Communication Silos: Everything B2C Marketers Need to Know | Fueled Guest Post

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Have you ever encountered a situation where your experience with a brand is disjointed and inconsistent across various touch points?

A fragmented experience like this can lead to dissatisfaction and have a negative impact on customer loyalty.

The culprit? Internal communication silos leading to misalignments that wreak havoc on the customer’s experience.

In this three-part blog series, we’ll explore how communication silos lead to disconnects in the customer journey and guide you through practical steps to building a multi-moment customer engagement framework.

In part 1 of the series, we’ll look at how disconnected marketing can damage a business and how to identify siloed communications within your organization.

Let’s get to it.

Part 1 – Siloed Struggles: How Disconnected Marketing Hurts Your Business 

Many businesses struggle with a fragmented customer experience in today’s complex marketing landscape. Imagine you’re scrolling your Instagram feed, and BAM – you see an ad for the latest {insert cool product here!}. 

So you click the ad (knowing all too well that the performance marketer on the other end will have the best day ever if you decide to buy today) expecting to get more details about {the neat thing}. 

However, to your dismay, when you land on the site, the experience is totally different from what you were expecting based on the ad. 

The messaging is off. 

The branding is completely different. 

You’re Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and are not in Kansas anymore. 😵‍💫 💫

It’s a symptom of a much larger problem: siloed messaging and communication strategies within, oftentimes, disconnected teams. 

The Siloed Communications Problem

Siloed communication journeys happen when messages sent lack the context of where the customer is in their journey with the brand.

The result? A jarring and disorienting customer journey that feels impersonal and undermines your brand’s overall presence. 

But how does this happen? 

It can be caused by a lack of shared goals amongst teams, a lack of connected platforms, or a lack of integrated technology. For example, engineering is in charge of push notifications, while email and SMS are under the marketing team’s purview. 

Each team has different goals for their messaging strategies. This results in teams that cannot share data seamlessly and are likely unable to track a customer’s behavior through various touch points. 

These discrepancies can often force teams to adopt outdated and generic messaging approaches, such as batch and blast emails, redundant messages on multiple channels, or triggered messaging to urge customers to complete an action. 

Siloed communication strategies can deliver irrelevant and disconnected messages, leading to a poor customer experience, creating data challenges, and furthering the gaps between internal teams.

Customer Experience Issues: A Broken Journey

The most devastating consequence of siloed operations is a disjointed customer experience. Here’s how it can negatively impact your brand:

• Inconsistent Brand Messaging: For good reason, customers don’t connect with brands (or people) that appear untrustworthy. Imagine a customer encountering a playful and informal brand voice on social media, followed by a dry and technical tone in an email. This inconsistency creates confusion and undermines brand trust. 
• Irrelevant Communications: When messages don’t align with customer needs or interests, they annoy. Customers who have already purchased a product shouldn’t be bombarded with emails promoting the same item. Irrelevant communication leads to frustration and can damage brand perception. An unsubscribe rate, while an obvious marker, won’t account for those who have tuned out or developed negative brand associations and not hit unsubscribe. 
• Missed Opportunities: Siloed structures make it challenging to nurture customer relationships and drive conversions. Using the previous example, imagine a potential customer who has shown interest in your product on social media but receives no personalized follow-up. This missed opportunity weakens the customer connection and makes it less likely they’ll convert or become a repeat buyer. Silos hinder the ability to nurture leads and build long-term two-way customer relationships, ultimately impacting your profitability.

Marketing and Data Challenges: A House Without a Blueprint

Communication silos don’t just create customer experience issues; they also make marketing efforts less effective and hinder data-driven decision-making. The following are challenges that can occur as a result of messaging siloes. 

Fragmented Customer Data:

Valuable customer insights like purchase history, browsing behavior, and preferences are scattered across disparate platforms within different teams. This fragmented data makes it challenging to gain a holistic view of the customer and effectively personalize marketing efforts. 

For example, your customer browsed shoes on the website and abandons their cart. Without a unified view of customer touch points, the marketing team may have missed an opportunity to send a targeted email with a discount code to nudge them toward completing the purchase. 

Limited Personalization Capabilities:

Tailoring messages to individual needs and preferences becomes challenging without a unified view of the customer. Customers expect the brand to understand their unique needs and interests. 

Generic messaging with a one-size-fits-all approach lands flat and is often not delivered on the correct device or at the most opportune time, rendering your efforts far less fruitful than they could be. 

This is the biggest loss to siloed messaging because the results are in a well-connected environment where personalization becomes genuinely magical for you and your customers. 

