As experience has shown us, messages that are too sales-y, unhelpful and uncreative don’t work anymore. So, what do you do?
Well, this is where omnichannel channel marketing comes in to save the day.
Creating an omnichannel strategy is your secret weapon to increase conversions and increase the effectiveness and value of your messages.
According to statistics, omnichannel marketing is so effective that the purchase frequency is 250% higher for omnichannel compared to single-channel marketing.
With that in mind, let’s see how to create the best omnichannel marketing strategy to supercharge your customer lifecycle marketing efforts.
What Is Omnichannel Marketing?
It may sound confusing but I reassure you that omnichannel marketing isn’t rocket science.
However, if this is the first time you’re hearing about it, then let’s cover the definition first.
Omnichannel marketing is a sales approach that aims at providing a seamless and unified customer experience throughout your customer’s journey.
Compared to the multi-channel approach, where the message of each channel is separate and unique, in omnichannel marketing, every channel works together to create a unified message for your company.
To put it simply, your omnichannel strategy is like putting together the Avengers.
And you, as the marketing equivalent of Nick Fury, need to put them together and make them collaborate effectively to save the day!
The Best Channels For Omnichannel Marketing
Modern marketers have a plethora of marketing channels that are easily accessible by everyone with an internet connection.
While the smooth collaboration between channels is your golden ticket to rock your omnichannel marketing strategy, using every single channel out there won’t work.
To select the best channels, you need to find out the ones that your audience uses the most to reach out to you.
Then, you simply need to leverage them the right way and you’re ready to set the omnichannel gears in motion.
Here are some of the most popular channels that consumers use to communicate with businesses.
Email marketing
According to DMA’s report, email has the best ROI out there with $52 received for every $1 you spend on it.
To take advantage of this incredible channel, you need to capture your visitors’ email addresses and then deliver a customer experience that will be seamless and unified.
The easiest way to capture those emails is to create and place an online form on your website.
Then, you need to display it to your visitors and incentivize them to give you their address in exchange for an amazing reward.
Here’s a newsletter signup form from Timberland’s website:
After collecting those addresses, you can use your email marketing platform to manage your mailing lists and create wonderful campaigns.
If you still haven’t found the perfect platform for your email marketing strategy, you can benefit from some of the best free email marketing services out there, test them out and see what suits you best.
Social Media
It’s a fact that social media is one of the most efficient digital marketing channels to boost brand visibility.
Modern customers will not only spend time sharing content with their peers, but they’ll also use social media as a channel to search for new brands and products.
Some will also send you a direct message asking you for information or further assistance.
This means that social media is more than an engagement channel.
Using some of the most famous platforms like Facebook and Instagram is an amazing way to offer good customer service, build trust, and turn your followers into loyal supporters of your brand.
Mobile
Another popular channel that’s vital for the omnichannel customer experience is mobile.
According to statistics, the number of mobile users is going to reach 7.33 billion users by 2023, so the need to include it in your strategy is dire.
Through special recommendations, in-app messaging and push notifications, businesses can deliver more personalized customer experiences than ever before.
For instance, allowing a customer to continue their shopping experience on mobile without having to add their items in their shopping basket anew will give them a seamless experience that will push them a step further down your sales funnel.
Also, leveraging mobile will also give you access to SMS marketing, an important tool to deliver real-time and personalized messages directly to your customers’ smartphones.
For example, a well-timed cart abandonment SMS with a discount code will reach your customer faster than an email will, and chances are, it’ll be read almost instantly. This way, you have a better opportunity to convert customers with time-sensitive offers, all with SMS marketing tools.
Now that we assembled your team of marketing’s mightiest channels, it’s time to create the best omnichannel strategy for your business.
4 Ways To Create An Efficient Omnichannel Strategy
1. Leverage personalization
Personalization is one of the most crucial elements to improve your marketing campaign efficiency and conversion rate.
To convert, modern consumers need to see relevant content that will be both helpful and valuable to them.
