Omnichannel marketing is the integration and cooperation of the various channels organizations use to interact with consumers, with the goal of creating a consistent brand experience. This includes physical (e.g. stores) and digital channels (e.g. websites).

The goal of an omnichannel marketing strategy is to create a convenient, seamless user experience for consumers that offers many opportunities for fulfillment.  An omnichannel strategy may give consumers the chance to find and purchase online, in-store, or a combination thereof – such as “buy online and pick up in-store”.

Today, organizations across industries are leveraging omnichannel strategies, including healthcare, retail, finance, technology, and more.

If your organization will be interested in this form of market, read on to see what it is and how it can benefit you in the long run.

• What is Omnichannel Marketing?
• Omnichannel Marketing Platform
• Omnichannel Marketing Examples
• What is Omnichannel Approach?
• What Are Four Qualities of Omnichannel Marketing?
• What Omnichannel vs Multichannel Marketing?
• Omnichannel Commerce
• Omnichannel Retailing
• Omnichannel Marketing Data
• Omnichannel Banking
• Omnichannel Retail Trends
• Omnichannel Strategy
• Omnichannel Salesforce
• Omnichannel Marketing Autommation
• Omnichannel Marketing Companies
• Omnichannel Marketing Plan
• Omnichannel Marketing Benefits
• Omnichannel Marketing in Pharmaceutical Industry
• Omnichannel Marketing Software
• Why is Omnichannel Marketing Important For Your Agency?
• How Has Omnichannel Marketing Evolved?
• Why Your Online Store Needs Omnichannel Marketing
• What is The Future of Omnichannel Marketing?
• How do I Generate Content For Omnichannel Marketing?
• What Are Some Winning Examples of Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
• How do You Optimize Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
• Why is Omnichannel Marketing Key to Customer Engagement?
• What Are Some Examples of an Omnichannel Marketing Experience?
• How to Implement Omnichannel Marketing
• How Does Omnichannel Work?
• What is Omnichannel Business Model?

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and online and offline touchpoints as consumers move down the sales funnel, enabling a more impactful customer experience. 

Read Also: Programmatic Advertising

Omnichannel marketing takes a consumer-centric view of marketing tactics. Consumers can now interact with brands on innumerable channels, from social media to customer service hotlines. An omnichannel approach ensures that the consumer has a positive, consistent experience on each channel, by offering a few key elements:

• Consistent, identifiable brand tone and vision
• Personalized messaging based on specific interests 
• Content that is informed by past interactions and current stage of the buyer’s journey 

An identifiable brand simplifies brand recognition, while personalization based on interests and shopping history makes consumers more likely to interact with branded content across channels.  

Examples of omnichannel marketing include: 

• A customer receiving a SMS message about a sale or promotion while shopping in-store
• A customer receiving a cart abandonment email after browsing a website and adding a product to their online shopping cart
• A customer receiving retargeting ads for abandoned cart products they added in-app

Omnichannel Marketing Platform

Without the right platform, omni-channel marketing can easily fall short. Spreading your resources across each platform must be done efficiently to be truly beneficial for your business. Platforms that are created for omni-channel marketing will help your business seamlessly operate across channels. These three below were designed for exactly that.

1. HubSpot CRM

The complete CRM platform that HubSpot offers is an all-in-one marketing automation tool. It’s functional and flexible to fit your business needs. Whether your focus is to grow sales, increase leads, improve customer service, or build a website, HubSpot CRM can do it all — across each platform.

The HubSpot platform is comprised of five hubs: Marketing Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, Sales Hub, and Operations Hub. Each hub is packed with powerful features to help grow your business.

2. Shopify

Although this platform is a robust ecommerce product, Shopify does a great job as an omni-channel marketing tool. In addition to selling products, Shopify helps you to create powerful email and social media ad campaigns. It also covers engagement through every stage of the customer acquisition funnel.

All in all, this tool helps businesses develop personalized experiences for their audience, optimize their sales to generate more revenue, and measure the impact of the marketing campaigns they run.

