What is a Customer Journey? Strategies and Practices to Clarify the Customer's Path with HubSpot Analytics and Accelerate Business Growth

combination of interactions contributed to the final goal achievement (revenue)."

As shown in the figure above, a "Customer Journey Map" is a visual representation of customer actions and the underlying psychological states organized chronologically. While many companies create journey maps assuming ideal customer movements, they have lacked a firm means to verify whether actual customers are moving as assumed. HubSpot's Customer Journey Analytics feature was developed to bridge this gap between the "ideal journey map" and "actual customer data." This allows companies to precisely allocate marketing budgets and optimize content strategies based on proven data rather than subjective intuition or rules of thumb.

The Necessity of Customer Journey in Marketing

The concept of the customer journey is indispensable in marketing strategy primarily for the following reasons:

To Understand Diversifying Customer Behavior and Psychology and Realize Accurate Approaches

The ultimate goal of modern marketing is to delve deep into customer insights and provide the information they need at the optimal timing through various channels.

Until a few decades ago, when digitalization was still underdeveloped and media was limited to one-way communication means like television, radio, and newspapers, it was sufficient for companies to merely assume customer personas and touchpoints. However, today, not only customer needs but also information gathering and purchasing behavior have diversified significantly, making it extremely difficult to accurately grasp customer insights and behaviors based on them. In particular, the spread of smartphones has further accelerated this trend. In recent years, the leapfrog evolution of technology, including AI, has continued, and it is predicted that further changes in purchasing behavior and diversification of marketing methods will proceed in the future.

In fact, according to HubSpot's original research, 73.1% of marketing practitioners feel that "the difficulty of achieving goals in the marketing department has increased over the past year." To comprehensively understand customer behavior and psychology that changes and becomes more complex with the times, a customer journey that provides a bird's-eye view of the whole picture has become indispensable not only for the marketing department but also for all departments that have touchpoints with customers, such as sales and customer service. By clearly visualizing customer behavior and psychology through the customer journey, you will be able to devise the most effective approaches and promotion strategies.

To Realize Marketing Optimized for the "Individual" (One-to-One)

The ability to deploy personalized marketing strategies tailored to the needs of individual customers—the "individual customer"—is one of the major reasons why the customer journey is considered indispensable in modern business. Due to the high-level development of digital technology and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), companies can now obtain vast amounts of high-quality data regarding customers, making it possible to grasp and analyze their behavior with high precision.

Furthermore, the evolution of Marketing Automation (MA) tools and ad technology has made it possible to timely deploy the most effective marketing measures for each customer while crossing various channels. This allows for the meticulous design of experiences at each touchpoint until the customer purchases a product or service and the emotions at each phase, aiming for a leap in user satisfaction as a result. The customer journey is truly a compass-like tool for deeply understanding customer behavioral principles and latent thoughts and building strategies based on them.

To Clarify the Results and Improvement Points of Marketing Measures

The customer journey also plays an extremely important role in measuring the effectiveness of implemented measures and the continuous improvement process.

According to HubSpot's original research data, 94.4% of marketers responded that "effect measurement is indispensable for increasing marketing ROI (Return on Investment)." However, the reality is that among those who recognize its importance, only 53.1% are actually able to practice effect measurement.

If you lack specialized knowledge in data analysis and face challenges in implementing effect verification, it is effective to return once to the customer journey, which is the starting point of marketing strategy. By comparing and considering the initially assumed customer journey and the effects currently being obtained during the progress of measures, it becomes easier to extract specific problem points and discrepancies. Whenever a gap arises between the customer journey plan and actual customer behavior, it is vital to update the journey map and increase its accuracy. Additionally, by regularly researching the trends of competitors and changes in the market as a whole and reflecting those results in the customer journey, you can achieve more strategic improvements that take external environments into account, rather than just improving individual measures.

