Omnichannel strategy: Key to seamless customer journeys

Highlights

You’ll learn about the benefits of omnichannel strategy:

• Consistent messaging across channels: Ensures every customer interaction is unified, enhancing brand recognition and loyalty.
• Data-driven decisions: Utilizes analytics to personalize marketing efforts, increasing engagement and conversions.
• Integrated touchpoints: Connect online and offline brand experiences to offer a cohesive customer journey.
• Mobile optimization: Prioritizes mobile users, acknowledging their significant share of global internet traffic.
• Real-time adjustments: Employ feedback loops for continual campaign improvement, maximizing effectiveness.

Start creating more meaningful and connected omnichannel experiences for sustained business growth.

Keep reading to learn more!

In the era where one-touch shopping apps and AI-driven 24/7 customer support are dominant, traditional marketing strategies are outdated. With customers demanding an Amazon-like experience, even from small retailers, you cannot simply create a website and offer standard services. 

It doesn’t work like that anymore. Just to remain competitive, offering exceptional customer experiences is a must. 

But what retailers need is an omnichannel strategy. 

With omnichannel strategies driving an 80% higher rate of in-store visits, companies failing to deliver customer expectations gradually lose their identity. 

In this article, we discuss what an omnichannel strategy is, explore the steps and advantages of an omnichannel marketing campaign, and understand why it distinguishes you from others. 

What is an omnichannel strategy?

An omnichannel strategy is a process that helps you create consistent experiences for customers on all the touchpoints through which you sell. These touchpoints include brick-and-mortar stores, mobile apps, websites, email, and social media.

That means you can sell sustainable shoes from an Instagram post or in your brick-and-mortar store, and your loyalty program will follow customers everywhere. It’s about connecting the dots between your physical and digital presence. 

Omnichannel strategy example

• A customer receives a promotional email with your website’s link. 
• They visit your website, browse the products, and add a large-sized t-shirt to the shopping cart.
• After reaching home, the customer connects with the customer service representative or the chatbot asking about the shipping time and other details.
• On accessing their Facebook account, they receive a message about the abandoned cart. 
• The customers download your mobile app and complete the purchase.
• They pick up their t-shirt from the nearby store.

Your customers should be able to do all these things and even more. With more than 50% of customers engaging with three to five channels before purchasing, adopting an omnichannel approach leads to sales growth and increases customer experience. 

Single channel vs. multichannel vs. omnichannel retail

Many businesses are often confused between single channel, multichannel, and omnichannel retail. Here’s how they’re different:

Omnichannel strategy case study

Using a case study, let’s understand the concept and benefits of implementing an omnichannel strategy. 

How Contentstack helped MTR deliver omnichannel experiences?

The MTR mobile app in Hong Kong transformed to provide a unified user experience. MTR enhanced customer guidance, loyalty rewards, and content delivery by merging reward programs and leveraging Microsoft Azure technology. 

Contentstack's headless CMS facilitated seamless content management across various channels, enabling MTR’s app to evolve into a lifestyle platform. The new app delivers relevant content to millions of users, shifting from a transit app to a comprehensive lifestyle platform.

As a result, MTR now delivers omnichannel content across mobile, websites, kiosks, and more.

Read the full case study here. 

Implementing an effective omnichannel strategy in business

With 56% of customers preferring businesses offering omnichannel experiences and only 7% delivering them, an omnichannel strategy is useful. Use these steps for implementing an omnichannel strategy:

1. Know your customers

First thing first, understand who your customers are and how they buy from you. Figure out which platforms, mediums, and devices they use. Knowing your customers' platform and device preferences helps you create a solid omnichannel marketing strategy. For instance, if you know none of your retail customers use desktops or don’t buy from eBay, there’s no point fuelling your efforts. 

So, remove the guesswork from your strategy and focus on analyzing your customers. 

The more information you have regarding different channels and platforms customers use, the easier it gets to create a strategy. 

2. Integrate every touchpoint or channel

One major aspect of implementing an effective omnichannel strategy is integrating every touchpoint or channel and ensuring a consistent experience. These touchpoints include physical stores, online platforms, social media, mobile applications, and more. Each of your touch points should be reliable and aligned with each other

Similar to what Disney does for its website, theme parks, and mobile apps. Every encounter with Disney provides the same experience across every channel and encourages you to purchase.. 

3. Connect the dots between offline and online channels

When your customers enjoy a seamless transition from online to offline channels and vice-versa, it results in higher customer fulfillment and loyalty.

For instance, if customers abandon a product in their shopping cart, they can buy it from offline shops or the mobile app. Instead of browsing and adding products to the shopping cart again, using an integrated shopping channel ignites impulse buying.

4. Centralize your data

Store the collected customer data in a single, central storage that provides a unified view of their online behavior. Centralizing your data makes it easier to chart your customer’s journey. As a result, you provide a smooth omnichannel customer experience and make informed decisions.

