Customer journey mapping is when you model the likely passage of a customer, from the moment they become aware of your product, to (if you’re lucky) the point they choose to buy, then beyond that to foster retention and loyalty. The idea is to look at the journey from the perspective of the customer, to see how simple it is to follow, where it veers off their intended course, and which touchpoints may be adding difficulty or inertia to their experience.

By the CDP Institute’s RealCDP definition, a true Customer Data Platform must be able to ingest data from any source, capture the full detail of that data and retain it indefinitely (subject to privacy constraints), create a unified profile of an identified individual (that is, a Single Customer View or SCV), and share that profile with any system that needs it. This sounds like a marketer’s dream – but doesn’t guarantee that marketers will be able to access and leverage that data to gain insights, enrich the customer profile, and meet regulatory obligations. For that, an added user interface is needed.

Throw away your old metrics! Start thinking about intention, progression and aversion

Social media, mobile devices and more accessible broadband have changed consumers’ buying habits and flipped the customer journey completely on its head. Twenty-five years ago a marketer could send a campaign and measure responses and conversions in a chronological pattern, but now customers have a plethora of platforms to choose between and can meander any which way they choose, so it’s very hard to shepherd them along a defined path.

However, marketers are still clinging to old, linear campaign metrics (sends, opens, clicks and transactions), which do not accurately measure the journey of the modern, platform-roaming consumer. The truth is that this linear mind-set is highly ineffective when it comes to measuring the success or failure of a non-linear customer journey.