What is HubSpot Customer Journey Analytics (CJA)? Development Background and Strategic Necessity

The background behind HubSpot's introduction of the Customer Journey Analytics feature involves two major factors: the fundamental limitations of traditional marketing analysis tools and a significant shift in HubSpot's own product development philosophy. This feature is designed not merely as a reporting tool but as an advanced customer behavior analysis engine deeply rooted in CRM data.

1. Breaking Away from the "Fragmented Dashboard" Problem

In traditional marketing scenes, it was common to use multiple different tools for different purposes, such as Google Analytics for website access analysis, dedicated tools like Mailchimp for email marketing, and CRMs like Salesforce for customer relationship management.

In this "fragmented tool environment," it was extremely difficult to accurately track the causality of behaviors that cross tools, such as "which email campaign a customer who viewed a specific blog post reacted to and how long it eventually took to reach a contract." In the traditional environment, in order to clearly prove the results (ROI) of marketing activities, it was necessary to manually combine multiple sets of CSV data in Excel and spend vast amounts of time on analysis.

HubSpot has deployed a unique strategy of integrating major functions like Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and CMS Hub onto a single platform (common database). The Customer Journey Analytics feature was developed to take full advantage of this "integrated database" foundation and visualize all interactions with the customer—from initial contact to closing by sales and even customer support response history—in an end-to-end manner.

2. The Limits of Last-Touch Attribution and the Importance of Journey Analysis

One of the major challenges in traditional analysis methods was the bias toward "Last-Touch Attribution," which evaluates only the final customer touchpoint. In this model, the touchpoint immediately preceding conversion (e.g., a demo request form) is considered to be the entire result.

Especially in cases like the B2B field, where the consideration period is long and multiple stakeholders are involved in decision-making, the last-touch model does not accurately reflect actual customer behavior. For example, suppose a prospect views multiple educational contents over several months and builds trust before requesting a demo. However, in this model, the contribution of the content in the meantime is ignored, and only the final demo application page is evaluated. This evaluation method can lead to the neglect of investment in the awareness and education phase content, which should be important, and consequently lead to a mistaken business strategy. HubSpot introduced Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) to resolve this opacity of the intermediate process and clarify the contribution of all touchpoints leading to conversion as a "sequence." This allows companies to deeply understand not only "which resources contributed to the final closing" but also "which resources promoted the customer's journey."

3. Philosophical Shift from Funnel to Flywheel

Around 2018, HubSpot shifted its philosophy from traditional "Funnel" thinking to a new business model called the "Flywheel." While the funnel model ends with customer acquisition, the flywheel model advocates a circular approach where high customer satisfaction generates sustainable growth such as new customer referrals and upselling.

The fact that the Customer Journey Analytics feature can utilize not only "Contact (Marketing)" data but also "Deal (Sales)" and "Ticket (Service)" data as analysis sources is based on this flywheel philosophy. This aims to identify points where customers feel "Friction" and reasons for leaving not only in the pre-purchase process but across the entire post-purchase onboarding and support experience, helping to maximize Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

HubSpot Customer Journey Analytics: Functional Overview and Technical Architecture

HubSpot's Customer Journey Analytics is an advanced behavioral analysis engine linked with CRM data, not just a tabular reporting tool. In this section, we will look in detail at its core technical specifications and functional goals.

Visualization of Flow via Sankey Diagrams

A striking feature of this function is the visual expression method using Sankey Diagrams. A Sankey diagram is a chart that intuitively shows the "volume" flowing between different processes through the thickness of "bands."

• Nodes: Vertical blocks showing each step in the customer journey (e.g., "View Pricing Plan," "Submit Inquiry Form").
• Links: Band-like flows connecting each node; the width is proportional to the number of contacts (or deals) that passed through that path.
• Drop-offs: Customer segments that did not proceed to the next step are visualized in a way where the flow is cut off or heads toward a specific "exit" node.

