How Managing Mind Spaces Creates a Personalized Customer Journey

How do you scale a self-discovery process unique to each individual? Career coach Jessica Manca realized she needed an automation platform to be as intimate, responsive, and empowering as she is.

Jessica Manca remembers exactly how she felt the day her life changed for good. “I was working in management consulting, doing 14-hour days managing a project in 3 countries, one of which was on the other side of the world,” she recalls. “I remember just feeling this capacity inside me that wasn’t being harnessed. I was good at my work but I wasn’t fulfilled by it, which meant I couldn’t give my all to it.”

The sudden realization that she was burned out led to Jessica working with an external career coach. It helped—but not in the way she’d expected. Rather than simply downloading advice, she found the most effective coaching encouraged her to work things out for herself—and with that, she found her calling.

“I got to this amazing nugget that self-discovery is the key to raising your awareness of something you need to learn,” she explains. “Advice only really works for things that are very linear, moving from A to B. However, you can’t simply tell someone to be confident—that’s something they have to find within themselves and discover on their terms. So I started my own business to help others unlock themselves the way I had.”

In search of a safe space for finding passion

Since launching Managing Mind Spaces a decade ago, Jessica’s work has come down to sparking these breakthrough moments for those who find themselves stuck in their career. She’s written a book, Finding Passion, which lays out the difficult questions people struggle to ask themselves about their life—but would get real benefits from answering. She guides people through this journey of discovery through a combination of online courses and one-to-one career consultancy.

“For me, a great customer experience sparks that breakthrough,” says Jessica. “Sometimes they’re small breakthroughs in a sequence, other times they’re a single life-changing moment—but the most important feedback I ever get is when somebody says to me, ‘that thing we worked on five years ago—I still think about that today!’”

Despite the power of those breakthrough moments, Jessica struggled to scale and build her business. That’s because the intimacy her clients depend on can’t be offered on most marketing platforms.

“The conversations we have may well start from a place of darkness—a place of burnout, when everybody is telling them they are crazy for needing to make a change,” she explains. 

Jessica’s instincts told her email marketing could create the space for the private dialogue you need to solve these types of problems—but she ran into problems finding a system to support her. “I chose some really cool, impressive-looking systems and purchased software to help me do what I thought I wanted at the time. But I couldn’t get my marketing tool to talk to my CRM—and I was stuck with this archaic view of what a pipeline is. There was limited automation, and I had to push prospects through each step manually.”

Most worryingly, the marketing systems that Jessica tried were not built to create such personalized moments of discovery that are so important to her clients.

“The biggest challenge I had is creating an intimate journey through my marketing,” she says. “I didn’t want to push messages out arbitrarily: ‘It’s Wednesday, so here’s this message.’ It just felt so disconnected. The email templates were all really ugly, and there didn’t seem to be the concept of following the customer through their journey.” 

The power of ActiveCampaign for Sales automation

Improving the customer journey isn’t just about email cadences. Automating sales processes with ActiveCampaign for Sales allows Jessica to keep up with prospects and customers every step of the way. “Since redesigning our sales pipelines with ActiveCampaign for Sales, we’ve improved in three main areas. First, transparency between sales and marketing qualification efforts for every customer and lead.” Tracking the impact of both sales and marketing efforts for each lead gives Jessica visibility into what’s working and where improvements can be made.

“Second, flexible automations better align with real-life customer timing and readiness, saving time on repetitive sales tasks and follow-up.” Automating follow-up tasks and other administrative work that comes with sales development work frees up time to focus on what matters most: connecting with customers and providing the best coaching services possible. 

“Finally, improved visibility to the customer journey with a pipeline that automates onboarding and monthly accountability for current and repeat customers.” ActiveCampaign for Sales takes the guesswork out of where a prospect is in the pipeline. Automating tasks with reminders ensures the best possible timing for communicating with prospects and customers and ultimately delivering the best possible value to them. Ultimately, this leads to a better customer experience and, ultimately, happier customers.

Unlocking the one-on-one potential of email

Jessica needed a marketing breakthrough moment. She found it when she attended her first ActiveCampaign workshop. “I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to create before,” she says. “When I learned about the ActiveCampaign approach to the automated customer experience, I realized that it’s completely consistent with how I want my business to work. It’s very organic rather than trying to force people through a linear process; it follows a person through their learning journey and the pace they’re traveling. It’s not sales-y, it’s not pushy, there are no countdown clocks, and you don’t get that passive-aggressive messaging you see on other email lists.”

From there, Jessica’s journey with ActiveCampaign moved faster than she expected. “I found the tool incredibly intuitive to use—and it was an awesome experience,” she recalls. “I thought I’d have this big, long transition phase, but ActiveCampaign helped map out automations for what I wanted to achieve. Then, I could port everything over straight away.”

Equally speedy was the difference that ActiveCampaign started to make to the bottom line of Jessica’s business. “ActiveCampaign paid for itself with the first campaign I ran—it was mind-blowing,” she says. “I put together a simple message and a single follow-up, and I had a customer come back to me saying, ‘That’s exactly what I needed to hear—I definitely want to work with you again.’”

The power of experience enhancing automation

This kind of deeper engagement with previous and existing clients creates new growth opportunities for Managing Mind Spaces. “I set up a learning experience through Thinkific, and I’m able to partner that with a sequence of emails to give people a guided tour of how they can develop,” explains Jessica. “I’m able to apply ActiveCampaign’s concept of following the customer and giving them that flexibility—and I’m excited about doing more with this idea.”

For Jessica, the most obvious measurement of ActiveCampaign’s impact comes with the open rates her client emails now generate. Every touchpoint helps to strengthen relationships and set each and every one of her clients up for success.

“Automation has strengthened my onboarding and given people the continuity they need to complete my programs,” she explains. “I’ve realized people don’t meet me for the first time in our first session. They meet me before that through the welcoming atmosphere I create with an email sequence and the videos that I embed. I’m consistently seeing open rates of 40% to 60% and click-through rates for new clients of over 80%. I can use tags and goals to kick off my automations, and then I watch people book meetings, and I know we’re off and running.”

ActiveCampaign has transformed the scope of Customer Experience Automation for Jessica’s business. In addition to saving time and staying on top of administrative tasks, she had the opportunity to enhance the overall experience by adding supportive touchpoints while allowing her clients to navigate on their own terms. 

“If I know what a message needs to say, I can automate it,” says Jessica. “I can put together a sequence of 7 touches that help with common issues people have—or answering common questions I know they’ll be curious about. I can help people I work with around the world, servicing them in their time zone but always keeping that intimate dialogue and being of value. ActiveCampaign has become an extension of my business—and I wouldn’t be as excited about the future without it.”

If you want to learn more about the platform Jessica Manca uses every day to create a personalized experience for her clients, try ActiveCampaign for free starting today.