Customer experience (CX) is everything in business. It starts the moment you connect with a prospect and spans the entire customer journey. That experience continues even when the customer isn’t actively purchasing from you, and ends only when you and the customer part ways for good.
Almost three-quarters of consumers say they’re at least somewhat likely to purchase goods or services based on experience alone. On top of that, people are willing to pay up to 16% more for a great customer experience. And those are just two of many CX statistics that underscore why it’s so important for businesses to get customer experience marketing right.
In this post, we explore more reasons customer experience marketing matters—and share several strategies to do it effectively. We’ll also look at some key metrics you can use to ensure your CX marketing strategy is on the right path.
Customer experience marketing is sometimes referred to as consumer experience marketing. As both names suggest, this marketing approach focuses on the quality of interactions people have with a business or brand.
Traditional marketing typically focuses on promoting products and services. In contrast, CX marketing uses engagement and personalization to develop and nurture long-term relationships with consumers, not just drive conversions.
This shift is essential because today’s consumers expect personalized, seamless experiences at every touchpoint in their journey. In fact, a recent survey by customer relationship management (CRM) solution provider SuperOffice found that nearly 46% of companies believe CX is more important to their marketing strategy than either product or price.
As we’ve established, creating a positive customer experience is what today’s consumers expect. Here are four ways implementing a customer experience marketing strategy can provide bottom-line benefits to your business.
It doesn’t matter what your business is — it costs more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. That’s why customer retention is so valuable: it provides business stability and reduces marketing costs. Satisfied customers are far more likely to remain loyal, so it makes sense that anything you can do to keep them happy will directly impact retention.
Higher customer retention rates are especially beneficial in industries like hospitality and travel, where average retention hovers around 55%. But even in sectors like healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, and insurance — where retention averages 75% to 80% — there’s still room for improvement.
While 100% retention may not be realistic, it’s a worthy aspiration. Even a modest 5% to 10% boost in retention can lower your customer acquisition costs (CAC) and significantly increase customer lifetime value (CLV).
Customer lifetime value (LTV) measures the total revenue a business can expect from a customer over the course of their relationship. For example, if a customer of a home services business spends $2,500 per year and stays with that provider for five years, their LTV would be $12,500.
A strong customer experience marketing strategy aims to front-load satisfaction by delivering exceptional service, personalized engagement, and a seamless, friction-free journey from the start. The goal is to keep customers happy, loyal, and spending more over time. In the case of our hypothetical home services business, effective CX marketing might increase the customer’s LTV to $15,000 or more.
As a general rule, LTV should be several times higher than your CAC — ideally 3:1 or greater — to help ensure long-term profitability.
A successful CX marketing strategy aims to move customers along in their journey so that they become passionate advocates for your brand. When customers have positive experiences, they’re more likely to leave glowing online reviews — either on their own or when asked.
Satisfied customers can also provide word-of-mouth marketing by passing details of their experience on to friends and family. Ultimately, brand advocacy may lead to business referrals.
Every business says they care about the customer experience — but not all of them have a clearly defined CX marketing strategy. The ones that do? They stand out from the crowd.
Take Zappos, for example. The online retailer built its brand around putting customers first, offering free returns, and 24/7 customer support. Zappos’ commitment to CX isn’t just a tagline — it’s the foundation of its business and a key reason for the brand’s loyal following.
CX marketing has grown in importance in response to changing consumer attitudes and heightened customer expectations. Here are some of the most important expectations customers have today.
If you need any convincing that personalization is necessary in your business, how about this? According to research conducted by McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. Even more important: the same research found that companies that “excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players.”
If consumers want personalization, your business needs to be ready to meet — and ideally exceed — their expectations. That might mean tailoring emails and texts, customizing special offers based on past purchases, or even personalizing recommendations from a customer’s wishlist.