Disparate Analytics and Reporting:

Measuring the success of marketing campaigns becomes complex when data lives in separate systems. 

For example, it’s difficult to understand the impact of an email campaign if web analytics data isn’t integrated with email insights. You are flying blind, spending money on marketing initiatives without understanding their return on investment.

This also makes it difficult to optimize campaigns and allocate resources effectively. 

Internal Team Silos: A Broken Chain

Behind every communication silo, you will likely find a myriad of internal team silos. When teams work in isolation, it can lead to feelings of disconnection and a lack of ownership. 

Internal team dynamics are like a party planning committee without a plan. 

If we each tell guests parts of the necessary information or conflicting information, how many guests do you think we will need to invite to get at least 50 to the party? How many of us are enjoying ourselves when we all get to the party? Very few. 

Just imagine the frustration when all of you show up with a different number of cupcakes… 

Like the lack of communication in the planning committee spills over into the guest experience, internal team silos can cause limited collaboration, inefficient operations, difficulty measuring success, and poor customer satisfaction. 

Here are some additional problems that occur due to siloed internal teams.

Limited Collaboration:

When teams are vertically aligned but horizontally fragmented, it hinders providing a seamless customer experience. Your team may be concentrating on increasing cart conversions. 

At the same time, another is focusing on growing registrations this quarter. While you can move toward two goals simultaneously without understanding where the targeted messages are landing in the customer journey, it can be hard to land meaningful messages at the right time. 

When marketing, product, and data teams operate with limited information, it leads to miscommunication and missed opportunities to work together to achieve your goals. 

Inefficient Operations:

Miscommunication can then lead to duplicated efforts and wasted resources. Imagine the marketing team creating content the product team is already developing, or vice versa. 

This redundancy slows down processes and increases marketing costs. In a world where resourcing and budgets are closely monitored, the last thing you want to do is double up on something already handled and potentially sent out to the customer. Efforts become muddied, and it can prove challenging to attribute success or failure. 

Difficulty Measuring Success:

When two or more teams are running campaigns from two or more platforms with two or more sources of truth, measuring marketing efforts’ impact becomes as complex as finding a needle in a haystack. 

Without a unified view of the customer journey, it’s challenging to determine which marketing activities are driving the most conversions. 

It can also be hard to tell if you are sending the right message at the right time and on the right channel, but moving to one customer engagement platform can help solve this. 

The Cost of Disconnection: An Empty Piggy Bank

The consequences of siloed operations go beyond customer dissatisfaction and team breakdowns and quickly affect your bottom line.

First of all, dissatisfied customers who experience a disjointed brand journey are more likely to defect to competitors. Imagine a customer frustrated by irrelevant emails and inconsistent brand communications. They’re less likely to remain loyal to your brand and far less likely to be a brand advocate. 

Second, disjointed experiences that lack personalization cause customers to have a negative brand experience. According to Statista, 72% of consumers say they have received irrelevant marketing messages from companies they have done business with.

If customers feel like they are interacting with multiple companies and not one cohesive brand, they will consider shopping elsewhere. This lack of brand consistency weakens brand recognition and makes it difficult to build customer loyalty.

Finally, fragmented data creates a fractured view of customer behavior and campaign performance.

Making decisions based on incomplete information or inaccurate data goes beyond marketing; it could also lead product development, sales, and engineering teams in the wrong direction. This hinders innovation and limits your ability to develop creative solutions. 

So, Are Your Marketing Communications Suffering from a Silo Problem?

Here are some red flags that might indicate your team is ready for a unified ecosystem: 

• Disconnected Teams, Disconnected Messages: Do different departments handle your social media, email marketing, and website content? Siloed teams often create isolated messages, leading to brand voice, tone, and messaging inconsistencies.
• Hinder Visibility Due to Digital Silos: Did you recently launch a new app or online store? If you can’t track whether customers have interacted with both your website and app, it’s a sign of siloed data. This lack of visibility makes it difficult to understand the complete customer journey.
• Missing Channels, Missing Opportunities: Are you neglecting email marketing or social media altogether? Every channel offers a unique way to connect with customers. Silos can lead to missed opportunities to reach your audience on their preferred platforms.
• A Tower of Babel of Platforms: Do you use a different platform to manage each communication channel? A jumble of platforms makes it difficult to maintain consistency and creates challenges in scheduling and content creation.
• Fragmented Reporting, Fragmented View: Do you struggle to gather data and reporting from multiple channels to understand your customer journey? Siloed data makes getting a holistic view of campaign performance and customer behavior difficult.
• Brick-and-Mortar Blindspot: Do you lack data on customer interactions at physical stores or events? A siloed marketing strategy often neglects offline touchpoints, creating a disconnect between the online and offline customer experience.
• One-Way Street Communication: Is two-way communication with your customers limited or non-existent? Silos can prevent you from effectively responding to customer inquiries and feedback, hindering relationship building.

