Definition
Logic is defined in House of the Customer (2023) as containing five dimensions that make up the creation and delivery of personalized experience. Logic contains 4 key areas:
Substitution
This involves replacing a generic greeting with a customer’s name or relevant information. For instance, you were sending me an email you might say “Dear Greg” instead of “Dear Valued Customer.”
This is by far the simplest type of personalization available, yet it remains effective, particularly when used with other tactics. According to Campaign Monitor, marketers typically see a 20% increase in sales revenue from personalized email campaigns[i].
Automation
Unlike substitution, automation is driven by action, and is in reaction to something. This automation may be “internal” or driven by an offer that a brand wants to send to a particular audience segment, or it may be driven “externally” by the actions of a customer. This might be signing up for an email list, downloading content, adding an item to an e-commerce shopping cart, making a reservation, and more.
Marketing automation is most helpful when your messages or responses require minimal personalization. This personalization might include readily available information such as their first and last name, or a recent product order. If the need to tailor the message or approach grows more complex, or needs to utilize multiple channels, marketing automation may not be sophisticated enough.
Customer Journey Orchestration
Customer Journey Orchestration takes automation a few steps further because it “orchestrates” the experience across multiple channels. While marketing automation may only include sending emails based on an action or trigger, customer journey orchestration may work across three or more channels that coordinate with one another.
Figure, Customer Journey Orchestration
The customer journey is mapped out from start to finish with multiple steps along the way, as well as several decision trees that can be automated depending on what a user does or doesn’t do.
For instance, a visitor to a specific page on a website may stay for a few minutes and leave, but they signed up with their email address to download a white paper while they were there. Because of this, they are now shown a retargeting ad on social media, driving them back to the website for more information. One or two days later, they receive an email with a coupon code that drives them to a personalized landing page, where a deal is created. This example uses social media, email, and a personalized web experience.
Unlike automation, orchestration is concerned with sequential steps of actions and reactions. Customer journey orchestration provides a prescribed “journey” that a customer embarks on with starting and end points, and several decision points in between.
Next best action
This brings us to the last method of logic, and perhaps the most unique. Unlike orchestration, next best action is less concerned with a predefined pathway for a customer. Instead, utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML), next best action determines the best content, offer, or action a customer should take to achieve maximum outcome. This outcome can vary from what the business deems the most logical, or it could be based on the customer’s changing need.
While this is easy enough to understand in theory, in practice this can be the most difficult approach for marketers, CX teams, and others to wrap their heads around. After all, in addition to creating multiple content variations to personalize experiences, next best action also dictates that the journey itself be more free form. While this may seem intimidating at first, next best action is a more customer-centric approach to logic. These systems combine AIML decision making with rules-based logic so that some transparency remains.
Figure, Next Best Action
While they always have an element of pre-defined orchestration, these next best action or offer journeys utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) to map a customer’s most likely actions related to what business priorities.
The next best action system uses predictive models based on similar customer behavior, as well as scorecard models to determine the best messaging and platform for the individual for conversion. With next best action approaches, you are still in control of the outcomes you want, but your customers have more control over how they get there.
[i] https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/personalized-email/
[ii] Braze. “2022 Customer Global Customer Engagement Review: Ace your marketing strategy with these proven facts and findings.” 2022.
Related
- Scale (Dimensions of Personalized Experiences)
- Context (Dimensions of Personalized Experiences)
- Reach (Dimensions of Personalized Experiences)
- Realm (Dimensions of Personalized Experiences)
Products
Resources
Book: House of the Customer (2023) by Greg Kihlström