Learning how to market a small business is hard, especially when you wear many hats. Our customers tell us this all the time, so we look for ways to make it easier for small businesses to do great marketing. In our research and conversations with customers, a theme emerged: It’s hard to identify which marketing tools and techniques match your needs at any specific time.
Some campaigns, like abandoned cart emails, can be set up as soon as you’ve got an online store. But others aren’t worth the effort until later on, like re-engagement automations that send to people who haven’t bought from you in a while. So how do you know what’s worth spending your (very limited) time on?
We realized that small businesses needed a map—something to point to and say, "This is where my business is, so that’s what I should be doing." Enter the customer journey.
People rarely discover a company or product and make a purchase immediately. Instead, they follow a less linear path that might include reading the website, deciding whether to buy, sleeping on it, and eventually going back to buy. This meandering route is called the customer journey, and it’s different for every person.
When you reach people with the right information at the right time, you can help them make quicker purchasing decisions. This is where Mailchimp’s customer journey comes in. When you click Create Campaign and choose the Explore option, you’ll see all of our most powerful campaigns organized by marketing goals. Pick a campaign in the section that matches your goal, and you’ll be off to a great start.
Let’s walk through the 5 sections in the customer journey.