The intent behind adopting such a visualization method is to allow users to intuitively grasp "bottlenecks" that tend to be overlooked in mere numerical data (tables). For example, if the band leading from the "Product Overview Page" to "Register for Free Trial" is remarkably thin, it can be instantly understood that this point is the most important area for improvement in the journey.

Flexible Data Source Selection: Switching Strategic Perspectives

The customer journey analysis function provides the flexibility to create reports based on three major objects depending on the analysis goal the company aims for. This function is integrated into the Enterprise plan of each HubSpot Hub.

• Contacts: Primarily aimed at effect measurement of lead acquisition routes and marketing content, and optimization of the nurturing path to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). Available in Marketing Hub Enterprise and Service Hub Enterprise.
• Deals: Focuses on accelerating business negotiation processes, the impact of sales representative activities (calls, meetings, etc.) on closing, and identifying factors leading to lost deals. Supported in Sales Hub Enterprise.
• Tickets: Delves deep into the customer support resolution flow, the path from inquiry to problem resolution, and how that affects customer satisfaction. Available in Service Hub Enterprise.

With this multi-angled structure, the marketing department can effectively analyze "lead generation," the sales department "pipeline health," and the customer service department "customer problem resolution efficiency"—the major indicators within their respective areas of responsibility.

Detailed Event Tracking and Diverse Data Points

The depth and precision of analysis are largely determined by the abundance of trackable "events" (customer action steps). HubSpot records not only interactions on the web but also customer activity data within the CRM as integrated events. Below are details of the major events:

Web and User Interaction Events

• Page View: Records access to specific web pages or content groups. The behavior of anonymous users (identified by cookies) before they become contacts can also be tracked, supporting "retroactive linking" that associates past anonymous data once they register as a contact.
• Form: Tracked in three stages: "View," "Interaction (Start of input)," and "Submission." This clearly distinguishes users who viewed the form but did not enter, and users who started entry but did not reach submission (form drop-outs), allowing for the identification of improvement points.
• CTA (Call-to-Action): Measures the number of views and clicks of CTAs such as buttons and banners.
• Ads: Tracks user interactions via ad accounts linked to HubSpot (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.). This covers not only clicks but also inflow from ad impressions.

Sales and Communication Events

• Email: In addition to marketing emails (opens, clicks, bounces), it tracks opens and replies of individual sales emails (1-to-1 emails). This allows for evaluating the smooth transition from automated nurturing to individual sales approaches and its effectiveness.
• Meetings: Tracks status changes such as meeting booking, execution, cancellation, and "No Show" in detail.
• Calls: Records the start and end times of calls. Filtering based on call duration and results (connection status, voicemail, etc.) is also possible.

Detailed Interactions and In-System Events

• Documents: Tracks behavior from the start of viewing to the completion of sales materials (e.g., PDFs). Grasping which materials were read to the end by potential customers provides extremely valuable insights for refining B2B sales strategies.
• Sequences: Possible to grasp statuses such as enrollment in automated sales sequences, execution of each step, or unenrollment in detail.
• Media: Tracks the playback status (start, completion, drop-out, etc.) of video content and audio files hosted on HubSpot.

Source: HubSpot Knowledge Base - Create a Journey Report

Key Specifications and Considerations for Use

In order to create effective reports and obtain accurate insights, it is important to understand the system's technical constraints beforehand.

• Upper Limit of Event Analysis: The total number of events that can be processed in one report is up to 20 million. If this number is exceeded, the system automatically shortens the analysis target period to maintain performance (e.g., adjusting to only the last 1 month). Please note that if a report containing 20.01 million or more events is set, the date range is automatically limited to one month.
• Upper Limit of Journey Stages: The maximum number of stages that can be set in one customer journey map is 15. Furthermore, the combination of unique event types (step types) that can be used across the entire report is also limited to a total of 15. For example, by placing 15 stages and including 5 different types of steps in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stages respectively, it is possible to define a total of 15 unique individual steps.
• Data Retention Period: Data from up to the past 5 years can be used for analysis.
• Object Limit when Creating Static Lists: A static list dynamically generated from Journey Analytics can contain up to 100,000 objects.
• Non-eligibility of Sales Activities: In journey reports, activities by sales representatives (sales activities) such as phone records and meetings from linked tools are not counted as analysis targets.

