A Complete Guide to Omnichannel Marketing in 2024

if you are one of the marketers to hear the term "Omnichannel Marketing" around. Don't worry, you are very lucky you landed in the right place to understand all about Omnichannel Marketing. 

In this blog, we’ll explain what omnichannel marketing is and how brands improve customer experience by using an omnichannel approach, For building a more profitable business, quality sales and successful marketing strategies.

Omnichannel marketing proposes a pivotal change, That’s why brands need to deliver a uniform experience, irrespective of channel or device. Omnichannel marketing strategy encourages business managers to walk in their customers.

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What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is an integration and cooperation of various channels that organizations use to interact with customers. The goal is to create a consistent brand experience. It uses seamless integration of all customer touchpoints ranging from branding, messaging and communication to move potential customers down the sales funnel.

Omnichannel marketing enables customers to interact with the brand and engage on their own terms leading to overall better experience engagement for them and for the brand.

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What can you achieve with Omnichannel Marketing?

1. Communicate over channels that customers prefer
2. Create Customer Delight with personalized channels
3. Convert customers with smart automation

It is important that we have content that is informed by past interactions and the current status of the buyer's journey.

Many times have you had a experience where you bought something online and went to the store to exchange or return it only to be told that since you bought it online you can only return it using the same channel or they will not cater to the exchange? 

These are the experiences that do not constitute customer delight. Customers now are demanding more than ever that brands know about their interactions with different channels and that there is no disconnect.

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Omnichannel Marketing Funnel

Understand Your Customer 

Understanding customer needs and expectations are very important for every successful business. First you need to know about your customers, Ask in yourself or learn from your competitors. Which platform do your customers use most to shop? What are the challenges they experience while shopping? What devices do they use? Figure out all the shoppers' interactions points, interest and most importantly what are their needs.

Analyze Customer Behavior

Learn your customer behavior by analyzing all available data, It’s very easy to recognize opportunities when you have all your business data in one place. That why the brands love the omnichannel business model. 

Look at online customers and what people talking about also consider their demographics, profession, age, gender, marital status, etc. Divide your audience into segments and make informed decisions. 

Key part is to convert all data to business strategy shape and do the next big move. 

Trigger Points

Strong business intelligence brands build offers for customer to make more actions. If your customer walks again to your store and they visit online store before that for the same product send them special discount and retarget it. 

Only one way to know the strategy is perfect or not measure your results time to time.

Offer loyalty points

Offering repeat customers special rewards build trust and customer lifetime value.

Analyze your all marketing plan according to this funnel structure and refine marketing strategy  

Read More About: 5 Best Omnichannel Retail Software Solutions

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Key Differences between Omnichannel Marketing and Multichannel marketing

You wonder why we focus so much on the omnichannel & ignoring the term multichannel. 

They are not interchangeable here is the clear differences

Omnichannel Marketing focus on providing a consistent experience for customers on all channels. The key principle of omnichannel commerce marketing is that it is customer based and not channel based. The goal is to make customer experience as convenient as possible which means consistent engagement no matter how a customer is interacting with you.

Whereas multichannel covers many different channels like social media, mobile, email and physical store. In this model every channel is separate and independent from others and works in a vacuum, each with its own marketing strategy and goals. The lack of integration in a multichannel approach can create a confusing and impersonal experience which often leaves customers frustrated. 

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How Omnichannel Marketing is better than Multichannel Marketing

An omnichannel marketing strategy ensures a seamless experience for shoppers. For example the shoes a customer viewed on a laptop are the same ones the customer sees while using Instagram on a phone and the same pair the customer received an email about, when they went to a sale a week later. The message is consistent, device independent and most importantly, customized based on customer browsing behavior.

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Omnichannel Marketing Challenges

Real-time data accuracy and reliability: One of the common problems that e-marketers face is figuring out the best methods for gathering marketing data. After collecting this data, businesses doubt its reliability because of the chances of errors, duplications, or discrepancies. Not shown in real-time, this data lacks authenticity. 

Data safety & security: With Omni channel marketing replacing conventional advertising strategies, data safety & security are essential. Consumers expect their security information to be safe while engaging from multiple devices. Any compromise in the integrity of consumers' identity data could lead to the loss of customers.

