Keywords

1 Introduction

The development of digital technology has allowed the emergence of a new environment of social interaction that facilitates and demands, at the same time, a profound transformation of the marketing strategies (Alshurideh et al., 2021; Alzoubi et al., 2021). Digital marketing is currently one of such marketing strategies in which many companies are dedicating greater investment (Lee et al., 2022; Tariq et al., 2022). This new marketing paradigm has been focused, specifically, on the careful management of the relationship between the customers and the company to have information about the customers, their characteristics, needs, and preferences (Edelman, 2010; Alkitbi et al., Alkitbi et al., 2020; Alsharari & Alshurideh, 2020).

Digital marketing is a fundamentally set of approaches, strategies, and tools to promote services and products on online platforms: emails, blogs, social networks, websites, mobile, SEO, etc. (Almaazmi et al., 2020; Nuseir et al., 2021). The achievement of digital marketing initiates with the on-going process of converting leads into loyal customers with a positive customer experience (Cook, 2014). It offers a set of strategies, tools, techniques, and operations coordinated through the Internet to increase the sales of a product or service (Aljumah et al., 2021; Sweiss et al., 2021). As per Parise et al. (2016), digital marketing varies from the conventional marketing manner through the methods and channels. It can be asserted that digital marketing helps to monitor things like conversions, what content works and what does not; how many individuals visit the business web page, collaborate with its social networks, search it in the enormous world of web, etc., and in short can offer the measurement of customer experience in real-time (Al Kurdi & Alshurideh, 2021; Alshurideh et al., 2016).

In the current era, novel technologies and particularly the potential of the Network, have been consolidated as an ideal complement for the establishment of digital marketing activities that include notices on Websites, e-mailing or mass mailings, search marketing, the usage of social networking platforms, and blog marketing among others (Alshurideh et al., 2019; Kurdi et al., 2021). A service or product with an appropriate digital marketing strategy or tool can generate a positive customer experience (Alshurideh, 2022; Edelman, 2010). Therefore, companies need to establish an adequate digital marketing strategy to generate traffic on the Web, capture potential customers and speed up effective communication with them by providing them with answers or solutions to their needs. In addition, companies need to recognize different types of customers as an essential part of generating a successful customer experience program having strategies that bring about a personalized experience for each segment.

2 Research Objectives

This research aims to explore the contemporary digital marketing strategies and tools and the role played by these in various marketing activities or areas. The study also explores the market segmentation in the digital era to improve customer experience tools. Lastly, the study determines which strategy has been suggested to be most optimized for enhancing Customer Experience.

3 Literature Review

3.1 Customer Experience

The customer experience is defined as perceptions of consumers or users, conscious and subconscious of their relationship with the brand as a result of all interactions during the life cycle of this.

As per Meyer and Schwager (2007), the customer experience is now more than ever relevant for three main reasons. First, the customer experience is playing a critical role in the ability of companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Second, the expectations of the customers are changing, many times because of the appearance of new businesses (many of them with a relevant digital component) or new companies in the market that have managed to break “established barriers” (such as WhatsApp, breaking the concept of traditional communication between people). Last, customers no longer expect an incredible customer experience only from large multinationals; they expect it from any company, including small and medium-sized enterprises, since it is not a matter of scale, but to develop the qualities and capabilities required for it (Meyer & Schwager, 2007).

Literature in customer experience management has identified three key levers to offer a superior customer experience: employees, organization, and “detail management” (Verhoef et al., 2009; Alshurideh et al., 2012; Verma et al., 2012; Rawson et al., 2013; Alzoubi et al., 2022). Personal employees are one of the main points to change the customer experience; they are the first line of contact with consumers and should be skilled and exceed the needs of customers (2020b; Kurdi et al., 2020a; Verhoef et al., 2009). Another aspect is the organization, which means that the customers at the center of all decisions, creating a responsibility at the management team level and making the customer experience a very powerful function within the business (Verma et al., 2012). Last but not least, leaders in customer experience management invest more time in understanding in greater depth the needs of the different segments of clients, or even of individual clients, to be able to offer them more personalized services (Alameeri et al., 2020; Rawson et al., 2013). However, how can a company go from offering a good customer experience to an outstanding one? From the literature point of view, everything is related to offering a personalized experience with a clear brand image and end-to-end vision at any point of contact. For many companies, this can be achieved by implementing digital marketing strategies. In the view of Cook (2014), the ultimate goal of exceeding the client's expectations via digital marketing would attract the client and turn him into a loyal fan of the brand and the product.

