CX Journey Mapping without postaids
The old school way
How is the title? Cool?
P.S. I use GIFs when I have no clue what I am going to write.
I am not going to give you insights about CX Journey Mapping. Instead, I can tell you a story. I am an expert in telling stories. (By the way, Customer(CX) Journey Mapping is having the superhero or superwoman skills to think like a customer.)
And Steve Jobs once said: “I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Not everyone is Steve Jobs or Apple. Not even if you start wearing the same tshirt to work or to your Zoom calls.
Coming back to the story, I would always wonder why do people stick yellow postaids on the whiteboard and stare it for hours as if they were admiring a modern art.
Anyways once I dared asking the Head of Design what are the yellow postaids for. He smirked and told me that they are drawing the steps of how a customer would think and thereby providing the consumer a hassle-free innovative experience.
I don’t get jargons. So I had a prompt reply eventually it all ties to the ROI of the business.
That was my one-time interaction with a design team.
A year later I was asked Prasant will you create personas and do journey mapping for us?
I was really excited that I will finally stick yellow postaids on whiteboard and feel special.
But at the same time, Prasant had no fucking clue, how? Failures in life have taught me to prepare for the best and think for the worst.
So I said yes and here is how I created my first Customer(CX) Journey for a nonprofit.
Donor journey mapping by hjc
But before I talk about my CX journey, let’s see what the smart folks at hjc have to say when it comes to donor journey mapping.
The whitepaper that the firm shares before you enroll with them for consulting services considers CX as one of the most powerful tools for any organization to improve a key constituent’s experience and to improve internal cooperation.
“Whether it’s making improvement to any constituent’s journey (major donor, mid-level donor, advocate, event supporter, volunteer, etc.) this is the most structured and proven way to carefully and thoughtfully understand a constituent’s point of view and be mindful of every step they take on their journey with you.”
The whitepaper that has 3 case studies gives a small preview to their secret sauce on how it creates journey mapping for clients. Starting from the very basic thing to do is your research to all the way creating personas to finally making it all sense.
10 years ago Kivi Leroux wrote The Nonprofit Marketing Guide. I haven’t read it but she says she is updating and is putting a lot of focus on personas.
She says: “I am updating the chapters with newer approaches that weren’t commonplace 10 years ago when I originally wrote it. For example, in the chapter about defining your target communities, I spent a lot of time on personas. I’m leaving that content in there, but also mentioning Empathy Maps and Journeys/Story Maps.”
She further adds valid points:
My point here is to do your homework with your actual supporters before you try to create a persona, empathy map, or journey. These are very useful tools to get your team collaborating and on the same page and then to make strategic decisions, but only if they are based in reality.
It is impossible to think like a customer. You can make wild guesses.
Donor journey mapping by PN
Donor journey mapping for an existing nonprofit is a complete process that starts from:
Understanding the business
Understanding and defining the online target audience
Creating personas based on the target audience
Finally creating donor journeys (without yellow postaids)
Understanding the business
I was lucky that as a consultant I got an opportunity to work on an entire digital strategy project for a nonprofit. I didn’t realise when I started it but now I am filled with gratitude.
I started from the basics. The old school way of doing research - face to face and telephonic interviews. I call them the old school way of having a conversation which starts from pressing the right trigger buttons and simply listening.
My recent favorite video on listening is from Celeste - “If your mouth is open, you are not learning.”
I had three simple questions and picked up some more during the conversations. I didn’t write the conversation but recorded. I wanted to listen rather than taking notes. I spoke to almost everyone, and not just the marketing or fundraising team.
Best insights come from corners that we normally ignore.
PN tip: Start your conversation about their work and how they are making a difference. And then flow with them. Some will flow and some won’t open up. It is how humans are. Most of us don’t open to strangers in the first meeting. Don’t press too much.
I can go on and on but most of them are on the internet. And as long as you are a human being you will have success in such research work.
Defining the online target audience
Google Analytics is the gold mine. Considering you have enabled it with your website. Otherwise, it will take months before you even vaguely understand your audience.
The internet helped me to understand how to start with Google Analytics(GA). Again the Internet is spammed with articles but Hootsuite does a decent job.
How do you do it?
Go to the Audience tab and select six months of data. The Audience tab tells everything about your audience that is visiting your website. When I started I was spammed by a bunch of raw data. I had orgasms seeing so much data.
But I failed miserably. The layman wouldn’t understand a dime with raw data unless you tell them how does the data solves a business problem. This is why it is important to understand why Personas are so important and they will work when you have an understanding of the target audience.
Use the target audience for your own reference. The interests category in GA will also reveal insights on what stage your audience is. Here comes the classic marketing funnel but in nonprofit the funnel is reversed. Anyways EOD these are all concepts.
PN tip: When you play with data it is overwhelming especially for an ex Business Analyst ( I am so full of myself, that I don’t miss any opportunity to show off.) But smart people find one point to start that leads them forward. In this case it is the age bracket of the audience.
When you put down data on paper or drilling on Google Analytics. Select the age bracket followed by male/female and then apply your filters. This way you won’t be lost.
Also, sort your data based on Bounce Rate and Average Session Duration on GA. I would prefer someone who spends more time with a low bounce rate.
Facebook gives you similar data but focuses more on behaviour such as what kind of pages a certain age group likes. I found GA more useful.
Looks like I need to do a separate post on defining the target audience from GA and Facebook.
Creating personas
Personas or your probable customers are the fancy-looking slides/templates that are given shape by your target audience. The raw data of your target audience fuels life into your personas. Presentable, understood by layman, and makes more business sense.
I had never created personas so kept on searching to find out the perfect template that can encapsulate the huge data of my target audience. There are some beautiful looking well-designed persona templates but I went back to the old school way.
I created my template and inserted all data that I had for a particular age group. Once it was over I started using simple English to define the data. Or in other words, I named my personas both male and female, gave them a face(I went to favourite actors), and brought them into life on my template.
I told where they are from, what they like to do, what they buy, what are their interests, how did they land upon the nonprofit website, what are their motivations, and so on. Once I created two Personas rest was easy.
PN tip: Do personas once you have a complete understanding of business and target audience.
Creating donor journeys
By the time I started working on the donor journey for the nonprofit. I understood the business, the target audience, I had 12 male and female personas and I knew quite a bit about 2 major users in the nonprofits(donor and subscribers.)
Thank you NextAfter.com for your reports and articles. I am indebted to you guys and here is my payback time.
If you are fascinated by the world of Online Fundraising then NioSummit from NextAfter is a must. I have never been before and I am not getting paid for this message. I have a minuscule audience and the web event is for FREE. Here is the free signup link and hopefully it will add value like their content.
Coming to my simple way of donor journey. Again the internet has enough tools to get the job done but I am not smart enough to use them. So I went back to pen and paper.
I listed down the different kinds of scenarios a donor will encounter or a subscriber will encounter. Then drilled them more with more scenarios and finally pasted them on a Canva slide(Search for Blue and Black Presentation, find a screen grab below).
For example: What would be the donor journey for someone landing from search or social advertising be? Once you know the business and put yourself into the shoes of the customer you will know what are the steps and where will be the common drops. I did the same just without the postaids.
Another instance would be the journey of an email be for a new donor. Starting from welcome series to newsletters to impact stories to campaign calls, all will fall into the journey mapping.
I didn’t get right on the first time, but I kept refining till I got bored. It can’t be perfect, keep fine-tuning.
The day you say you understand your customer, you are dead buddy.
I am not an expert about CX. So if you find something making no sense feel free to curse and send an email.
I will get back to you on clarifications if required.
P.S.S I don’t have a problem with postaids.