Data display in one platform: Businesses should engage customers across multiple channels and devices. E-marketers face the issue of managing marketing campaigns from various platforms. A single platform for managing Omni channel marketing campaigns can help avoid costly mistakes.

Customer segmentation & analysis: Another challenge of Omni channel marketing is the analysis and segmentation of customers. Analyzing consumer behavior data and customer transaction history is essential for efficient marketing campaigns. Using multiple platforms for analyzing consumer data and developing market segmentation can be a hassle.   

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Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

1. A better user experience

Since Omnichannel focuses on the customer experience across devices instead of the channel, the customer experience is better. By focusing on the customer instead of the platform, companies can drive more sales and improved retention rates.

2. Cohesive brand strategy and identity

Omnichannel marketing creates a unified strategy across all channels that builds an easily identifiable brand image. Organizations should base this image on their core audience needs and values. Through focusing on overall experience and working within the brand guidelines to target each channel, retailers will have a more effective brand strategy that will produce increased loyalty and more targeted messaging.

3. Increased Revenue

An omnichannel approach encourages customers to engage with a brand across multiple touch points and channels. This increases diverse engagement at each stage of the customer’s journey and helps increase revenue. Companies with extremely strong Omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% increase in annual revenue compared to 3.4% for weak Omnichannel companies (Aberdeen Group)

4. Builds Loyalty

The more unified and targeted messaging also builds loyalty, making it more likely that a customer will purchase from your brand again. Customer retention rates are 90% higher for Omnichannel. (Omnisend, 2020). Companies with extremely strong Omnichannel customer engagement retain and average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak Omnichannel customer engagement (Aberdeen group)

5. Better Attribution Data

Omnichannel Marketing should not just cover customer experience with your brand, but with your data analytics as well. By tracking the engagements across all channels, brands get a better understanding of the customer journey.

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Steps to develop a successful Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

• Think Customer First
• Know your Customers
• Use the Right Marketing Techniques
• Segment Your Customers
• Personalize Across All Channels
• Track your success with the Right Metrics

Omnichannel Strategy statistics for retail ecommerce brands

Challenges to executing an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

• Lack of resources & investment required to succeed.
• Lack of analytical & technical resources to make sense of data.
• Difficulty in integrating data.
• Lack of connection between online and physical stores. 
• Siloed organizational structure.

The five pillars of an incredible Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Convenience: Understanding a customer's busy schedule and making the buying process seamless and quick is vital.

Consistency: Creating and eventually abandoning an Omnichannel marketing strategy is not the way. The ideal method comprises consistently upgrading and tweaking the marketing strategies. 

Relevance: Omni channel marketing platforms enable businesses to showcase relevant and highly personalized content based on consumer behavior and preferences across all channels.

Empowerment: Empowering customers by sharing relevant information that helps them make better customer decisions ultimately builds trust and customer loyalty.

Agility: Businesses should improve their marketing strategies by constantly adapting to new tools, industry trends, and customer behavior.

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Improving Customer Acquisition and Retention

Omni channel digital marketing is the ideal strategy for businesses to acquire new customers. However, planning and implementing an effective Omni channel marketing program can be challenging.

Here are a few marketing strategies that retailers use:

The right message at the right channel: Businesses should analyze real-world customer feedback and launch channel-specific customer acquisition campaigns accordingly. Creating user-generated content and authentic experiences enables businesses to acquire more customers. 

Grow your social footprint: Building a prominent presence on social media platforms helps businesses to target a broader audience. Moreover, social channels allow brand enthusiasts to spread brand awareness.

Employ omnichannel loyalty management: Offer rewards to your customer when they buy from you. Rewards increase customer’s interest in the brand and become a motivator for them to buy again. Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering. These rewards should be omnichannel so that your customers can get the same rewards experience across all channels.

XStak LMS is a next-generation omnichannel loyalty management system that facilitates brands to engage and create lasting relationships with customers, using the best in breed artificial intelligence technology. XStak LMS helps you execute the best loyalty strategy, by enabling you to personalize offers that are completely in line with your customer’s preferences and providing the tools to measure the success of different real time strategies.

Build customer trust: Enterprises that resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently encourage consumers to spread a positive message. Analyzing feedback enables businesses to address customer complaints, further improving customer trust

Leverage word of mouth marketing: Engaging customers in personalized memorable ways increases acquisition rates through referrals. Numerous consumers have identified word-of-mouth as a significant factor influencing their purchase decisions.