These restrictions suggest that HubSpot's CJA feature is optimized for discovering and grasping "recent trends and patterns of customer behavior" rather than comprehensively archiving all past data.

Detailed Analysis and Comparison with Other Platforms

HubSpot CJA vs. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Many marketers ask, "What is the difference between GA4's 'Path Exploration' feature and HubSpot CJA?" While both tools provide visualizations like Sankey diagrams, their design philosophy and "Source of Truth" are fundamentally different.

Comparison ItemHubSpot CJAGoogle Analytics 4 (GA4)Data ModelIdentity-Based: Analyzes specific "contacts (individuals)." Identifies who took the action and delves deeper by linking with their attributes (job title, industry, etc.).Event-Based: Places "events (user actions)" at the center. Data tends to be anonymized or sampled, focusing on overall trends and traffic volume.StrengthsRevenue Clarity: Directly links web behavior to concrete business results like actual sales, deal creation, and support ticket creation. Suitable for B2B and high-ticket items.Traffic Intelligence: Excels in site performance, behavior by device, and site navigation analysis for large-scale anonymous traffic.IntegrationCan analyze diverse non-website customer touchpoints—emails, calls, sales notes, and offline events—on the same timeline.Primarily limited to user behavior within websites and mobile apps (unless advanced integration is performed).

Ultimately, HubSpot CJA and GA4 are not competing tools but rather complementary. The most effective strategy is to utilize GA4 for the health of overall website traffic and UI/UX improvement, and use HubSpot CJA to deeply solve the "process of persuasion and nurturing" until individual leads grow into customers.

Comparison Between Customer Journey Analysis and Attribution Reports

"Customer Journey Analytics (CJA)" and "Attribution Reports" are analysis methods with different purposes and are often confused, but their roles are clearly distinguished.

• Attribution Reports: Clarify the "weight of contributing factors" leading to customer acquisition or sales achievement. Specifically, it evaluates monetarily "how much each marketing channel (e.g., $3,000 for webinars, $2,000 for email) contributed to $10,000 of achieved sales," and is primarily used for the optimal allocation of marketing budgets.
• Customer Journey Analytics: Visually captures what "series of actions" customers followed to reach a goal. For example, it grasps specific action paths like "80% of customers who participated in a webinar viewed the product case study page thereafter," contributing to UX improvement and the construction of more effective customer nurturing strategies.

By utilizing the HubSpot platform, it is possible to link these two reports. By identifying "which touchpoints and channels are most affecting results (Attribution)" and strategically assembling "when and how to provide those important touchpoints within the customer experience (Customer Journey)," you can aim to maximize customer engagement and business results.

6 Elements for Effective Customer Journey Construction

In order to formulate high-quality customer journeys, it is indispensable to deeply understand and organize the following six major information elements. Clearly defining and utilizing each of these elements makes it possible to draw a high-precision customer journey map more in line with actual customer status.

Major Measures in Each Stage of the Customer Journey

In general customer journey design, the customer purchase process is classified into four major phases: "Awareness," "Interest/Interest," "Comparison/Consideration," and "Action." It is important to take the most appropriate marketing measures according to the customer's psychology and needs at each stage.