3.2 Digital Marketing

Digital marketing uses mobile devices, social media, the internet, search engines, and other mediums to get to customers. Specific marketing experts like Ryan (2016) and Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2019) regard digital marketing as a novel endeavor that necessitates a new method of approaching consumers and comprehending how they behave in contrast to traditional marketing. The implementation of digital tools, together with traditional communication between customers and the company to achieve marketing objectives, is named digital marketing (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019, p. 20). It is an advanced way of advertisement to present the customers with the information materials they require through diverse digital tools. Eventually, traditional marketing and digital marketing have no huge difference in the industry. Nevertheless, the manner of making contacts and delivering info to the customers are more innovative in the latter (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014).

4 Research Method

The research was carried out in line with the Hair et al. (2008) “Essentials of marketing research,” which included tasks such as developing the procedure or review, recognizing and choosing the main publications, data extraction and synthesis, quality assessment for the chosen publications, and assessing and presenting the results.

The researcher used NVivo software to achieve the systematic mapping of the carefully chosen publications. One main advantage of NVivo is that it can distinguish the same papers spontaneously, lessening the assessors' effort during the selection stage.

4.1 Research Question

RQ1: What are the various marketing activities/areas, and how digital marketing strategies and tools play a role in these activities/areas?

RQ2: What are the contemporary strategies and tools in digital marketing?

RQ3: How Market Segmentation can be achieved in the Digital era to improve Customer Experience?

RQ4: Which digital marketing strategies are most effective in enhancing Customer Experience?

4.2 Search Process

The search process for this SLR began with a systematic search, together with the assessment of references for a number of studies. The digital databases used for the SLR were: ASCE Library, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and ASCE Library.

Systematic exploration was carried out on publications’ full text and restricted to “Digital Marketing” and “Customer Experience” via the search engine filter. For every database, different keywords and search strings were used for the research questions, and the findings were combined (see Table 1).

Table 1 Keywords and search strings for searching the studies
Full size table

4.3 Selection Process

The selection procedure included five stages. The first stage was carrying out a string search on databases and attaining the findings. The second stage was eliminating dual publications via NVivo. The third was investigating the headings and abstracts of studies from each digital database in comparison to the exclusion and inclusion benchmarks and eliminating the irrelevant studies. The fourth stage was revising the whole text of all the chosen studies that remained after the second stage again on the base of inclusion and exclusion benchmarks. The fifth stage was once more looking for the repetition of studies by examining articles having the same authors and including related research areas. In this condition, the up-to-date publications were selected.

The researcher inspected the citations of all main publications remained after the fifth stage to distinguish any other publication not by now included in the designated main studies. After that, these studies had to go through the same selection stage. Figure 1 shows the selection process for the studies and the number of selected studies at each stage. The first stage shows the total publications gotten from each digital database, which was 108 altogether. The circles on the left-side include the number of remaining studies after each stage for the SLR. The circles on the right-side contain the systematic of outstanding studies after each selection stage for the citation search, which was carried out via 10 papers gotten through systematic search. The last sample included 39 studies.

Fig. 1
A flowchart for the selection of studies starts from phase 1 with 108 studies from different sources. It moves on to phases 2, 3, 4, and 5 to select a total of 39 studies via systematic and citation search.

