Omnichannel Marketing
7 min

A Guide to Omnichannel Customer Experience

article

Let’s start with an example you must have experienced yourself.

You visit the mobile website of an e-retailer. After browsing products for a few minutes, you add some to your shopping cart and wish list, then log off.

When you next browse social media, you see an ad with products from categories that interest you. Checking your inbox on your laptop, you notice an email reminding you of items in your shopping cart. You can even walk to the nearby physical location and pick it up.

That, in a nutshell, is an omnichannel experience. It’s valuable not just for retailers but also for fintech, mobile apps, or any category that wants to keep up with changing consumer habits.

This guide will explain why it matters and how you can create a winning omnichannel experience for your consumers.

There are six steps:

  1. What does an omnichannel strategy do?
  2. Why is it essential for today’s consumers?
  3. How to create an omnichannel customer experience
  4. Best practices in omnichannel marketing
  5. The challenges to watch for
  6. Some successful omnichannel examples

With a proper omnichannel strategy, you can seamlessly guide your consumers from one touchpoint to the next as they move up the marketing funnel.

What Does An Omnichannel Strategy Do?

An omnichannel strategy unifies consumer experiences across channels. This could include social media, mobile web, push notifications, etc. Sales, marketing, and service platforms are likewise connected.

Such alignment is the main difference between multichannel and omnichannel strategies. Multichannel strategies also use various platforms but don’t take the critical step of seamlessly linking them together.

An omnichannel strategy can make a significant difference in customer convenience and conversions.

  • Studies show that using three or more channels in an automated, linked manner got an 18.96% engagement rate, while the number for a single channel was just 5.4%.
  • When interacting with three or more channels, customers bought 250% more frequently than customers who only engaged with one channel.
  • Customers who engaged with three or more channels were 90% more likely to return for another purchase. Retention for these brands was 66.12%

 

An effective omnichannel strategy makes consumers not only purchase more but also purchase more over time. Research shows that 9 out of 10 consumers want omnichannel service rather than interacting separately at each step.

Why Is it Important For Today’s Consumers?

Fifteen years ago, the average consumer used approximately two touchpoints when buying an item. Only 7% regularly used more than four. Today, consumers use almost six touchpoints. Nearly 50% regularly use more than four.

 

Regarding purchases and being influenced, they get information from various platforms: physical stores, online search, social media, apps, and more. The growing importance of the online world has only made such behavior stronger.

A Harvard Business Review study indicates that consumers who used more channels were worth more to a business. They spent an average of 4% more in physical stores and 10% more than single-channel online customers.

Customers now expect productive and personalized interactions. It makes sense for companies to deliver this. Whether retention, lifetime value, or valuable insights into the marketing funnel, an omnichannel approach pays off.

How to Create an Omnichannel Customer Experience

Generally speaking, five sequential steps are involved in creating a satisfying omnichannel experience for the customer.

1. Research, strategy, and design

It begins with understanding the consumer. You should research their desired needs and know what they’re looking for and how they look for it. This consumer-focused vision should be shared with the entire marketing and sales team. Value propositions, as well as business goals, can be built around consumer segments. Then comes the process of designing your omnichannel universe. This involves planning service journeys and ensuring that end-to-end digital and live-contact experiences are matched.

2. Identify touchpoints

After this, you need to identify consumer touchpoints. How do they interact with your brand? There could be those who prefer digital, those who balance between digital and offline, and a few who are primarily offline. All touchpoints need to be linked so that the consumer journey is uninterrupted.

3. Plot the funnel

As you know, a marketing funnel maps the consumer’s behavior from when they first interact with your brand to purchase and loyalty. With a data-based knowledge of consumer behavior and an understanding of the touchpoints, you can use an omnichannel strategy to guide them onward. Attention can be paid to planning bridges between interactions so that the consumer moves from step to step.

4. Use the right technology

Of course, technology and automation are vital to the process. The right digital tools will go a long way in ensuring integration. For example, a chatbot on your home page could request an email, and then the email strategy can take over to recommend an action, and a push notification can serve as a reminder. Enabling technology delivered through the right IT architecture is essential.