3. ActiveCampaign

This platform combines a variety of automation, marketing, and CRM tools to create great experiences for your business and your audience. The features are segmented into four goals defined by your interactions with leads: Reach, Nurture, Convert, then Grow. This platform also offers not just customer support, but free online training so you can become an expert in using it to the highest degree.

Omnichannel Marketing Examples

When building an omnichannel strategy, take a look at these brands who have done so successfully: 

1. Starbucks

Through its mobile rewards app, Starbucks is able to better integrate the mobile experience with the in-store one to put consumer convenience first. Users can reload their cards from their phone or desktop computer. By using the app to pay, they are rewarded with points that can be applied to a free coffee. Additionally, they can skip the morning line by ordering in advance. 

2. Walgreens

Walgreens created a custom mobile app that makes it easier for customers to refill prescriptions, which they can then pickup in store. Their app also showcases store specific inventory making it easier for customers making a trip to decide which location they should visit.

3. Timberland

Timberland is combining the convenience of online with the experience of the in-person customer experience through the installation of near field communication (NFC) technology. Timberland created Touchwalls in their store, which leads to further information on their shoes.

Customers can then add these to their online shopping list or purchase in-store. In addition, Timberland utilizes a product recommendations engine to gain exposure to lesser-known products based on user preferences.

What is Omnichannel Approach?

An omnichannel approach means there’s integration between distribution, promotion and communication channels on the back end.

For example, a customer service representative interacting with a customer in a store can immediately reference the customer’s previous purchases and preferences as easily as a customer service representative on the phone or a customer service webchat representative. Or the customer can use a desktop computer to check inventory by store on the company’s website, buy the item later with a smartphone or tablet, and pick it up at a chosen location.

An omnichannel approach improves customer service by providing multiple communication options. The back-end integration of channels also allows for more flexibility, as the customer can switch between channels throughout an interaction.

What Are Four Qualities of Omnichannel Marketing?

To help you make sense of it all we simplified omnichannel marketing into four major pillars.

Visibility

The first key principle of omnichannel marketing is visibility. You know your customers are moving between channels and devices, effortlessly. In fact, Google reports that 90% of consumers move between devices when making a purchase.

The first step towards a singular view of the customer is a fully integrated tech stack. Your marketing automation, retargeting platform, CRM and other solutions should all work together under the guise of a single view of the customer. You need to have insight into every interaction a potential customer has with your business across channels and devices.

But what happens when your customers jump offline to make a phone call? The thread is lost unless you have call intelligence. Without visibility into offline behaviors, you’ll miss out on the complete view of the customer journey.

Measurement

According to a study by The CMO Club, 82% of respondents surveyed felt an inability to measure cross-channel performance is standing in the way of their omnichannel marketing success. Accurate measurement on every possible customer touchpoint is an essential part of omnichannel marketing.

Once you have visibility into all of the interactions a potential customer is having with your business, you can then measure the success of your marketing efforts. What offers, landing pages, retargeting ads, and more are working? What is influencing people to buy? You need to understand the impact of every marketing touch point whether the customer is interacting on a laptop, tablet, or mobile.  

Marketers need to be able to accurately measure the impact of their marketing efforts across channels, devices, as well as offline and online. Let’s say you’re A/B testing a landing page. One page may be performing well online, so you optimize towards the high performing version.

But if you’re not looking at the offline impact of your landing pages, you may miss that the second landing page was actually driving more phone call conversions than online conversions, and you actually “optimized” against the higher performing version.

Personalization

Use online and offline data together to deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience. One-third of marketers surveyed by Adobe would prioritize personalization because it is considered the most important to marketing in the future. However, marketers surveyed by Econsultancy and Monetate stated that the biggest challenges with personalization are gaining insight quickly enough (40%), having enough data (39%), and inaccurate data (38%).

Your tools like real-time personalization, social media analytics, predictive analytics, marketing automation, CRM, and more need all of the online and offline data from your potential customers. If a customer visits your website and picks up the phone to call, you can push that offline data to your real-time personalization platform so you can design a returning web visitor experience that makes it easy for that potential customer to call again.