The selection procedure for the studies and the number of selected studies at each stage

Full size image

4.4 Exclusion and Inclusion Benchmarks

For the studies to be on a sample, it should be in English and handle digital marketing and customer experience. The researcher intended to include studies that explore contemporary digital marketing approaches to enhance the customer experience even if the authors do not assume clearly that digital marketing is the ultimate way for a positive customer experience. On the other hand, several types of papers and articles were eliminated: papers that do not take into account digital marketing and rather focus on traditional marketing for customer experience; publications that summarize results from prevalent studies like roadmaps, surveys, and reviews; repeated papers and finally, articles that cannot be downloaded from digital databases.

4.5 Quality Evaluation

The quality evaluation is a subjective process as different researchers value different aspects of the research. In this systematic review, the researchers chose the inclusion and exclusion benchmarks for the evaluation of quality. The quality evaluation is based founded on the specified by Hair et al. (2008). Some of the key points were: The aims of the publication are defined in a clear manner (Yes = 1 or No = 0); The publication efficiently describes the matrices (Yes = 1 or No = 0); The data gathering methods are defined well (Yes = 1 or No = 0); The findings are presented in a clear and an unambiguous way (Yes = 1 or No = 0); The findings are supported by empirical evaluation (Yes = 1 or No = 0); The threats to the paper validity are reflected (Yes = 1 or No = 0).

4.6 Data Extraction

The researcher totally inspected all of the 39 publications for getting the crucial information and used a well-defined way to have numerous features for data extraction and storage. A few of the features were a year of publication, source, paper type (conference paper, journal article, book chapter), and quality score.

These features were expected to be indispensable to answer the key research question. This paper did not include the details on the procedure of data extraction because of space restriction. One investigator was tasked with extracting and verifying the data. As most of the selected studies were qualitative, a meta-analytical technique was not suitable for synthesizing data.

5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Overview of the Publications

Table 2 displays authors and year of publication in addition to the types and quality scores for the selected studies. As much as the publication year is concerned, it can be seen that from the Fig. 2 that Digital marketing strategies and tools have been a hot research area in the marketing and management literature during the previous ten years; however, customer experience and traditional marketing strategies can be found in literature during the past five decades. Alternatively, Digital marketing and customer experience is a very contemporary phenomenon. Averagely, 3 published every year. It can be seen from Fig. 2b, around 61% of the publications were journaled articles, while 31% were reported. On the other hand, 11 publications got the maximum score which meant that they defined their objectives, metrics, and data collection methods effectively. When classifying the publications in Table 2, the researcher coded journal articles as ‘J,’ reports as ‘R,’ and conference papers as ‘C.’

Table 2 Overview of the publications as per year, quality score, and type
Full size table
Fig. 2
A bar graph and a pie chart A and B. A has the data for the number of publications versus the years from 2010 through 2019. B has the data for journals, reports, and conference papers in percentages of 61, 31, and 8 respectively.

a Number of publications per year; b Types of publications

Full size image

It can also be seen that the researcher restricted the date of publication in the search stage to nine years, i.e., 2010 to 2019. The reason for choosing 2010 was that as this was the year when the most relevant study was published. This shows that there is much room for growth within this area of marketing literature.

For the quality score, the researcher used the aforementioned 6-point criteria (0–1 score) to evaluate the sample. The higher the score, the detailed and clearer the study is to the present SLR. The lowest score acquired by the study comprised in this SLR was 1. Only 2 studies got this score. These publications failed to include any empirical methods efficiently. Most of the publications achieved either a 4 or 5 score, which means that the general sample was strong in nature as the publications backed empirical evidence. This rationalizes the effort to carry out the SLR in this emerging area of marketing.

5.2 Marketing Activities and Related Digital Strategies

The systematic review of the sample showed that digital marketing strategies vary as per marketing activities. The researchers identified different marketing activities and related digital marketing strategies presented below.

Market research: In this area, reference is made to all the tools designed to understand better the market in which it competes and the targets in the ones to focus on to obtain leads that can easily become customers. An example of a digital marketing tool in this area is electronic surveys (Edelman, 2010) and online focus groups (Smith, 2012).

Brand: It refers to all actions aimed at improving product or service awareness (brand recognition) among the public of interest. Some of the best electronic tools to improve the top of mind (positioning) and the share of voice (SOV or voice participation) are, for example, corporate blogs and direct search engine marketing (Cook, 2014).