5. Study feedback and find gaps

Collecting and analyzing data is also vital. Information can be gathered through automated processes as well as through consumer feedback. Studying this will enable you to tweak your efforts. You can identify best-performing channels, understand the points where the consumer needs more interaction, and optimize efforts.

 

Some Best Practices in Omnichannel Marketing

There are specific techniques and methods that successful omnichannel marketers use for the best results. Understanding these will help you to do the same.

1. Emphasize mobile services

The latest mobile statistics show that 51 percent of internet users use mobile phones to purchase online products. Two out of every three (66 percent) say they use shopping apps on their mobile devices. Mobile cannot be ignored. Make all your web pages, emails, push notifications, and the rest optimized for mobile. Further, emphasize offline customer service journeys such as service centers and helplines to integrate them into the consumer journey.

2. Leverage social media

In 2020, there were 3.96 billion consumers actively using social media, an increase of 10.9% year-on-year from 2019. The growth is phenomenal. Leverage this to turn it into a service and information tool. It is important to be topical, quick in responding, and to create ways for the consumer to go from the social media post to another channel. One Twitter study showed that customers who received prompt replies from airlines were more satisfied with their experience. They were more willing to recommend the airline and willing to pay more money for a ticket for that airline in the future.

3. Don’t ignore text messages

Text messages have become so common nowadays that many companies overlook their usefulness. It can carry out a variety of needs, from linking to other sites to reminders to confirmation notices. Research shows that SMS open rates are as high as 98%, and about 33% of marketers will prioritize mobile loyalty schemes and coupons in their plans for next year.

The Challenges to Watch For

Change is often complicated because so many old practices are already firmly established. It’s the same with omnichannel marketing. Here are some challenges that can be faced:

Data boundaries: Often, individual departments collect and store data associated with their function. However, an omnichannel strategy’s point is to combine and update all of this for the best consumer experience. Efforts should be made to overcome such silos.

Personalization across channels: Observing segmented consumer behavior and providing engagement avenues is at the heart of an omnichannel approach. All channels, therefore, should be rejigged to allow for such personalization.

A consistent approach: Unifying channels for a seamless system means one approach should prevail. Care should be taken that one channel is not divergent from the other.

Quick response times: As we saw in the case of social media, quick response time is a real asset. The same speed should be observed across all channels, be it a helpline, an email, or a text message.

Some Successful Omnichannel Examples

1. Sephora

Sephora, a leading retail beauty chain, puts consumer experience before all else. Their mobile app uses location-based marketing to recognize when a consumer is near the store, to entice them in. Make-up artists use iPads and other mobile devices with clients to showcase shades and styles until they find the perfect match. It can be ordered and shipped via a mobile device if you need a specific shade. New products, video tutorials, and all the latest news and trends are delivered to consumers digitally as part of the Sephora experience.

 

2. Kredivo

Kredivo, one of the fastest-growing and the stickiest digital payment channels for E-commerce in Indonesia, realized that online shoppers today use at least two devices before they make a purchase. They wanted to stay with these customers every step of the way. They implemented an omnichannel engagement strategy to engage and convert new customers to get a 20% uplift in push notification delivery and a 64% conversion rate for triggered emails.


3. Starbucks

Starbucks uses a highly effective omnichannel strategy. There is an app for information and ordering and a newsletter to engage across touchpoints. They have a loyalty rewards scheme for more discounts and to make checkouts at Starbucks even easier. The more the consumer engages, the more rewards and incentives are offered across channels.

For more practical and effective advice on how to put an omnichannel strategy into place, check out this free e-book.

Takeaways

  • The more touchpoints you use, the more you can engage your consumer.
  • It’s essential to research consumer behavior and only then design a strategy.
  • Personalization pays dividends.
  • Feedback will reveal gaps in the funnel, and technology can help you to plug these.

Today, your consumer has access to more channels than ever before every single day. Savvy marketers use and align all these channels for a seamless experience across touchpoints. These ensure that the consumer is reached at the right time, in the right place, and with the right message. Step by step, this omnichannel experience will guide them up the funnel until loyalty is created.

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