Optimization

In a study from Multichannel Merchant and Neustar, 78% of respondents currently realize or expect a sales lift with an integrated omnichannel marketing strategy. However once you have the omnichannel customer experience in place, you’re only halfway through the battle. The next step is to have the capability to accurately optimize your marketing strategy and budget based on complete visibility into your marketing performance.

What offers, landing pages, products, or services are driving your visitors to take the next step? What channels are they interacting with your business that leads to a purchase? With complete visibility into the complete performance of your marketing campaigns, you are able to make more powerful optimizations to your marketing strategy and budget.

What Omnichannel vs Multichannel Marketing?

Multichannel refers to the use of more than one channel to market and communicate information about a brand. These multiple channels are not integrated with one another. A billboard, for example, is not directly connected to a business’ website – they are separate channels used to increase awareness of a brand.

Omnichannel also refers to the use of more than one channel to communicate with customers. However, in this case the multiple channels are integrated to create a seamless experience for the customer. In other words, a customer can pick up on one channel where they left off on another. 

For example, a customer starts a live chat interaction with a contact centre agent. To deal with the particular issue adequately, the interaction is escalated to a video chat. As the two channels are integrated, the customer does not have to repeat the information shared in the live chat when they switch to the video chat channel. 

Omnichannel Commerce

Omnichannel e-commerce is an e-commerce sales approach that uses multiple channels and gives customers a unified experience across all channels, whether it’s from in-store kiosks or other digital channels.

Omnichannel e-commerce is a unified e-commerce experience for your customers no matter which digital device or platform they are using. This is essential because research shows that 73% of online shoppers use multiple channels while purchasing online.

Omnichannel Retailing

Omnichannel retail is a business model in which all existing channels become completely integrated to offer customers a seamless shopping experience. This omnichannel retail strategy is empowered by centralized data management, which means that the distinctions among channels, both physical and online ones, are blurred.

As a result, customers can simultaneously use different channels in their shopping process, starting their search at a channel and finish the purchase in another one. They are given chances to create their own preferable shopping routines, which seems to be more attractive to a new generation of consumers in the 21st century.

It’s interesting to note that omnichannel retail approach can be adopted simultaneously in sales channels, inventory management, and marketing strategy.

Omnichannel Marketing Data

In multichannel marketing, a company may use different channels to interact with the customer but each channel is managed separately with a different strategy. Omnichannel is centered around the customer and ensuring that customers can easily and seamlessly navigate between each company touchpoint to make a single purchase.

Below are some impressive statistics:

• Marketers using three or more channels in any one campaign earned a 287% higher purchase rate than those using a single-channel campaign.
• Omnichannel campaigns that involved SMS at some point in the process were 47.7% more likely to end in conversion.
• Purchase frequency is 250% higher on omnichannel vs. single channel and the average order value is 13% more per order on omnichannel vs. single channel.
• Customer retention rates are 90% higher for omnichannel vs. single channel.
• 98% of Americans switch between devices in the same day.
• 15 years ago the average consumer typically used two touch-points when buying an item and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touch-points with nearly 50% regularly using more than four.
• Over 35% of customers expect to be able to contact the same customer service representative on any channel.
• Companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement.
• 77% of strong omnichannel companies store customer data across channels, compared to 48% for weak omnichannel companies.
• 61% of customers have not been able to easily switch from one channel to another when interacting with customer service.

Omnichannel Banking

In simple words, omnichannel is offering the same set of services to the customer across all the channels whether they are digital or offline. In terms of banking, it means that the users can avail all the banking operations from a website, mobile app, bank’s branch, a call centre, or any other available channel.

This was a simple definition. However, there’s more to it. A true omnichannel banking platform comes with real-time data synchronisation across all the channels. For example, the users can begin the onboarding process on one channel and can finish it on another without providing the same data all over again.

Moreover, omnichannel banking comes with several implications for back-office operations. An omnichannel platform can play a crucial role in improving marketing performance, boosting customer retention rate, and simplifying onboarding processes.