Product: Actions oriented to a product or a line of them. Some of the proposed tools in the publications are digital product verifiers or online product testing (Peterson et al., 2010; Al-Dmour et al., 2021; Al-Khayyal et al., 2021; Khasawneh et al., 2021a).

Price: This area includes the actions related to the price variable for improving the marketing mix. The digital world offers important contributions in this area, such as digital price timing or electronic auctions (e-auctions) (Gill and VanBoskirk, 2016).

Communication: This area and those of promotion and advertising are integrated into the model of the 4P's; however, in practice, it is appropriate to treat the actions separately of communication in which the company does not pay for appearing in a third-party media (advertising) or encourages the purchase of a direct form (promotion). As stated by Homburg et al. (2017), virtual communities and RSS marketing (Content Syndication Systems) are an explanatory example from the electronic point of view.

Promotion: The point of sale is one of the marketing scenarios in which the digital revolution has been noticed more because it is detached in a way totally from the Internet like the other forms of electronic promotion such as digital coupons or re-merchandising (Al-Dmour et al., 2014; Dennis et al., 2014; Ryan, 2016).

Advertising: Online advertising is commercial and informative information expressed with creativity about a product or service on the network (Alshurideh et al., 2017). As an example, Homburg et al. (2017) cited buzz marketing or contextual advertising.

Distribution: Like, the price and the product, in this area, the correspondence between theory and practice is clear and direct. Examples of tools are infomediaries (Mitic & Kapoulas, 2012) or affiliate marketing (Bolton et al., 2018).

Marketing: Without a doubt, the ultimate goal of marketing is selling, so that in practice, there must be an area that groups together all the tools to make it more profitable and productive, which from the electronic channel they get without going away the marketplaces and the e-commerce portals (Alzoubi et al., 2022; Kane et al., 2015).

Control: It is necessary to measure the effectiveness of digital marketing tools to improve both the selection and how to use it (strategy). The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is based on knowing the customer as much as possible and identify to produce what customers want to buy, and the Gross Rating Point (GRP), which corresponds to the metrics par excellence used to measure the impact of spots determining how much of the target the company has reached. The CRM (Heller and Parasnis, 2011) and the electronic GRP (Bolton et al., 2018) constitute excellent audit tools for e-marketing.

The following table summarises the findings for the various marketing activities and related digital marketing strategies and tools.

5.3 Digital Marketing Strategies

5.3.1 Viral Marketing or Buzz Marketing

Viral marketing or buzz marketing is one of the most examined digital strategies in the chosen publications. Also called the electronic word of mouth (eWOM), this strategy encourages individuals to quickly convey a commercial message to others seeking to create exponential growth in the exposure of said message (Edelman, 2010). As per Chaffey (2010), it deals with commercial communication that propagates by itself. It is a tool of communication on the Internet that allows the diffusion of a message, starting from a small emitter core that is multiplied by the collaboration of the receivers in their transmission and diffusion, generating a pyramidal effect with geometric growth (Nash et al., 2013). With the viral marketing advertising campaigns spread like a virus through the network, and the users are the ones who share and transmit the advertising message, the costs associated with this strategy are considerably low or zero.

Nash et al. (2013) maintained that any eWOM campaign on the network should be feasible to be shared or transmitted from one user to another. The ease that users have to pass a message to others will directly influence the scope and spread of the campaign. So, if a firm publishes a very interesting article, it should allow with just a press of a key to be forwarded to a friend; or if a video is published, it must be ensured that it can be download in a format compatible with most users and that additionally can be easily forwarded to other users; if an image is loaded; that it can be downloaded and forwarded easily; if an application is created; that it can be installed in any operating system or if it is a document then it can be added to the social networks (Edelman, 2010).