Today’s customers expect the flexibility of omnichannel communication. They might browse products in-store, message your sales team on social media during their commute, call with questions, and complete their purchase later on a laptop or tablet. However, omnichannel experiences are only great if the transition between channels is seamless. That means your brand needs to look and function flawlessly across every touchpoint.
Keep in mind that consistency goes beyond just visuals. Consumers should experience the same tone, messaging, and level of service across digital, phone, and in-person interactions. These touchpoints should also be friction-free. For example, if a customer saves an insurance quote in their online account, they should be able to access that information just as easily from the mobile app as they can from a desktop browser.
Because most consumers own a smartphone and are highly mobile, they expect immediacy. That could mean customer service responding to their inquiry within a few seconds or under an hour, depending on the channel.
Customer experience marketing must anticipate these expectations and meet—or exceed—them. One key metric to track here is the Customer Effort Score (CES), which measures how easy it is for customers to interact with your business.
Why does this matter? Fewer than 10% of customers who have fast, effortless interactions with a brand are likely to leave. In other words, a high CES is a strong sign that your customer service is responsive, efficient, and keeping customers loyal.
Customers want to trust the brands they do business with. They value integrity, authenticity, honesty, and transparency — and they notice when those values are missing. More than two-thirds of respondents to a global survey by Adobe said that honesty from a brand is very or extremely important.
Building trust is critical in a competitive marketplace where customers have numerous options. One way to gauge how well you’re delivering on values like authenticity and transparency is by tracking your Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS measures customer loyalty and how likely customers are to recommend your business or brand to others — a direct reflection of the trust that you’ve earned.
So, you are a convert to customer experience marketing now, right? That’s excellent news because your business can benefit greatly from embracing this approach. To help you get started, here are five key strategies you can use to make your customer experience marketing program truly shine.
Let’s face it: Personalization isn’t new, but it is challenging to do well at scale. Most businesses can manage basic first-name personalization in emails or texts, but going beyond that without ballooning your marketing spend? That’s the real challenge.
The key lies in efficient data gathering and real-time analysis. With a conversation analytics platform like Invoca, it’s easier than you might think. These tools help you pair offline call data with online behavior to create a complete, actionable picture of your customer. That means you can deliver hyper-relevant and timely marketing messages, as well as personalized offers based on products mentioned during calls.
Here are a few examples of personalization at scale in action:
If you’re not mapping the entire customer journey, you should be. Identifying all touchpoints — both online and offline — helps you root out friction, fix customer service problems, and properly target your marketing efforts.
You can cover the online-offline gap with a bridging technology like Invoca PreSense. PreSense provides seamless hand-offs from digital interactions to phone calls by providing customer service agents with valuable insights before they even pick up the phone. This data might include the caller’s name, phone number, webpages they’ve viewed, and whether they have an existing account.
Armed with this context, agents can set the right tone at “hello” — personalizing conversations and delivering smoother, more satisfying experiences for customers.
To deliver a superior customer experience, you need to use data from the customer journey to drive high-quality engagement. Thanks to AI, businesses can now dig deeper into their data to uncover insights into customer sentiment and even intent.
Invoca’s AI-driven conversation analytics tools can even detect shifts in sentiment that occur during phone calls, both from the customer and the agent. Managers can use sentiment analysis to elevate agent training and coaching by pinpointing when a conversation veers off track and suggesting ways for the agent to pivot if a similar situation happens in the future.
Here’s an example of sentiment analysis in practice: Spectrum Retirement Communities, an operator of retirement, assisted living, and memory care communities, used Invoca’s AI technology during the pandemic to better understand the surge in calls from residents and their families. By analyzing phrases, tone, and sentiment, Spectrum was able to identify common concerns and emotional cues.
These insights led Spectrum to make several key changes, including updates to the visitor policy and website content to address frequently asked questions. For prospective residents who couldn’t tour in person, Spectrum also introduced a virtual tour option, ensuring a seamless, empathetic experience despite the challenges.