The Value of Breaking Down Communication Silos

As we’ve discussed, there are many negative impacts caused by organizational siloes. However, by investing in breaking down those silos, you will reap the benefits of having a more tightly connected customer journey. 

With regard to your messaging strategy, you are now creating a unified experience, a seamless continuation of the story you began on social media. You are building website messaging that complements the ad, welcoming the customer with a familiar voice, not a stranger from a different world. 

Unsiloing your messaging isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about creating a customer experience that feels and looks magical. It’s about empowering your teams to work together, see the bigger picture, and craft a seamless journey for every customer, like winding your way down the yellow brick road toward home. 

It’s about creating loyal brand advocates, happy customers, who want to share your brand with others. It’s about leveraging data to understand your audience and deliver timely messages that resonate deeply. It’s about fostering innovation and creativity and building a solid brand that stands out in a crowded marketplace. 

By unsiloing your messaging, you’re creating a more effective marketing strategy, a loyal customer base, and a thriving business. So, ditch the fragmented and disoriented experience of waking up in Oz and embrace the power of unified communication. 

In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to do just that.

Part 2 – A Practical Guide to Building a Connected Customer Journey Framework

As you know, in part one of this series, we discussed how communication silos can hurt your business. But we haven’t looked at exactly how your organization can build a connected customer journey that whisks your customers away on the proverbial yellow brick road of delightful interactions, leading them to the Emerald City of brand loyalty!

In part 2 of this series, we’ll guide you from the blues of siloed messaging to the bliss of multichannel magic by exploring the core principles for building a connected customer journey framework. 

We’ll delve into the specific focus areas for each phase of messaging maturity and practical implementation tips to get your team collaborating to create the connected customer experience you have always dreamed of, starting with 4 fundamental principles for success.

Framework Foundation: 4 Fundamental Pillars To Keep Top Of Mind

• Customer-centricity: This is the golden rule, and it pays off. Every aspect of your framework should be centered around understanding and listening to your customer’s needs, wants, and pain points at each touchpoint they encounter with your brand. This involves bringing everyone (marketing, product, data, and technology) together to recognize the customers as a whole, not segments owned by individual departments.

• Unifying your customer data: Remove barriers to collaborative data by creating a center that houses customer data from many sources. Silos often occur because departments have access to different data sets and a central hub unites all teams around a single source of truth. The unified view allows you to deliver targeted, personalized communications that resonate deeply with your audience. 

• Data-driven decisions: Embrace data-driven decision-making by removing the conflicting messages created by departmental biases. Use analytics to track performance, measure success, and continuously refine your approach. In order for data to be your guide, and to lead you toward a customer journey that you know so intimately that you can deliver exceptional results, you must be able to rely on data gathered from all touch points. Strive to eliminate departmental guesswork and ensure consistent communication across the entire journey. 

• Orchestrating Omnichannel Magic: Run, don’t walk toward a cohesive omnichannel approach. Silos often confine communication to specific channels. For example, marketing might focus on email while technology owns push notifications. This framework thrives on integrating all channels into a seamless experience. It requires collaboration across departments to create a seamless experience that follows your customers across their journey and allows you in on real-time insights. 

Framework: From Siloed Communications to Connected Journeys

Now that we have a solid foundation let’s delve into the essential elements of a robust, connected customer experience framework: 

1. Mapping the Customer Journey

The first step involves creating a comprehensive journey map. This map visually depicts a customer’s complete path when interacting with your brand across all digital and physical touchpoints. 

In order to fight the fractured approach, get organized around which types of information each department will share in a group setting. For example, allow marketing to expose open rates and campaign results while product reports on product pathway behaviors. 

Pro tip: As part of your customer journey mapping process, use an online whiteboard tool to pull in screenshots or Figma files to label each step accurately. Consider it your blueprint for understanding how your customers might move through the buying process. By working together, departments can identify areas where there is a communication gap and brainstorm how to correct it.  

Questions to consider as you build: 

• What are all the possible touchpoints customers might encounter at each stage? 
• How do customers typically move between these touchpoints? 

2. Defining the moments: Zooming in on critical interactions

Each step on the journey map has specific moments where your customer interacts with your brand. These critical moments might include browsing subscription plans, joining the restaurant waitlist, abandoning a cart (let’s hope not!), finding the location of a store, seeking customer support, or leaving a review. 