5.3.2 Email Marketing

This digital marketing strategy consists in the use of electronic mail as a loyalty strategy; that is, it proposes to attract new customers and retain customers already acquired through the sending of messages to email accounts to maintain a continuous dialogue with the client throughout the entire commercial relationship and finally feed a certain base of data (Peterson et al., 2010; Smith, 2012). The foundation of this strategy is focused on the fact that more than one trillion emails are sent every day. This behavior makes e-mail marketing one of the most effective, fastest tools and to carry out advertising campaigns directly through electronic mail system because it is an ideal means of carrying out any type of one to one marketing action (Smith, 2012).

In the view of Parise et al. (2016), e-mail marketing is a good complement to offline marketing. Some of the benefits highlighted in the studies are interactivity, customization, low intrusiveness, savings, reduction of times and distances; it also avoids inconveniences related to legal and brand risks. Its purpose is to generate a good price to induce the desired purchase.

5.3.3 Affiliate Marketing

This digital marketing strategy refers to online platforms where advertisers are contacted who want to advertise their brand, their products, or their services with Web pages of all kinds and size that are intended to include advertising on the site for economic purposes (Peterson et al., 2010; Cook, 2014; Payne et al., 2017). The advertisers indicate the commission they offer to the media for using their advertising and, according to the commission, use an advertiser. Therefore the affiliate network rents the commission that the advertiser pays to the affiliate. Affiliate marketing is a form of Internet distribution based on commissions in which one company (advertiser) rewards economically another (publisher) for generating business through a series of links introduced in the website (Payne et al., 2017). These Hyperlinks can be routed to the direct sale of the product or sent to the user who has accessed the website to the selling company's page.

5.3.4 Search Engine Marketing

Search engine optimization consists of applying techniques and strategies to locate preferentially, via keywords or words key, websites in the search engines. The main motivation is that the companies want and need to be well-positioned in the network, which is equivalent to be among the first thirty results offered by different search engines (Munro & Richards, 2011). As per SLR, it is important to be positioned in the network; although “being” in the network means very little, the important thing is “to be visible to the user” (Gopalani & Shick, 2011; Munro & Richards, 2011).

5.3.5 Social Media Marketing (SMM)

The Internet makes it possible to have conversations between individual customers and companies that were simply impossible in the era of traditional media (Almazroue et al., 2020; Khasawneh et al., 2021b). Through Social Media, a company can converse individually with all of its customers in a unique and personalized way because the SMM are tools of communication that allow listening and speaking with the client (Heller and Parasnis, 2011; Rawson et al., 2013; Edelman and Heller, 2015). From a technical approach, SMMs can be described as platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others to publish content where the users make decisions about the published content (Al-Maroof et al., 2021). These users become people influencers whose thematic agenda is subject to personal circumstances and/or professionals of each.

One of the most significant SMM approaches is Facebook marketing (Edelman and Heller, 2015). Facebook, with more than 800 million users, works equivalently to a meeting place between customers or users with similar needs and interests who share, both professionally and personally. So it is considered the most important social network worldwide. From the perspective of marketing, it is especially interesting for products and services aimed at markets having huge consumption potential (Edelman and Heller, 2015). Many companies have their profile on Facebook and constitute one of the best tools when communicating and interacting with customers.

5.3.6 Corporate Blogs

According to Goodman (2019), the term blog corresponds to a Web frequently updated, chronologically structured offering information about one or several topics in an informal and accessible way, written by one or more authors and where the most recent one appears first and with the author retaining the freedom to publish what he/she thinks relevant. These are weblogs of personal, journalistic, business or corporate, technological, etc. Corporate blogs are published to achieve business objectives such as the positioning of the brand, the firm, and the internal communication where blogs act as a management tool for the knowledge and external communication to strengthen relationships with key groups of clients (Bughin et al., 2018).

5.3.7 Other Tools

Mobile Apps: Mobile applications are essential within an e-marketing strategy. The customer experience is fundamental, and the reputation of the brand is at stake. Some studies such as (Mitic & Kapoulas, 2012) and (Dennis et al., 2014) recommended including mobile applications within a company's mobile marketing strategy and taking advantage of the capabilities of mobile phones, making them simple and useful, integrating them into a marketing strategy of the company, using external Apps, choosing the right platform, including social networks, attracting the client and measuring the result.