5. Define metrics for success

Identify critical success factors or key performance indicators (KPIs) to check the results of your strategy. Identify KPIs like customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and revenue of every channel to measure the campaign's effectiveness.

How to create an omnichannel marketing campaign

Follow these steps to create an omnichannel marketing campaign:

1. Create a buyer’s persona

You’ll want to gather insights into what your customers like, what they need, and how they prefer to shop. This knowledge allows you to tailor your messages to them, making every interaction feel special and personal. That’s where the buyer’s persona comes in. Start by answering a few key questions:

• What type of content are your customers consuming?
• How are they engaging with your brand?
• Do they prefer free tools? 
• Do you know your customer’s journey from when they became aware of your brand to purchasing?
• Which customer problems are you trying to solve?
• Which platforms are your audience most active on?

When you answer these questions, you no longer make decisions based on assumptions but on what your customers like. Delivering personalized messages increases your marketing effectiveness, resulting in stronger customer relationships.

2. Map your customer journey

Understand the various digital touchpoints and channels your customers use. Mapping out their journey shows how your customers obtain information and what motivates them to make decisions and conduct purchases.

3. Create consistent brand messaging

Ensure your marketing campaign's message is clear and consistent across all channels. Variations in these messages confuse customers and dilute the impact of your marketing efforts. For instance, changing the color scheme midway can confuse customers and reduce the campaign's impact.

4. Leverage data analytics

Collect and analyze data from all customer interactions to customize your marketing campaign in real time. This improves your engagement and conversion rates.

5. Integrate different touchpoints

Eliminate silos between your offline and online channels and ensure each channel works together. Integrating different digital touchpoints creates a uniform in-app, online, or in-store experience.

6. Optimize for mobile experiences 

With 4.83 billion active Smartphone users worldwide, mobile optimization is essential. Ensure that your campaign provides an excellent user experience on mobile devices. For this, design mobile-friendly apps and personalize the campaigns to mobile users.

7. Measure and adjust in real-time

Your omnichannel marketing campaign will improve when you try new ideas based on customer feedback. Implement feedback loops to measure the effectiveness of each channel. Actively test your messages, headers, titles, subject lines, images, and send time. Tracking and measuring your data regularly makes it easy to connect with your customers.

Advantages of an omnichannel marketing strategy

Omnichannel marketing ensures important marketing success for your business. The advantages of an omnichannel marketing strategy are:

Helps with data integration

As omnichannel marketing collects data from different sources, you better understand customer behavior and preferences.

With a better understanding of your target audience and market, you deliver personalized experiences.

Ensure omnichannel personalization

As you have customer data in your hand, it's easy to personalize messages and offer customized products. This strengthens your connection with customers, resulting in high customer loyalty and retention rates.

Offers convenience and accessibility

An omnichannel strategy allows you to engage in conversations irrespective of whether your customer uses a smartphone, laptop, desktop, or even social media. When you offer multiple ways of engagement, you improve customer experience.

Ensures higher engagement rates

Engaging customers through their preferred channels increases the likelihood of interaction with the brand. This heightened engagement can lead to more conversions and increased sales.

Grows your sales

An omnichannel strategy contributes to sales growth by improving customer service. This journey teaches you about the customer's interaction history and purchase details across all channels. 

It gives your customers timely support, resolves issues quickly, and suggests personalized products and services. This gives your customers the best experience and encourages them to use the products again, increasing sales revenue.

Provides agility and responsiveness

Adapting quickly to the customer’s behavior and shifting preference is important. Through an omnichannel approach, companies become flexible and better able to foresee market demands and changes. 

FAQs

What is an omnichannel strategy?

An omnichannel strategy is a sales and marketing strategy that allows customers to purchase from anywhere across various devices or channels. Companies use this strategy to integrate communication channels like physical stores, online stores, social media, and mobile apps throughout the customer journey.

What is an omnichannel example?

A customer buys a product online and tries to pick it up from a nearby store. When the store staff gets the information, they bring the product to pick it up. If the client decides to get their item back, they can do it offline, e.g., in-store, by post, or using a courier. The method of initial purchase does not matter in this case.

What is the omnichannel approach?

The omnichannel approach uses digital and offline touchpoints to present a unified, coherent experience reflecting your core values and message. Such an approach does not take these digital channels as separate entities but as a single system component.

What are the 4 C's of omnichannel?

The 4 C's of omnichannel are conformity, continuity, customization, and collaboration.

Learn more

Omnichannel strategy is not just another marketing strategy. It’s a game-changing method, helping you create businesses that respond to customers’ needs for superior customer engagement. You offer unmatched experience and drive business growth by keeping all the digital touchpoints integrated.

Do you want to take your business to the next level? Schedule a free demo to learn how the omnichannel strategy can help you.