A touchpoint is a point of contact between a customer and your product, service, or brand. Whether before, during, or after an actual sale has taken place, any interaction a customer has with your business is considered a touchpoint and potential for your business to increase their customer’s perception of your brand.
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- A touchpoint is not a channel — it is a moment the customer remembers. Channels are cheap. Memorable moments are scarce. The work is identifying which touchpoints produce memory and over-investing in those, not treating every interaction as equal.
- The highest-use touchpoint in any journey is the second interaction, not the first. The first converts curiosity; the second converts trial into habit. Brands that polish the first and ignore the second acquire well and retain poorly. Inverting the focus is the hidden growth lever.
- Every touchpoint should do three jobs: serve the transaction, express the brand, and earn the next touch. Most touchpoints only do job one. Adding the other two costs almost nothing and compounds across every interaction for the customer's lifetime with the brand.
- CD1 (Epic Meaning) shows up at touchpoints when the brand uses them to remind the customer why the product exists. A purchase page that restates the mission for 10 words is a CD1 moment. A purchase page that doesn't is a checkout.
- The deepest principle: touchpoints are where brand equity is earned or spent, never unchanged. Every interaction moves the needle up or down. Neutral touchpoints are a myth. Brands that treat any touchpoint as “just logistics” are silently leaking equity across every interaction.
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Table of Contents
- Direct Mail Marketing
- In-Store Advertising
- Point-of-Sale Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Mobile Initiatives
- Managing Multiple Touchpoints
- Related Reading
About Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou is a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer whose work has impacted over 1.5 Billion Users worldwide through work with LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast.
He has taught and lectured at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His books have been referenced by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more. Check out Books by Chou here.
Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail is one of the most heavily used forms of advertisement with multiple coupons for different brands hitting mail boxes every day.
The direct marketing association pegs the response rate at “Letter-sized envelopes, for instance, had a response rate this year of 3.42 percent for a house list and 1.38 percent for a prospect list.”
This shotgun approach has been a consistent marketer’s tool, but with the low response rate, and even lower conversion rate, marketers are seeking other channels and touchpoints to reach customers.
In-Store Advertising
In-store advertising is a major touchpoint as customers are already in the store. Now in-store advertising hopes to increase sales and promote products customers may not have intended to purchase in the first place.
These highly visible displays of advertisement help influence a customer’s purchasing decision and awareness of new product offerings. The future of in-store advertising is making these advertisements uniquely relevant to customers depending on their prior purchasing decisions. This type of tailoring will increase relevance, and thus increase sales conversion.
Point-of-Sale Advertising
Point-of-sale advertising refers to any advertisement placed at the actual point of sale, usually at the cash register or around the POS system. This pertains to pop-up display ads, counter-top mats, and more recently promotions on the POS integrated credit card terminal.
This POS integrated advertising is just starting to become more noticeable at businesses. It is still basic and early in its development with black and white screens and simple messages trying to up-sell or cross-promote a product.
Some of the most apparent uses of this are at gas stations when they ask you if you want a car wash to go with your fill up and at retail stores when they ask you if you would like to sign up for a credit card or donate some money to a particular charity.
Point-of-sale advertising can be an effective tool if presented properly and not just as another display advertisement, but enveloping the customer into the brand and experience of your business.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing refers to the new platforms oriented around people sharing with their social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. These services allow brands to build their online social profile and increase their brand awareness online.
If used well, loyal customers help brands by sharing interesting information and deals with their friends and family.
This type of “free” brand awareness is what marketers are looking to tap into. Currently there is a disconnect with physical businesses and online profiles, as in-store purchases are not as easily translated onto social media networks.
Customers, especially the younger demographic, are becoming more and more technologically savvy and have the desire to be ‘social’ with their online networks.
Mobile Initiatives
Mobile marketing refers to reaching customers on their cell phones whether through text messaging, a mobile website, or a mobile application on their smartphone. This is an important medium as the number of smartphones are rapidly increasing and potential customers always carry their phones with them.
Targeting customer’s phones has numerous benefits including being able to contact them at a particular time of the day (e.g., 10:30am when they are making lunch plans) or when they are in a particular location (e.g., within 1 mile from your store). This makes mobile marketing exponentially more relevant and conversions significantly higher than other mediums of contact.
Text message marketing (or SMS marketing) has not garnered as much popularity as other forms of marketing. But from case studies of those who have implemented text message marketing, businesses have seen 15-20% redemption rate, leading to significantly higher sales compared to a similar sales period.
Managing Multiple Touchpoints
New mediums for reaching and contacting customers are spawning as technology becomes more integrated into lives. This offers new opportunities for businesses and brands, but it also presents a challenge to manage all of these new touchpoints.
Integrated solutions that offer a platform to manage the majority of these initiatives will prove beneficial to brands and their business.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework
- What is Gamification
- Top 10 Marketing Gamification
- Top 10 Enterprise Gamification
- Actionable Gamification Book