Marketers must create a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices. This is the top priority for Thai marketers, as revealed in the 7th edition State of Marketing report.
Kavin Manomaiudom is VP and Group Head of Tech BI at Thailand property developer, Sansiri. He believes creating a cohesive customer journey begins with digital transformation.
“It’s about cultural, organisational, and operational change,” he shared at a Salesforce webinar. “We must combine an agile mindset with processes and tools to deliver value to customers.”
Mr Manomaiudom outlines five ways Sansiri is creating a more cohesive customer journey.
1. Respond to changing customer behaviours
Sansiri turned to Salesforce three years ago to begin its digital transformation. Mr Manomaiudom says Salesforce technology helps the company identify changing customer behaviours. This has been vital to staying agile during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Before COVID-19 hit Thailand, our customers were visiting showrooms in person,” he says. “Now, we have a significant number of customers viewing our properties virtually. We needed to react fast by adjusting our marketing priorities.”
Mr Manomaiudom says that means using customer data “to know more, see more, and do more. Marketers must leverage customer data to analyse and understand changes in customer behaviour.”
2. Map customer journeys
New customer journeys must align with changing customer behaviours. Sansiri used Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder to map a range of new customer journeys.
Mr Manomaiudom explains that it’s helpful to begin with the customer’s end destination. Then reverse engineer the customer journey.
“We always begin with the end in mind,” he says. “Our customer journeys at Sansiri have evolved with COVID-19. To date, we have built a total of 25 journeys. This has decreased customer attrition. These journeys have also increased sales conversion across all customer touch points.”
3. Personalise customer communications
Link customer communications to specific points on each customer journey. Doing so helps to personalise customer communications. Sansiri uses marketing automation to achieve this.
“We send an automated email to remind customers about their viewing appointments,” Mr Manomaiudom says. “We also send relevant messages to convert our customers when they register online.”
This, says Mr Manomaiudom, has doubled conversions. “It helps us make sure we are achieving good return on investment (ROI) against our marketing spend.”
4. Innovate digital payments
Payment is a critical point on every customer journey. Sansiri launched an online payment gateway during the pandemic. The company also now accepts cryptocurrency.
Mr Manomaiudom says that digital payment innovations help to engage the younger generation. This stimulates revenue growth.
“One of our big steps is to make cryptocurrency purchases in the real estate sector a reality,” he explains. “Especially amongst the young generations who are keen on using this technology.”
5. Stay agile and use data as your guide
Customer behaviour may continue to change over next 12 months. Mr Manomaiudom says marketers need to stay agile. They also need to track campaign ROI, and shift priorities when needed.
“We started to shift our advertising budget to online, but surprisingly did not see as strong returns for some product segments and some zoning,” he explains. “As a result, we reallocated the budget back to offline marketing.
“Marketers must be agile to run successful campaigns, stay on budget, and hit KPIs. You must be adaptive at all times and do not stick with what might work.”
Rather, use customer data to identify what will work. This is how marketers adapt to change and keep delivering cohesive customer journey.
Download Salesforce’s 7th edition State of Marketing report in English or Thai for more marketing trends and insights.
