There are countless omnichannel marketing tools on the market. Some are powerful, some are simple. They don't all deliver the best experience for customers, work across channels, or integrate with existing software.
Companies with an efficient omnichannel customer engagement strategy keep 83% of their customers, on average. Businesses with weaker strategies keep only 33%, on average. When it comes to marketers adopting omnichannel marketing tools, we’re nearing the point of no return. Customers have come to expect a consistent, engaging omnichannel experience. Anything that doesn’t deliver could result in lost business and a damaged reputation.
Marketers must perfect their omnichannel MarTech stack to retain and delight customers.
Omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering seamless customer experiences regardless of channel.
How does it differ from other approaches? Here are some definitions:
Omnichannel marketing promotes products and services across all channels, devices, and platforms. Customers enjoy unified, personalised, relevant, and on-brand communications.
Example: A company sends a weekly email newsletter with product news and offers. Insights from customer shopping behavior informs the content of the email.
Multi-channel marketing promotes products and services across many online and offline channels. Messages are similar across channels but aren't personalised based on customer behavior. Each channel operates independently.
Example: A company sends a weekly email newsletter with product news and offers.
Cross-channel marketing promotes products and services by blending channels and messages to create a logical progression to push customers from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the next. The channels work together to provide context for the messages customers receive as they go from one channel to another.
Example: A company sends a weekly email newsletter with the latest products and offers. Then they post product tests and reviews on social media to encourage customers to buy them.
Here are some things to think about when you’re crafting what an omnichannel experience could look like for your customers.
Before you do any marketing activity – omnichannel or otherwise – you need to know who your target audience is. Think about who’s buying from you now, who would ideally buy from you, what their pain points are, and how your service can help them. Understanding your customers means you'll attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business.
Knowing the journey your customers take when they interact with your brand allows you to have a deeper understanding of them.
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer experience from the first to the last touchpoint. Making one helps you provide the best experience possible, solve customer pain points, and achieve long-term success.
Not all customers are alike. You’ll have a mass of customer data, but you can’t do an awful lot with it without segmenting it in some way. You need to turn your data into a collection of sub-sets that you can use to deliver a better customer experience.
Segmenting your customers into categories based on their behavior, preferences, and other demographics will help you to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to an omnichannel approach where you can serve customers with tailored marketing messages.
Once you’ve got your data segmented, you can start to personalize your marketing activity to increase loyalty and improve customer satisfaction. You can use what you know about them to communicate with customers as individuals and send them relevant, timely content to help them along their journey. For example, a new customer to a category should receive relevant messages and offers to help them deepen their engagement and understanding.
Coupons are powerful marketing tools. They can help you get your brand in front of more customers, increase loyalty, and drive sales. Using the right coupon marketing software, marketers can provide personalized offers based on data like customer preferences, previous purchases, or average basket size.
It works on any channel by giving customers a paper or digital coupon. Some software includes a digital receipt feature for extra convenience. This means you can catch the attention of your customers with something that’s more likely to result in a purchase and help them to save money, buy that item they’ve had their eye on, or treat themselves.
An intuitive audience builder will help you to create customer audiences easily. It will work alongside or integrate with your analytics tool so that you can create profiles and lists to target customers with personalised offers. These audiences should update in real-time, so you don’t have to repeat work as your database grows.
You’ll have a lot of customer data, but it needs to be processed and analyzed properly before you can use it to your advantage. It also needs to be collected in a single format and stored in a centralized system. An analytics platform can do this and will help you to understand customer behavior, drive more effective and relevant marketing, and target with precision in real-time.
They can gather point of sale (POS) data and data from other customer touchpoints, analyze it, and inform you about your customers. They can collect data in-store, online, and via mobile app for deeper insights on:
These insights can be used to engage and re-engage customers with personalized offers and content. In some cases, the software can predict and recommend promotions and actions unique to individuals based on their data, too. And, having access to analytics behind every campaign or offer you run means you can always test, assess, and improve – a great way to refine your omnichannel approach.
Being able to organize and schedule campaigns helps you to stay on top of your ever-growing marketing to-do list, and with analytics you can test and learn from the results. With automation features, you can set up workflows to limit manual tasks and give customers a more seamless experience.
If you choose the right tools for the job, think about your customers first, and make sure any new software integrates with existing software, you could benefit from:
There’s really no reason not to think about using omnichannel marketing tools to drive your own customer engagement.
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