1. Awareness Phase: Strategies to Make Brand and Product Existence Known

• SEO content strategy
• Social media operation
• Listing ads, display ads
• Press release distribution
• Influencer marketing
• Strategic website construction
• Exhibitions and events

2. Interest/Interest Phase

• Valuable web content (blogs, success stories, white papers)
• Newsletter distribution to deepen interest
• SNS ad deployment tailored to targets
• Webinars providing specialized knowledge
• Offline events to encourage real interaction

3. Comparison/Consideration Phase

• Material requests providing detailed information
• Free trials to experience product/service value
• Product demos showing specific introduction benefits
• Individual consultation sessions to resolve doubts
• Public release of specific success stories to increase reliability
• Word-of-mouth collecting raw customer voices

4. Action Phase

• Formal contract for service utilization
• Final purchase of desired products
• Application for valuable services
• Inquiries for final doubt resolution

Strategic Best Practices for Success with HubSpot CJA

Insight into Deep Customer Desires

To effectively build HubSpot customer journeys and accurately predict patterns of customer behavior, thoughts, and emotions, it is indispensable to deeply understand the essential needs at their root. Recognition discrepancies between the ideal customer image drawn by the company and the urgent desires held by actual customers can weaken the effects of formulated measures.

To capture essential customer needs, "Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)" theory—which views what they "want to achieve" or "challenges they want to solve" as a "job"—is extremely effective. Defining true customer needs through Jobs-to-be-Done theory bridges the gap between the seller's hypothesis and what the customer truly seeks.

"Map Before You App": Build Hypotheses Before Touching HubSpot Tools

The most important element for maximizing HubSpot Customer Journey Analytics is to establish a clear strategy and hypothesis before opening the software.

1. Specific Definition of Stages: Clarify specifically what customer states or actions represent "Awareness," "Consideration," and "Decision" in your business.
2. Setting Clear Hypotheses: Set hypotheses regarding specific customer behavior, such as "Users who registered for a free trial should click a specific link in the onboarding email thereafter."
3. Verification in HubSpot: Use HubSpot CJA to confirm if users are moving according to the established hypothesis. If different movements are seen, use the Pathfinder function to explore where users are deviating or following unexpected paths.

Fusion of Strategic Overall Picture and Precise Segmentation

It is vital to capture "engagement with the blog content as a whole" rather than being end-all-be-all about individual blog post performance.

• Analysis by Persona: Decision-makers (CxO level) and practitioners generally have different pages they view and orders of information gathering. Use HubSpot's list function to create detailed reports specialized for specific segments.
• Comparison by Outcome: By comparing the journeys of "lost leads" and "customers who reached a contract," you can identify behavior patterns that promote success and bottlenecks leading to drop-outs (e.g., closed customers commonly viewing case study pages).

Extracting True Insights via Integration with Qualitative Data

HubSpot CJA clearly shows the facts of "What" the customer did, but it does not directly speak to the "Why" behind that behavior. By combining qualitative data—surveys, heat map analysis, customer interviews—with key exit and conversion points identified by CJA, you can obtain deep insights into motivations and emotions and lead to more effective improvement measures.

Strategic Setting of Required vs. Optional Paths and Pathfinder

• Journey Report (Verification Mode): Verifies to what extent customers follow a specific pre-assumed path (e.g., Product Page → Material Download → Inquiry). By default, all specified steps are treated as Required. This allows for grasping strict funnel passage rates.
• Pathfinder (Discovery Mode): Exploratory visualization of paths customers followed before or after a specific important event (e.g., closing, downloading specific content). To make a specific stage Optional, check the "Optional" checkbox in the setting pop-up. Optional stages allow for analysis that does not question the strict order while affecting the overall percentage that reached the final conversion. Note that the 1st stage (start) and final stage (end) cannot be set as optional.

Specific Use Cases by Scenario

B2B SaaS: Analysis of Conversion from Free Trial to Paid

• Setting: Stage 1: Access Website → Stage 2: Complete Trial Registration → Stage 3: Open Onboarding Email → Stage 4: Login to Key App Feature → Stage 5: Deal Creation.
• Insight: Understand numerically the difference in subsequent app usage frequency and deal development rate between users who opened onboarding emails and those who did not.

E-commerce: Recovery from Cart Abandonment

• Setting: Stage 1: Visit Product Page → Stage 2: Add to Cart → Stage 3: Drop-off at Checkout → Stage 4: Send Recovery Email and Revisit → Stage 5: Complete Final Purchase.
• Insight: Clearly measure the recovery rate among users who opened the email and returned to the site.