Electronic product configurators and verifiers: An online product configurator is a special software that is inserted inside a site and allows the potential buyer to customize their product according to all the options available to them (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). A product verifier is a system (software + hardware) that focuses on choosing options to show the product from all possible points of view. The navigator has experience as close as possible to that of a “physical test” of the product. Lemon and Verhoef (2016) highlighted that it is especially useful in products such as clothing and increases the customer perception of the brand and promotes trust.

Electronic coupons: e-coupons seek that the buyer prefers a brand, product/store in exchange for a discount on the purchase, a sample, or a free product (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). The traditional coupon required going to the establishment to benefit from the discount; the new technologies reduced the process by just clicking on the computer or pressing a button on the phone to capture coupons to be exchanged electronically.

e- Survey: This tool facilitates marketing research by evaluating processes to determine the loyalty ratios, level of satisfaction with the purchase and customer service, etc. (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). This tool also facilitates the client's relationship to ensure that the products, services, and prices satisfy them, know better the tastes, satisfactions and interests, and segment them to make a more personalized offer.

5.4 Market Segmentation in the Digital Era and Customer Experience

To adopt an effective digital marketing strategy in order to create a positive customer experience, it is essential to defines the profiles of the customers and places them in the appropriate segment. In the view of Hollebeek (2011), customer segmentation allows targeting particular groups of customers efficiently. Studies defined different market segments such as Backuppers, Bluetooths, Browsers, Hackers, Trojans, and Virals (Flavián et al., 2019; Iankova et al., 2018; Ryan, 2014; Verma et al., 2012). Examining these segments would also help in understanding how negative customer experience would hamper the company/business.

Backuppers: Corresponds to those satisfied customers who do not pronounce or exercise any kind of influence in the market (Verma et al., 2012). The business achieved through these clients is what they generate personally, i.e., the Medium Business Potential (MPN) or the VEC. These clients allow the company to survive without risk. The MPN is the weighted sum of the client's successful experience and the value that can generate the weighting coefficients depending on the strategic objectives of the company.

Bluetooth: The customers are satisfied enough to boast of their belonging to the company/organization (Ryan, 2014). They exert a positive influence on the market. The business will be the sum of the personal business plus the amount generated by its influence, which corresponds to the Net Positive Influence Index (NPII). The volume of the business that the clients of this segment suppose is: (NPII + 1) x MPN.

Browsers: The customers who, not being satisfied, do not keep the relationship, but they also have no influence on the market, so they do not destroy extra value, but customers lose only the MPN in this segment (Iankova et al., 2018).

Hackers: They are those customers who, in addition to not being satisfied with the products and/or services of the company, not only do not maintain the relationship but rather exert a strong negative influence among potential customers (Flavián et al., 2019) which corresponds to the Net Negative Influence Index (NNII). Therefore, the destruction of value due to this type of client is: (NNII + 1) x MPN.

Trojans: These are those customers that are maintained due to the different obstacles that condition their exit and that the company has established, for example, permanency contracts that under the assumption of loyalty establish some companies with which the user has no other option but to stay and continue paying, but the negative influence they exert on the market due to the mixture of dissatisfaction and frustration is very dangerous for the company (Iankova et al., 2018; Schneider, 2014). It corresponds to a specific destruction segment that can be evaluated with (NNII – 1) x MPN. The value (−1) is maintained during the period of time in which the obstacle for the exit of the client, that is, the time during which he continues to pay the fee for the service rendered.

Virals: These are those customers who are necessary to conquer more and more. If their experience is satisfactory with the acquisition of product/service, they communicate it to others, that is, exert a strong positive influence and attract undecided customers or others who had not even considered it; therefore, the volume of business that they contribute, is the derivative of their influence, constituting a new continuity (Bilgihan, 2016; Flavián et al., 2019). Its evaluation corresponds to the expression: (NPII – 1) x MPN.

The following Table 3 shows that summary for the different market segments and indexes to measure customer experience (Heller and Parasnis, 2011; Rawson et al., 2013; Edelman and Heller, 2015) (Table 4).

