Omnichannel marketing refers to all marketing strategies and solutions that help deliver smooth communication optimised for every platform you’re using to speak to your customers. Key characteristics of omnichannel marketing:
- It reaches customers where they are.
- It adapts to the customer’s schedule.
- If the customer decides to change their preferred platform, omnichannel marketing will follow instead of persuading the customer to come back.
- The customer can expect an established communication pattern on any channel.
It all sounds good but how does it look when translated into practice? Let’s say you’re a brand selling beauty & care products. You have a website with a chatbot, a blog, an app, accounts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and your YouTube channel with makeup tutorials.
You run regular campaigns sending emails, SMS, web pushes and mobile pushes. Some of your customers may regularly interact with all of these channels, some may only visit a website and follow on Facebook, some may be subscribed to emails but not to push notifications.
Being omnichannel means all your clients and subscribers get to interact with your brand and content you produce on the channel they prefer. No matter what information they’re needing at the moment, say how to ship internationally or how to take care of 35+ skin, they should be able to get it on the website, in the blog articles, through a chatbot, in social accounts and through your campaigns. The same applies to B2B businesses. Content on your blog, on YoutTube or in podcasts may differ in format but should follow one strategy.
Omni Principles
An omnichannel approach can be used at any stage of the customer journey, be it acquisition, retargeting, retention or re-engagement.
Plus, it’s quite flexible. You don’t necessarily have to use all platforms for a certain task at once. You can focus on the one or ones that fit your current needs most and direct all your budget and resources to it.
For example, if you have a strong blog with loyal followers and a newsletter with 10K subscribers, they will be your top priorities when launching a new product or running an event. And if you have a big following on Instagram, regular stories, live broadcasting with partners and Q&A sessions would be the core activities.
Automation Built-In
When people think of omnichannel strategies, they picture a lot of routines to take care of and multiple platforms to learn to use. However, it doesn’t have to be that hard. In fact, modern technologies enable to automate your marketing processes and run most activities within one system.
If you choose a professional all-in-one marketing automation software that supports sending of bulk and transactional messages, customer data tracking and collection, personalisation, segmentation, etc. you can operate all activities at one place though unified contact profiles and automated workflows.
Look at this example of a multichannel workflow that involves 4 channels: email, web push, mobile push and Viber. It runs automatically and messages are sent to users based on their response. E.g.
- It helps preserve your contact base: People may stop following you on a certain channel while keeping the conversation on others. Users can unsubscribe from your email campaigns but still be willing to receive your SMS or app notifications. That’s why when running omnichannel marketing, you can move communication with a client to another instead of deleting them from your base.
- It helps collect customer data: Today, customer data runs the marketing world. The more you know about your customers, their shopping habits, behavioural patterns and preferences, the more personalised communication you can build and the more satisfying experience you can deliver. And the more channels you use, the more data you have to analyse. Knowing what product categories people browse, when they tend to open their email, what offers they most likely click help build a solid customer image and understand your target audience better.
- Omnichannel marketing delivers a better customer experience: Of course it does so provided you manage it properly. The whole idea of omnichannel is to lead a customer through all cycles of their journey in the most comfortable and smooth way. If your customers speak to support managers who know the history of interaction, if they receive content based on their browsing interests, if they are sent messages, bulk or transactional, to channels they prefer, they will have no reasons to go elsewhere looking for a better service.
Summary
Omnichannel marketing offers a business numerous advantages like an improved customer experience, collection of personal data, higher sales rates, longer customer lifecycle and audience loyalty. If you’re new to marketing, add channels to your marketing strategy by one, making sure they follow your corporate tone of voice and stick to the general content strategy.