Omnichannel Retail Trends

While retailers will continue to have their own unique approach for reaching their audience, it’s the consumers who will inform the initial strategy.  Here are the five biggest omnichannel trends we expect you’ll see this year.

1. A more deliberate approach to data

As the demand for digital privacy is put into action, the cookieless future grows increasingly near. This means marketers will need to find ways to be more deliberate with the precious first-party data they are able to collect.

Forrester’s 2021 Global Marketing Survey reports that “32% of marketers cite quality of customer data as the greatest challenge to meeting their marketing goals over the next two years.” So, if consumers are willing to share their information with retailers, they’ll expect a meaningful experience in return. 

To acquire that data and provide the meaningful experience customers are looking for, many brands are seeking ways to ensure shared data is consistent across customer touch points. This could look like a shopping cart carrying over from mobile to desktop. Or perhaps it’s sending targeted social ads to customers based on what they looked at on your website.

While this does require customers to be logged in, more and more retailers are creating enticing loyalty programs as a way of delivering a mutually beneficial shopping experience that increases the value for the customer…so they’re more apt to share their data. 

But getting that data is only half the battle. And this is why customer data platforms (CDPs) are among the top technologies marketers are investing in. In fact, in the 2021 Acquia CX report, 50% of marketers state that they have invested in CDP technology in the last 18 months. With data access dwindling — yet still being more important than ever — you can expect marketers to be looking for ways to maximize the information they are able to collect.

2. Personalized vs. personable shopping experiences

In discussing how marketers use data to establish relationships with their customers, we’d be remiss in not mentioning personalization. Personalization continues to be a hot topic in the marketing world — and rightly so. With waning data and even further diminishing customer-attention spans, marketers need to make their messages count. But does “personalized” always mean “personable?”

Just because marketers know a customer’s demographics, like age, gender, and location, doesn’t mean they have enough information to make their messaging personable. And fortunately, some retailers are realizing this. From flower shops to department stores, brands are beginning to ask customers what they want to hear about. Holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day can be particularly triggering for people.

When brands give their customers the chance to opt out of marketing for these holidays, they gain the opportunity to earn that customer’s loyalty for the long-term. Marketing to people instead of at people isn’t a new concept, but being able to collect this data and do something with it is.

Having tools like a CDP and a digital asset management (DAM) system that can work together to deliver the right content based on individual data will mean the difference between being personalized and personable. 

3. Window shopping on social media

Social media isn’t new. Shopping on social media isn’t new. And neither is influencer marketing. But what’s becoming more expected on these channels are relatable influencers. Diverse ethnicities, a wide representation of genders, a spectrum of body shapes, and varying levels of mobility.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, ultimately, what shoppers want is people who look like them. People who share similar experiences when it comes to choosing an outfit or selecting their next travel destination. 

Brands certainly have an opportunity to do more in this area, but as marketers, we know the amount of content being created daily is getting out of control! We can’t physically do it all and put ourselves into the shoes of every customer…but influencers can! 

Partnering with influencers who encapsulate your brand while supporting a subset of your audience is a great way to build trust with consumers. This user-generated content (UGC) also offers a credible solution for tight marketing budgets since brands will have real people modeling their products instead of needing to look for creative ways to design one-size-fits-all photoshoots and marketing campaigns. 

By using the data customers are willing to share (possibly even based on the size and types of products they buy), brands can offer suggestions for partner influencers to follow that fit a specific customer segmentation. A new follower means more exposure for the influencer and more opportunities for customers to see your products in action out in the real world. 

4. Seamless shopping experiences

Omnichannel retail is ultimately putting the customer at the center of the numerous ways they can interact with your brand. Regardless of time, place, channel, or number of engagements, the aim is that the whole of their brand experience leaves them with a positive, memorable impression. And it’s this feeling that’s important because it’s exactly what compels customers to react, purchase a product, or tell their friends about it.