By zooming into specific touchpoints with other departments, you will spot where communication silos are occurring more easily. You will gain a better understanding of your customer’s thought processes, concerns, and motivations at each touchpoint and be able to develop a unified script for outreach. 

Questions to consider while you dig in: 

• What information are they looking for at each stage? 
• What emotions might they be experiencing (e.g., confused, excited, frustrated)?
• What types of messages would the user be most open to receiving at this moment? 

For example, an online pet store might consider the “browsing product categories” touchpoint on the customer journey map and identify moments like using filters to narrow down food options based on pet type, clicking on specific product description pages to look at ingredients, or comparing prices between different brands and products. 

3. Identifying overlaps and closing gaps

This step encourages teams to look for gaps in where touchpoints overlap and how customers move between channels. These inconsistencies in customer experience and communication gaps might look like conflicting messaging across different channels, lack of personalization after a customer makes a purchase, or multiple conflicting discount offers to complete an abandoned cart. Close these gaps by staying true to your thorough examination of messages across all channels. 

Questions to consider in your hunt for overlaps and gaps: 

• Are there any inconsistencies in messaging or branding across different interactions?
• Do certain stages of the journey lack relevant content or personalization and where can we grow in this area? 
• Are there any gaps in the customer journey where additional support, education, or information could be helpful? 

4. Data Measuring & Analytics

Don’t drift off here; this part is pivotal to the success of the following steps. To truly understand your customer journey, you must analyze their behaviors at each critical step. Implement proper measurement mechanisms like website and app analytics tools, marketing automation platform data, customer engagement platform data, and customer service interaction logs. 

This task is often left to the engineering team to navigate but is most successful when multiple teams influence the data blueprint and measurement plan. Because each department brings a unique lens to the way they view and use the data, analysis is most useful when shared. 

Insights will inform your personalized marketing strategies and guide you toward optimizing the customer journey for an engaging experience. 

Pro tip: If you don’t know where to start with your data taxonomy, start small and scale. Look at your customer journey map from steps 1 and 2 and create events and properties accordingly. If you can understand the critical steps, you can color your taxonomy with additional context as you advance it.

Questions to consider as you build your taxonomy: 

• Do you have the ability to understand each critical moment in the customer journey? 
• Are you using analytics tools to identify trends and patterns in customer behavior? 
• Can you leverage customer data to personalize the journey for different segments? 
• What steps need to be taken to say yes to the questions above? 

5. Segmentation and targeting based on user behaviors

We all know that the days of one-size-fits-all marketing are gone. The good news is the days of targeted communication are here. 

Departments can deliver personalized customer experiences that break through the noise and foster customer loyalty by developing communication plans together. Successful segmentation involves grouping customers with similar characteristics or behavior patterns. 

We can take this further with a data-driven approach by focusing on user behaviors, such as time spent on specific product categories, search terms used, average order value, and following specific brands or products. 

By concentrating on using behavioral data, you can expect highly targeted communications to increase engagement and improve conversion rates. 

Questions to consider: 

• What user behaviors are we currently keeping track of? Where are the gaps? 
• How can I segment our customer base based on relevant user behaviors like frequent buyers? 
• What marketing channels and messages would suit the segment that I am trying to reach? Does it match the call to action? 
• How do I need to adjust for this targeted audience’s customer journey? 

For example, an online clothing store may want to segment users based on browsing history. They could create a segment on “dress enthusiasts” who frequently view dresses and have purchased dresses in the past. 

This segment could be targeted with email marketing campaigns showcasing new summer dress arrivals, personalized recommendations for shoes that accompany the dresses, and exclusive offers and discounts. When the barriers come down, this campaign could extend to customers that walk into the store when sales pitches the same products to customers. 

6. Personalization with Content Creation and Automation

Personalization takes segmentation one step further by tailoring content and experiences to individual users. 

It is the difference between walking into your favorite coffee shop and the barista greeting you by name and walking into your favorite coffee shop and Brian, the barista, greeting you with, “Hi Heather, would you like your usual iced oat milk latte and a chocolate croissant today?” 

Imagine if Brian knew you would want it hot in the winter and iced in the summer. 

See the magic there? 

This involves leveraging customer data to create relevant, engaging content that speaks directly to their needs and interests. 

Personalization can take many forms and evolve over time. The goal is a hyper-personalized strategy that feels natural to the user. And this framework is most impactful when teams are encouraged to coordinate content that speaks directly to the customer needs, in that moment. 