While personalization might seem like a grand task, it’s actually one of the easiest things to implement and benefit from.
Here’s how you can do it.
Segment Your Audience
To deliver more relevant content, you should segment your mailing list into groups with similar interests.
Again, you can leverage the power of your online forms to collect valuable data like your subscribers’ age, gender, and geographical location.
When you collect this information, you can divide your audience based on demographics and deliver content that will be tailored to them.
Here’s an example from Converse:
Personalize Your Copy
Using your followers’ names when you talk to them on social media is the best way to make your messages friendlier.
When it comes to emails, though, you should strategically add your subscriber’s name either in your subject line or in the body of your email.
Just think that a simple “Hey, John” feels a lot more personal than the generic “Hey there” found in mass-sent campaigns.
Similarly, your subject lines should feel as personal as possible in order to incentivize your subscribers to open your emails.
Here’s how The Dollar Shave Club uses personalization in both:
These emails are so well-done they make me wish I had a beard, but let’s not expand on that.
All in all, a personalized copy and subject line is the basis for a successful eCommerce strategy.
So, never forget to leverage personalization for higher open and click-through rates.
2. Use Your Customers’ Favorite Channels
The first step to a successful omnichannel marketing strategy is to identify and choose the right channels.
To select the best ones for your strategy, though, you need to leverage the channels your target audience uses to reach you.
For example, if your target audience uses Twitter to engage with you, then you should consider creating a Twitter profile to interact with them and solve their problems.
Here’s a great example from Delta Hotels on Twitter:
Forcing your audience to follow you on specific channels isn’t what omnichannel is about.
So, make sure to fully adopt a customer-centric approach first and then start building your Instagram or Facebook marketing strategy.
Since omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering a seamless experience, you should make sure that every representative is fully aware of individual customer problems.
So, next time a customer talks to a different representative about their issue, they’ll feel like talking to a single person who understands and knows their problem.
3. Map The Customer Journey
Understanding your customers is equally important to deliver the best customer experiences.
The only problem, though, is that customers behave very differently from one another.
Hence, you can’t come up with a single strategy that will apply to every single one of them.
To understand your customers, you need to map your individual customer journeys and use individual data to create your strategy from scratch.
As you can see, a customer journey consists of various stages of interaction between the buyer and your company.
To fully understand it, you need to map every step your customer takes from awareness to purchase and identify the multiple touchpoints across multiple channels.
As a result, you’ll manage to create effective messages that will increase your brand engagement and promote your growth.
4. Break Down Organizational Silos
While adopting a customer-centric approach is the first step to ace your omnichannel marketing, breaking down the organizational silos is the thing that will guarantee its success.
Effective collaboration between your marketing, sales, and customer support is of paramount importance when you go omnichannel.
So, if you want your teams to embrace your customer-first approach, you need to show them that they all share the same goals and vision.
Here, good communication plays a major role in ensuring that everyone in your company understands that they no longer belong to separate departments.
Your teams belong to a unified team that prioritizes customer experience and strives to make customers happy.
Here’s a funny yet accurate depiction of the silo mentality that you should avoid no matter what:
Breaking down the organization silo can’t happen in a single day.
However, there are certain things that will help make the transition a little smoother and break down that organizational silo-castle!
Training your employees on other skills will help them understand their co-workers better and collaborate better with them.
Also, to promote your department collaboration more effectively, consider using various team collaboration tools to keep your teams up-to-date.
Takeaway
Offering a seamless and personalized experience across multiple channels will help you simplify the shopping experience and inspire trust to your customers.
Building an effective omnichannel marketing strategy will not only increase your sales but also skyrocket your customer retention, reduce customer churn, and boost engagement.
So, if you are about to build your first omnichannel strategy, start personalizing, identify your customers’ favorite channels, break down the organizational silos, map your customer journeys, and you’ll manage to deliver the best customer experiences in no time.
