shareable content will help to retain and excite these into brand evangelists.

Example

As we have just seen, identifying where your recipients are in the buyer's journey can help to align your emails to the right audience. Consider an example of a 32-year-old woman named Claire. What we know about Claire is that she's a career-driven woman, has an interest in fashion, and is searching for a new outfit for work.

She has already come across your clothing website online and has selected a few outfits, entered her details to sign up before paying for the products, but has left your website before completing the purchase.

So, how do you use email to encourage Claire not just to come back to purchase, but to re-engage with your brand? And how does recognizing what stage she is at in the buyer's journey help to send her the right email?

So, first of all, if we look at where Claire is in the buyer's journey, we'll see that she is a potential new customer in the interest stage, edging on the consideration stage. You could send her a welcome email thanking her for signing up to your email list when she's entered her details, before leaving the purchase. You could then offer her an option to confirm whether she'd like to opt-in to getting regular newsletters and offers, and then, send her an email to remind her of the items she has left in the online cart.

After this, the next step would be to help Claire move from the consideration stage to the conversion stage. You want her to buy the new outfit from your company, not your competitors after all. Here, emails with product information and sale offers would perform very well with the goal of getting Clare to buy.

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Please note that the module slides are designed to work in collaboration with the module transcript document. It is recommended that you use both resources simultaneously.

Digital Marketing Resources:

Andrea Francis

Inbound marketing manager @ Poppulo

  • Inbound marketing manager in employee communications technology 
  • Worked at Relayr as a senior marketing manager, creating and implementing a global inbound marketing strategy
  • Worked with Hubspot as a marketing manager and funnel optimization specialist focusing on converting leads to qualified leads for the EMEA region
  • Content marketing and blogging with various SaaS startups at Startupbootcamp Amsterdam

The following pieces of content from the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library have been chosen to offer additional material that you might find interesting or insightful. While relevant to this module, you will not be assessed on this content.

You can find more information and content like this on the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library

ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

Email Marketing
Andrea Francis
Skills Expert

This module begins with the fundamentals of email marketing and how the concepts of segmentation, personalization, timing, engagement, and the legislation and regulations surrounding data protection underpin an effective email marketing strategy. The module introduces key email marketing tools and techniques and explores subscriber list and email design best practices. It covers how to create, test, and optimize an email campaign that maximizes email open and click rates and provides an overview of the value provided by marketing automation tools.