Marketing can create personalized emails based on browsing history, suggesting complementary products or offering free trial memberships. Product teams can develop product descriptions that highlight features relevant to specific customer segments. 

Unification ensures a consistent, hyper-personalized experience across all brand touchpoints. When working together product recommendations, dynamic website content, retargeting ads, and marketing automations can be designed for each user, not large segments. 

7. Invest in Real-Time Interaction Capabilities

To truly break down messaging silos and personalize experiences, invest in online and offline real-time interaction capabilities. Real-time interactions can be device-triggered, transactional alerts, or segment evaluation based and power immediate and targeted communication. 

Real-time device triggers allow marketing to send a personalized push notification upon reaching a specific milestone and allow product teams to leverage in-app to offer personalized how-to recommendations. 

Additionally, real-time transactional alerts streamline communication across all channels by enabling teams to send timely messages when a package arrives or a one-time password for secure transactions. 

Finally, real-time segment evaluation allows teams to work together to define customer segments based on real-time behaviors to launch personalized campaigns across email, push, WhatsApp, SMS, or in-app when it matters most. 

Because communication silos often create a static customer journey, joining forces with real-time interaction capabilities results in less missed opportunities. Real time interactions empower a dynamic approach to a more engaging experience which motivates the user to complete the intended action. 

8. Experimentation for refinement and continuous improvement

Building a connected customer journey is an ever-evolving road, as needs, wants, trends and pain points will change. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies, messages, and channels. 

You can select A/B, multivariate, or customer feedback surveys to execute experiments and gather data. Ways to make this a more collaborative practice is to share experimentation requests, tickets, and analysis cross departmentally. 

Build a feedback loop that allows departments to identify the best messaging across all channels, refine their communication strategies based on real-time data, and constantly evolve with customer needs. 

Experimentation will benefit your ability to make data-driven decisions and optimize your customer experience by allowing you to refine your framework to deliver the best possible experience continuously. 

Questions to consider: 

• What aspects of your framework do you experiment with today? And where would you like to take your experimentation practice? 
• How will you track the results of your experiments and measure success? 
• How can you use customer feedback to refine your approach and identify areas for improvement? 
• How can experimentation translate to product development, marketing strategy, and sales? 

Implementation Tips and Tricks: Breaking Down Silos in Action

Build Collaboration

Foster teamwork across product, marketing, data science, and customer service departments. This collaboration dismantles silos and ensures everyone contributes to creating a connected customer experience. 

Regular meetings, shared reporting, workshops, and brainstorming sessions can help deteriorate departmental barriers and encourage open communication. 

Embrace Data & Experimentation

Leverage analytics to track performance, test different approaches, and refine your strategy for continuous improvement. Share metrics and conduct joint experiments to empower teams to see the impact of refining their communication tactics. 

Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure the effectiveness of implementation of the above framework. By working together on experiments and analyzing results, the teams can strive to identify areas for improvement for maximum impact. 

Invest in Real-Time Technology

Utilize a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) with real time data to manage multi-channel campaigns, personalize messages, and automate workflows across departments. 

One platform makes it much more straightforward for teams to manage customer data, execute campaigns, and tracking results. Real time data allows you to react to customer behaviors as they are happening, and unlocks the ability to truly meet customer needs with relevant and timely interactions. 

With the right technology, you can empower teams to collaborate more effectively and create a more connected experience for your customers.

Prevent Silo Recurrence

When barriers are removed, practices to prevent them from re-emerging are key to success long-term. Perform regular performance reviews that include cross-departmental communication and effectiveness metrics. 

Invest in training that equips teams with collaborative practices and reward teamwork to incentivize continued cooperation. Reevaluate your anti-silo approach and adopt new tools to ensure your strategy adapts with your evolving business and customer needs. 

This continuous effort fosters a synergistic environment and prevents silos from becoming a roadblock again. 

Moving from Communication Silos to a Connect Customer Experience: Conclusion

Moving from siloed messaging to a connected customer experience isn’t an overnight achievement. However, this framework provides a roadmap for gradual progression, equipping you with the tools and strategies to unlock the power and value of connected communication. 

By prioritizing customer needs and leveraging data-driven insights, you’ll cultivate a loyal customer base, achieve business goals, and achieve product/market fit efficiency. 

Remember, the journey to a seamless customer experience is an ongoing process. Embrace experimentation, gather feedback, and continuously refine your approach to create a journey that delights your customers at every touchpoint, transforming them into raving fans who click their heels and sing, “There’s no place like [your brand]!”