From Product to Experience: The Importance of Brand Touchpoints

Purchase intent improves by 90% when consumers view consistent messaging across multiple channels.

The modern customer is more attracted to a brand that understands their needs, appeals to them on a personal level, and delivers high-quality experiences. Even though product and price continue to be important buying factors, in order to engage with customers, brands should also focus on delivering great experiences.

Customer experience refers to the overall brand journey, from the discovery phase to checkout and post-purchase. Brand touchpoints refer to all the interactions, both online and offline, a customer has with a business or a brand throughout the entire customer journey.

In order to offer an impressive customer experience to your customers, take a close look at the touchpoints that define the customer journey.

The Importance of Consistency

Why Are Brand Touchpoints Important?

Before deciding to make a purchase, consumers will interact with six to eight touchpoints, and it is highly important to make sure your brand stays consistent across all of them. Consistency across all touchpoints makes customers feel more confident and comfortable with your brand — and this can be the key to creating lasting impact.

Research shows that purchase intent improves by 90% when consumers view consistent messaging across multiple channels, while brand perception improves by 68%. From tone of voice to look and feel, your brand’s style and messaging should be easily recognizable and aligned with your company’s goals and mission.

Take a Look at Your Customer Lifecycle

Discover Your Customer’s Crucial Touchpoints

The total sum of experiences a customer has with a brand can result in transactions or even lifelong customers.

When thinking about ecommerce retailers, digital touchpoints refer to all the online engagements with your brand such as your website, social media, search engine results, email marketing, and more. Keep in mind that touchpoints include any point a customer could come in contact with your product or service.

As you consider the many ways your customers interact with your brand and which are the crucial touchpoints, you can start by taking a close look at the lifecycle stages of your customer. Here are some of the most common stages you should consider, along with a couple of touchpoints examples:

Pre-Purchase

Some of the most common touchpoints in this phase are typically the website and product pages in particular. At this stage, you’ll get your customer warmed up to your brand, so emails and mobile notifications are great touchpoints you can use.

Purchase

During the purchase phase, one important touchpoint is the checkout page. Make sure that you have a great UI/UX and that everything is optimized so that your customers have a positive experience. Also, use personalized recommendations to surface complementary products to your customers.

Post-Purchase

Delivery is definitely the major touchpoint here, but your post-purchase strategy — which includes tracking updates, thank you emails, or feedback surveys — is also crucial. In this case, your touchpoints can vary from emails to in-app, direct mail or digital ads.

That being said, you should analyze your current customers’ behavior patterns and see what their key engagement points are. Pay attention if there is friction or drop-off during the process and think about what you could do to improve customer experiences.

Bear in mind that your goal should be to offer online customers the same great experience they would have as in-person customers.

AI Systems: A Key Strategy Component

How to Create a Cohesive Experience for Your Customers

We know that all of this can sound a bit overwhelming. That’s why we recommend using a customer data platform so you can access the insights you need and make the most out of it. On that note, AI systems have become a crucial component to delivering personalized customer experiences (e.g., AI-powered chatbots).

With a customer data platform like Blueshift, your team can get a 360-degree view of a customer’s data across channels so that you can optimize your customer touchpoints accordingly and create seamless, end-to-end customer experiences at scale to help your marketing skyrocket.

Ready to get started? Reach out to the Blueshift team to learn more about how we’ve helped other brands succeed and how we can help you up-level your marketing strategy.