Omnichannel is a cross-channel content strategy used to improve the customer experience and drive better relationships across all possible channels and touchpoints. This includes traditional and digital channels, point-of-sale, and physical and online experiences.
Omnichannel refers to the multichannel sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated shopping experience. Each channel works together to create a unified experience – the customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store, and the experience will be seamless.
Examples of omnichannel marketing include:
- A customer receiving a SMS message about a sale or promotion while shopping in-store
- A customer receiving a cart abandonment email
- A customer receiving retargeting ads for abandon cart products
The growing number of available marketing channels has made the customer journey increasingly intricate. Follow these steps to easily create an omnichannel marketing strategy to satisfy customers at all touchpoints:
1. Think Consumer-First
A major difference that separates omnichannel and multichannel marketing is the fact that omnichannel prioritizes the customer. The first step to omnichannel success lays in evaluating the customer journey.
Take a look at every touchpoint a buyer comes across before becoming your customer. Do these touchpoints provide a consistent customer experience? If not, you’ll need to gather the necessary departments to make this change. Each department should be aligned with a customer-first focus and work to facilitate engaging customer experiences.
2. Know Your Customers
It is highly important that marketing teams understand their customers. This means developing buyer personas, identifying target audiences, and understanding their wants, needs, behaviors, demographics, preferences, and goals.
From there, you’ll want to leverage available first-, second-, and third-party data to analyze and identify patterns in buyer preferences. It will be helpful to use the right tools to gather, analyze, and store this data. Once you understand who your customers are, it becomes exceedingly easier to deliver appropriate marketing.
3. Use the Right MarTech
Once you’ve identified your customers, you must identify the tools and solutions you will use to connect with them. Choosing the tools that fit within your tech stack can be complicated, however, we recommend looking into the following solutions to start:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
- Fully Integrated Customer Engagement Platform
- Marketing Automation Tools
- Social Media Management Solutions
- Data Analytics Tools
4. Segment Your Users
It is important to segment your audience based on the data points and audience characteristics that are most important to your business goals. You can develop segments based on buyer personas, paths to purchase, subscription status, and more. Proper segmentation helps e-commerce companies effectively tackle marketing and re-marketing efforts.
5. Personalize Across All Channels
Personalization is the most crucial element of omnichannel marketing. This is what makes your customers feel appreciated. Successful personalization requires you to establish a 1:1 connection with each member of your target audience. With the right data points, automation and analysis tools, your organization will be able to deliver individualized content to recipients. This will improve the customer experience, drive revenue, increase brand loyalty, and create consistency across channels.
6. Track Your Success with the Right Metrics
Tracking the right metrics using the right tools allows you to report accurate data and derive actionable insights to enhance your omnichannel approach. By capturing the right metrics, you can better report on the successes and failures of your omnichannel strategy and use those data points to revise your strategy and enhance ROI.