Content marketing: Updated and relevant content is essential for marketing and customer acquisition campaigns across multiple channels. Actively publishing content shows customers that the enterprise is keeping up with the industry trends. 

Targeted advertising: Many businesses don't consider inactive consumers as existing customers. Analyzing historical data can enable enterprises to re-acquire old customers through customer-targeted advertising.

Offer deals & promotions: Offering promotions and deals makes customers feel like they're a part of something limited and exclusive. The most inspiring promotional campaigns encourage consumers to share offers with prospective customers.

Keep track of the competition: Businesses that actively monitor competitors' marketing strategies can stay ahead of the game and acquire new customers by offering better deals.

Read More: Payment Gateways For Ecommerce Businesses In Pakistan

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Omnichannel Marketing Solution Platform

Acquisition Marketing Suite

XStak Acquisition Marketing Suite facilitates retailers to integrate all their marketing channels and send personalized recommendations to their customers. It helps brands acquire new customers by rewarding them for referrals, sign-ups and brand advocacy and also provides them with a centralized CRM to start push notifications, email and SMS campaigns.

Having the capability to create granular segmentation, allows you to then create better lookalike audiences on social platforms, thereby increasing your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

Segmentation and Targeting Capabilities

XStak Omni channel marketing solution enables businesses to run RFM analysis quantitatively ranking consumers. RFM analysis is a marketing technique that brands use to rank consumers based on the frequency, recency and monetary value of their transactions. Based on this data, e-marketers can perform highly targeted marketing campaigns. With XStak, sellers can perform segment analysis to divide customers into groups based on consumer behavior. Moreover, segmentation and RFM analysis allow businesses to maximize ROI and conversion rates. 

Customer Loyalty Engine

• Manage campaigns: With XStak, retailers can manage multiple loyalty programs and campaigns from a single dashboard in a no code environment. 
• Measure & optimize ROI: XStak enables businesses to measure ROI (online & offline) on their marketing campaigns. Analyzing this data can help sellers maximize their ROI by optimizing ad spend.
• Targeted campaigns: Like all modern Omni channel marketing solutions, XStak features customer segmentation tools and RFM analysis reports. It enables retailers to create highly targeted campaigns across various dimensions. With this, businesses can perform targeted marketing, improving ROI and conversion rates. 

Recommendation Engine

• Customer segments: XStak allows sellers to perform customer segmentation for targeted marketing. 
• Upsell & cross-sell: With XStak, businesses can analyze consumer data, including purchase decisions, behavioral data, and demographics, to recommend higher-end and complimentary items.
• Predict peak demand periods: XStak enables sales affiliates to analyze historical data and predict peak demand periods for pushing products at the right time.
• Tracking and analysis: Businesses can analyze and process store rankings, stock opening/closing, and sell-through rate with XStak to optimize marketing campaigns.

The benefits of using the recommendation engine are

• Better ROI
• Increased conversion rates
• Higher average order value (AOV)
• Higher engagement and loyalty
• Improved merchandize efficiency

Digital Marketing Integrations

XStak features a modern Omni channel marketing solution. Businesses can conveniently integrate their marketing campaigns with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. With XStak, enterprises can easily integrate their marketing programs with the Google Marketing Platform.

Moreover, Brands are integrable with email marketing and SMS automation platforms, including Klaviyo and Mailchimp.

Additionally, website unblocker feature ensures seamless access to online resources necessary for executing comprehensive marketing strategies.

So all in all, our suite of products and services help improve your marketing efficiency and drive better ROI for your business. 

FAQs

What is Attribution Modeling?

How do you evaluate how each channel is contributing to the customer’s progression down the Sales Funnel? This is where Attribution Modeling comes to play. Attribution modeling in simplest terms is giving credit to the channel/medium/ad etc. with which the customer interacted/viewed and eventually took the meaningful action.

Why is Attribution Modeling important?

Attribution modeling is what leads brands to make data-driven decisions in order to allocate their marketing efforts to the channel making the most contribution to conversions. It is however important to understand what that conversion metric is. It might not be making a purchase or booking a sales call. It could be any meaningful action that a customer takes to lead to that final outcome.