What’s a Touchpoint Analysis, and Why Do You Need One?
There’s plenty of discussion in marketing circles about the customer journey, which generally refers to the process of moving people through increasing levels of engagement until they become customers. It also refers to customer care after the sale, with the goal of extending their loyalty in hopes that they will buy more and become ambassadors of your brand.
Note: I use customers, here and elsewhere, to refer to people who are fully engaged with an organization or brand. For nonprofits, these people are donors; for political campaigns, they’re voters and donors.
It’s easy to talk generally about the customer journey, and most companies have a good handle on how efficiently their sales funnels move people through the conversion process. But as companies grow and their customer base widens and becomes more diverse, customer journeys become more complex. Like personas (and linked to their behaviors), journeys become more individual and personalized as customers become more engaged.
Communication scramble
In most organizations, marketing and sales people (or fundraisers in nonprofits) scramble to address and nurture these distinct customer groups. Ads and email campaigns are created, collateral material is printed, swag is produced, products are shipped, events are held and, in some cases, virtual or brick-and-mortar stores are opened.
Each of these artifacts are touchpoints: material experiences where your brand touches your current or potential customers. Each touchpoint is a marker on an individual customer’s journey – and a measure of your brand’s message and consistency.
That’s why undergoing a touchpoint analysis is so important. As marketing and sales efforts expand, a growing number of touchpoints are created throughout an organization. An ad campaign created by marketing is supported by email outreach and promoted on social media. Meanwhile, a contest within the sales department encourages salespeople to reach out directly to a selection of customers with a special offer. At the same time, the CEO is handing out baseball caps with last year’s logo to a group of top clients.
In this example, it’s likely that the top client group saw at least one – if not all – of the described touchpoints (in addition to the old-logo hats). There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, as long as it was intentional, the organization’s messages were in sync, and the goal of the touchpoint barrage was fully understood. What are the chances?
A moment in time
If you think of a touchpoint analysis as a moment-in-time snapshot of the totality of a company’s customer contact, you begin to understand why it’s so important to undertake one. Our friends at Think Co. performed a touchpoint analysis for a complex higher education institution. They uncovered over 250 unique touchpoints emanating from 10 areas within the institution. One area alone was responsible for 28 different email streams!
Their analysis found that the institution’s tsunami of touchpoints was overwhelming and confusing its current and potential students. Messages lacked a common voice and were sometimes contradictory. Redundancy was baked into the system, resulting in important messages being missed or ignored. In short, marketing effectiveness was decimated.
While this is an extreme example, it demonstrates why taking stock of your customer touchpoints is critical to achieving marketing and sales goals. A successful touchpoint analysis reveals opportunities to make your communications more intentional, powerful and effective. If you’re ready to take the plunge, here are a few tips:
Get organized. A touchpoint analysis is driven by marketing but requires input and cooperation from people across the organization. Make sure the project has a clear leader, preferably someone who has great communication skills and is enthusiastic about the work ahead. Then prepare a spreadsheet that includes all the touchpoint types you’re aware of – like emails, social media posts, ad campaigns, events – and use that as a starting point for collecting information.
Get executive buy-in. As the examples above show, the result of a touchpoint analysis can send shockwaves through an organization. It’s important that leaders in the organization know about and fully support the analysis. Bonus points if they commit to act on recommendations that come out of the work.
Understand the parameters. Internally, a touchpoint analysis is essentially a counting game. Your goal is to uncover every instance of customer contact over a clearly-defined time period. If your company produces a monthly newsletter, that’s considered one touchpoint, occurring 12 times a year. If you have an annual customer summit, the summit itself is a touchpoint, as are all the individual promotional pieces leading up to and following it.
Visualize as you go. One of the biggest challenges of a touchpoint analysis is getting your arms around what you’re learning. One simple way to begin to track your findings is to use a timeline visualization. Draw a 12-month timeline and designate a color for each touchpoint. Mark each point’s frequency on the timeline to begin to get a sense of the cadence of your communications efforts.
Look inward – and outward. Department focus groups are a good place to start the process. Remember that in addition to simply counting touchpoints, attach examples of each to the spreadsheet to track aspects like tone, voice, and message. And don’t forget to meet with at least one group of customers. Their insights into the frequency and tone of your outreach are perhaps the most important takeaways from the touchpoint analysis process.
Drop us a line or give us a call if you’re thinking about taking on a touchpoint analysis – we’d love to help!