Table 3 Digital marketing activities and related digital marketing strategies and tools
Full size table
Table 4 Different market segments and indexes to measure customer experience
Full size table

6 Discussion

In contemporary years, it has become clear that all effective marketing strategies intended to improve the customer experience. Their voices are the ones that establish brands, form the market, and directly affect sales, so it appears rational that marketing determinations must work towards enhancing their experience (Tiago et al., 2014).

The SLR presented several strategies and tools which can enhance customer experience and generate a positive perception of the brand. One of the most important strategies is the eWOM campaign, which, as per the scholars, can effectively maximize customer experience (Kane et al., 2015; Ryan, 2016). This tool does not require much effort since the action of the users themselves transmits the message; the key is to find the key attraction that drives the multiplier diffusion. Likewise, it offers a quick brand promotion, a small investment volume, a very high response rate, and generates pre-existing social networks offering great efficiency and interactivity. However, Gill and VanBoskirk (2016) argued that customer experience could be affected badly if the loss of the message occurred or the interruption of the file by the antivirus preventing the reception of the message or the distortion of the message by the receiving audience; thus, creating a negative customer experience.

Likewise, the SLR highlighted e-mailing as the most powerful and effective e-marketing channel with the potential to maximize customer experience. In the view of Bilgihan (2016), the perception and experience of a customer concerning a certain product improve when the advertising message is personal and interactive. E-mailing, being a multidirectional channel, allows knowing the clients' opinions and allows real-time tracking of the action's effectiveness (Hudson et al., 2012). Likewise, the recipient of any communication via e-mail must have authorized and consented to send messages (permission marketing), what otherwise constitutes reportable illegality in several countries like the US and Spain. In addition, Homburg et al. (2017) maintained that to maximize customer experience. An e-mail must be short, no more than 30 or 40 characters, or a maximum of seven or eight words and include words such as “offer,” “gift,” “urgent,” or questions that generate interest of the customers (Nash et al., 2013). Customization is the key when maximizing customer experience via e-mail marketing. However, similar to eWOM, email marketing can create a negative customer experience if messages are sent with false and misleading content. Customers can also become a Spam victim, which would also damage the customer experience (Hudson et al., 2012).

Another strategy is affiliate marketing, which aims to transform the customers into affiliates. Affiliation agreements between advertisers and sellers are operationalized through the so-called affiliate programs to which you can Access by click and by sale (Chou, 2019). Affiliate marketing can do a lot to construct trust, particularly when the affiliate has an enormous following. Instead of asking consumers to take the company’s word for the quality of its goods and services, it asks someone else to do this for it while growing the experience and reach of the brand. Bolton et al. (2018) argued that the usage of referral programs enhances the impact of affiliate programs on customer experience. DropBox, Netflix, Uber are all incredibly successful examples of how “refer a friend” can boom a business. Some companies like Dell incorporate affiliate marketing with Electronic product configurators, a very complex tool from the technological point of view. A classic example of this type of tool is Dell computers' brand that allows customers to configure computers that they buy according to their online preferences without limiting those already configured with fixed characteristics (Bolton et al., 2018).

Furthermore, search engine marketing or SEO aims to create a positive customer experience by showing the customers the products on the first page of the engine. Studies show that users do not usually go beyond the third page of results. To achieve, it is necessary to optimize the Web page, that is, adapt it so that seekers understand it better and value it more (Dumitrescu et al., 2012). This is the most economical way to position the company on the Internet. The first thing for a positive customer experience is to choose the keywords for the activity to be published. Petit et al. (2019) maintained that it is necessary to perform comparative analyses with the competition through dashboards that allow companies to monitor certain words or combinations of words.

As mentioned, for the generation of positive customer experience, personalization, and customization, as well as interaction, are fundamental aspects of the digital era. Marketing via social media offers the customers the ease of access, participation, personalization to the user's taste and conversation, among others (Nash et al., 2013). The most striking feature of Social Media is the viral capacity that its contents acquire and from a business point of view. This relevance can occur between activities such as purchase, consumption or capture of attention. Numerous social networks aim to enhance the customer experience in a different approach and are suggested by several authors. The following table shows the types of these networks (Table 5).