Event Marketing: ROI of Webinars

• Setting: Stage 1: Click Online Ad → Stage 2: Submit Registration Form → Stage 3: Actual Participation in Webinar → Stage 4: View Sales Materials → Stage 5: Final Closing.
• Insight: Analyze the difference in deal conversion and closing rates between the audience that registered but did not participate and the audience that actually participated.

Steps to Create a HubSpot Customer Journey Report

Using Existing Samples

1. Log in and go to "Reports" > "Reports."
2. Click "Create report" in the top right.
3. Select "Customer Journey Report" from the left menu.
4. Select "Start with a sample report."
5. Click the sample that best matches your goal and click "Next."
6. Adjust details as necessary.

Building from Scratch

1. Go to "Reports" > "Reports" > "Create report."
2. Select "Customer Journey Report" and click "Next."
3. Select "Create your own journey."
4. Select a Primary Data Source (Contacts, Deals, or Tickets).
5. Add the first stage event.
6. Click "Add new stage +" to expand the timeline.

Adjusting Journey Stages

• Add Events: Hover over events to see estimated occurrences.
• Detect Key Events: Enable "Search for top events" to identify the most frequent events at a stage.
• Pathfinder Tool: For Contact data sources, toggle the Pathfinder switch "On." Select "Search for top paths before this stage" or "after this stage" to let HubSpot automatically suggest stages.
• Required vs. Optional: Use the checkbox in the pop-up.

Customization: Filters and Property Breakdowns

• Filters: Click the filter icon next to an event. Note: For contact creation, HubSpot uses the import date unless you filter by the "Contact creation date" property.
• Property Breakdown: Click the "Breakdown by" icon. You can include up to 10 stages with property breakdowns.

Running and Saving

1. Click "Run report" to visualize results.
2. Use the filter function at the top for deep dives.
3. Click "Save report," set permissions, and "Save."

Summary

HubSpot's Customer Journey Analytics provides a "common language" for understanding customers that marketing, sales, and customer service departments can share. This is a powerful means for transforming from an organization that only tracks individual KPIs to a company that comprehensively optimizes the entire customer experience.

The true value of introducing this function is not merely creating attractive graphs but converting obtained insights into actions (Orchestration). It is extremely important to lead to specific improvement measures, such as introducing a chatbot on pages with high drop-off rates, incorporating high-closing emails into automated workflows, or stopping budgets for ad campaigns that bring low-quality leads.

The continuous cycle of "Measure → Hypothesize → Orchestrate → Re-measure" is the only approach to accelerating the flywheel advocated by HubSpot and encouraging the shift to a data-driven organization.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Customer Journey?

It is a chronological visualization of the changes in actions, thoughts, and emotions in the process where a potential customer learns about your product and eventually purchases it.

What can I do with HubSpot CJA?

You can visually delve deep into the "journey" from brand awareness to closing based on actual data. It integrates web behavior, email engagement, sales interactions, and support history from the HubSpot CRM.

What is the difference between HubSpot CJA and Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

HubSpot CJA is "identity-based" (focusing on individuals and attributes), while GA4 is "event-based" (focusing on overall traffic and anonymous trends).

What license is required to use HubSpot CJA?

It is available on the Enterprise plan of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub.

Can HubSpot journey reports record anonymous user behavior?

Yes. If an anonymous user (tracked by cookies) later becomes a contact (e.g., via a form), their previous history is retroactively linked. Select "Include anonymous visitors" in the report settings.

What are the main constraints when creating a report?

Up to 20 million events, 15 stages, 15 unique step combinations, and a 5-year data retention period.

What is an effective approach for success?

Delve deep into fundamental customer challenges, build a framework based on "field voices" (interviews) rather than speculation, and continuously repeat effect measurement and improvement to brush up the journey.

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