Seamless multichannel and omnichannel communication are essential for delivering a positive CX, no matter what type of business you operate. You must integrate online, offline, and phone interactions to consistently deliver a cohesive and compelling consumer experience.
One way to make sure this is happening is to monitor quality assurance across every channel. At scale, that’s only possible with AI-powered tools — like the automated quality management features built into platforms such as Invoca.
Invoca’s automated quality management helps marketers ensure that phone leads passed to the contact center team are being handled properly and, ultimately, help to drive revenue. Invoca also supports better collaboration between marketing and sales by using automated QA scoring to identify coaching opportunities and improve performance across the enterprise.
Here’s a straightforward strategy: Listen to your customer. We mean, really listen.
Customers share valuable feedback all the time — through online reviews, surveys, and even casual conversations. Sometimes, their referrals say it best: “My friend told me she can always get an appointment at your practice, and your staff is so helpful to new patients.”
That kind of feedback is gold for your CX marketing strategy. But rather than relying on one-off anecdotes, you can use Invoca’s AI to capture and analyze these insights at scale. By extracting meaningful patterns and sentiments from phone calls and other interactions in real time, you can fine-tune your marketing approach and continuously improve the customer experience.
The strategies above offer a strong foundation for implementing a successful CX marketing approach. To ensure your efforts are delivering real impact, keep an eye on these key metrics and KPIs.
A CSAT score measures customer satisfaction with a specific interaction, product, or service. It’s typically based on a 1-to-5 scale, with 5 indicating the highest level of satisfaction.
To make CSAT more meaningful and actionable, it’s helpful to combine it with other data sources. For instance, AI models can analyze caller sentiment during phone conversations. When used alongside CSAT scores, this provides a richer, more nuanced view of the customer experience.
Net Promoter Score measures brand loyalty and customer advocacy by scoring responses to one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?”
Customers who score you 9 or 10 are considered Promoters — loyal fans who are likely to refer others. Those who respond with a 6 or below are Detractors, signaling dissatisfaction. Scores of 7 or 8 are considered Passives — neutral but not enthusiastic.
You can benchmark NPS against industry peers. (For example, in the healthcare industry, a good NPS is 46.)
It costs five times more to land a new customer than keep one, so you must keep a close watch on customer retention rate (CRR). CRR provides insight into both why customers stay and why they leave, making it a valuable metric for evaluating your CX marketing strategy.
A high CRR signals strong customer satisfaction and loyalty. It also ensures greater business continuity and helps reduce the costs associated with acquiring new customers.
Conversion rate measures campaign effectiveness by tracking the percentage of customers taking a desired action because of a marketing campaign. This action might be clicking on a CTA link, signing up for a newsletter, downloading an e-book, or making a purchase.
To get the most accurate conversion rate for your business, you should track offline conversions as well as online conversions. Offline conversions occur when a customer contacts your business by phone or makes an in-person visit to a store or office.
It’s easy to track and analyze conversions from phone conversations using AI-powered analytics platforms, like Invoca. Not only can you accurately attribute conversions by tracking phone interactions, but you can also use AI to help analyze data and provide actionable insights to measure and inform CX marketing strategies.
Customer experience marketing is essential for building loyalty, retaining customers, and growing your brand. Every improvement you make to your customer’s experience brings you one step closer to those goals.
Invoca supports your CX strategy by streamlining the customer journey, starting with smarter call routing that ensures each caller connects with the right agent. From there, PreSense gives agents valuable context before they even pick up the phone, using insights from the customer’s pre-call digital journey to personalize the conversation and deliver a smooth, satisfying experience.
During the call, Invoca records and stores full interaction details and runs automated quality assurance scoring. Post-call, you can tap into analytics from 100% of calls to enhance agent coaching and tailor marketing offers based on what customers care about most.
To learn more about how Invoca’s AI-driven quality intelligence tools can help your marketing team provide a superior customer experience, see these additional resources:
When you’re ready, you can also book a free demo with our team to learn how Invoca can help your business elevate its customer experience strategy — and much more.