Table 5 Types of social networks and respective approach to enhance customer experience
Full size table

As far as corporate blogging is concerned, similar to SMM, it tends to create decentralized information engaging the customers on a large scale (Tiago et al., 2014). Some of the studies regarded blogs as one of the most effective approaches to enhance the customer experience owing to faithfulness, loyalty, and trust among the customers. Faithfulness is based on the relationship of trust that is established with the blog editor, hence the importance of respecting their principles, and although they may become corporate vehicles or commercial the rules have to be maintained. Studies such as (Dörner & Edelman, 2015; Solis et al., 2014) argued that similar to e-mailing, if used properly, a blog allows the company's positioning as an organization of experts least in one suitable place. Because of its social environment, blogs allow the customers to participate publicly, free, and in real-time. Any reader can know the opinion of all the participants, which is a great advantage over the traditional written press. This is one of the characteristics that has made blogs the main drivers of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. However, they entail the danger that certain comments made without foundation affect the image and the positioning of some company, a risk it shares with viral/buzz marketing or eWOM (Petit et al., 2019).

7 Threats to Internal and External Validity

For the SLR findings, the key threats can be those associated with external and construct validity and reliability. This is because the chosen research method, i.e., SLR, mainly focused on the selection and categorization of previous studies.

The threat to external validity is when the competence to generalize the publication's findings is restricted (Klink & Smith, 2001). For the present study, a likely threat would be whether the chosen publications characterize a substantial portion of the past studies on current digital marketing strategies and customer experience. The researcher intended to reduce this threat by employing four online databases for the systematic search and employing the citation research method. Still, the researcher overlooked several digital databases and did not carry out manual research. Consequently, there are likely a few papers that could not be retrieved from the libraries and were not referred to by any of the publications carefully chosen.

Construct validity is the extent to which a test measures what it purports or claims to be measuring (Heale & Twycross, 2015). In the present study, the key threat was whether the search strings reflected the original intentions. The researcher aimed to reduce this threat by authenticating the strings from a marketing professional. When validating the strings, the researcher confirmed if publications were incorporated in the sample.

Reliability is related to what degree the data and the analysis are reliant on the particular researchers (Heale & Twycross, 2015). In the present study, the extraction of data was achieved by three experts within the field of marketing. Thus, this threat was minimized by selecting the maximum number of researchers for the task.

8 Conclusion

In the digital era, customer experience becomes positive if the information reached in the first instant is distributive, horizontal, and backed by many references such as peers and colleagues. This can be achieved most effectively via social media marketing, especially Facebook marketing. Digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing allows the development of products of the client's preference since the social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter facilitate research in a more personalized way in order to develop products that necessarily enhance the customer experience. In addition, using social media does not generate high costs.

The customers who connect to social networks do so because they are interested in the information that is published by the contact list; while generating content that their friends follow, becoming a platform that allows society to access information valid outside the traditional media. When the customer experience is positive, these users become social media influencers, thus improving brand sales and productivity.

At present, social networks have consolidated as platforms oriented to the business world, and without having an active presence in it is practically impossible to achieve online reputation and image. Even corporate bogging can be done via social media platforms, and debates and discussions can be carried out on any subject in an agile way. The best way to increase the customer experience is to complement social media marketing strategy with tools such as electronic product configurators and verifiers or e-coupons. This would enhance customer perception of the brand.

Overall, this review is important for marketing professionals as it emphasizes the significance of selecting appropriate digital marketing strategies as per marketing activities to maximize customer experience. The Internet is the most powerful tool for businesses. Marketing managers who fail to utilize the Internet's importance in their business marketing strategy will be disadvantaged because the Internet is changing the brand, pricing, distribution, and promotion strategy. Future research should focus on selecting a particular industry or organization to conduct a qualitative or quantitative study to determine the effectiveness of social media marketing strategy.