Ordering a product online but need it today? Buy online, pick up in-store has you covered. Bought something online but don’t want to mail it back? Return it in-store. Being able to take action regardless of the initial touchpoint is what customers are looking for. That’s why it’s so important that all of the back-end technologies are working together to support this experience. 

According to Acquia’s 2021 CX report, 48% of marketers are adopting strategies to unify the digital experience across platforms. And to execute this harmonious digital symphony, it requires coordinated tools. The technologies in a digital experience platform (DXP) bring these events to life, offering a centralized hub from which teams can create, manage, deliver, and optimize content-driven experiences across any and all digital channels.

5. Supply chain collaboration

Supply chains have always been a hot topic among retailers. And they’re a pain point that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. With these economic challenges and increasing sustainability efforts, understanding your supply chain will continue to grow in importance. 

As of October 2021, supply chain levels are making a comeback, but they’ve not quite recovered to pre-pandemic numbers yet. This is a source of frustration for retailers, sure, but it’s a make-or-break moment for consumers. Getting to a site only to find the product is sold out is annoying and making it all the way to your cart just to be told something isn’t available is even more irritating.

That’s why many content marketers — 72% according to research we commissioned from Forrester — are using product information management (PIM) tools to coordinate product data to support customer experiences. 

Omnichannel Strategy

An omnichannel strategy is a method that helps you create a seamless experience for customers across all the channels through which you sell. It encompasses the online and offline touch points of your brand, from a point-of-sale system to an Instagram shoppable post, and it’s not just for retailers anymore.

That means you can sell a collection of leather goods on social media, in a pop-up location, and online, and your loyalty program will follow your customer throughout their journey. Or you can run a restaurant that allows diners to order from QR codes, on your website, and in your brick-and-mortar location, and their experience will be connected each step of the way.

To stay relevant, businesses need to deliver a cohesive and consistent brand experience across all sales and marketing channels, whether they’re accessed digitally, in brick-and-mortar locations, or both. It’s about connecting the dots across your digital and physical presence. That’s where an effective omnichannel strategy comes into play.

Restaurants are a prime example of how a true omnichannel approach is no longer confined to retail. “In restaurants the concept of omnichannel has really evolved,” Rusenko explains. “Now you’re talking about a single ordering platform that lets you do on-demand delivery, order pickup, offer shipping, all on the same platform.”

Imagine a wine supplier that ships bottles of wines and offers pickup and delivery options from the same platform that powers their in-store experience, describes Rusenko. “When you think about omnichannel, what better example than literally one platform that’s handling pickup, delivery, and dine-in?”

That connection, enabled by a central platform that knits together an integrated experience, is the definition of an omnichannel strategy that drives value for businesses.

Omnichannel Salesforce

A true omnichannel customer service center allows your customers to connect seamlessly with your support staff using multiple channels. At the same time, your support agents have immediate access to a holistic picture of the person they’re about to help.

Omnichannel is not multiple departments looking at multiple dashboards pulled from disconnected databases. It’s not teams passing customers from one disempowered agent to another without resolving issues quickly.

In the service world, we think about omnichannel in terms of the three Cs: complete, consistent, and connected.

• Complete engagement with customers on any channel
• Consistent service across channels
• Connected to one CRM for a unified view of the customer

If you’re using Service Cloud already, you know how a single screen with a simple interface and a rich set of information makes it possible for your team to deliver a seamless customer experience across your different customer service applications. This becomes increasingly important when you add channels, or you make the decision to take steps towards an omnichannel contact center.

Omnichannel Marketing Autommation

Rather than working independently, with omnichannel marketing automation communication channels are designed to work together so that the experience of engaging across all the channels is more efficient and pleasant than using single channels in isolation.

An omnichannel marketing strategy creates a unified message across all channels. This means marketers must design their campaign processes to be interconnected, integrated and accommodating. All channels are reflective of each other and respond to the customer’s actions in a cohesive manner, regardless of which channel the customer last used.

If a customer starts a purchase on a store website but then abandons the cart, the mobile app will recognize that fact and automatically carry out the next level of engagement.

Omnichannel marketing automation allows customers to receive timely content in a personalized way, based on where they are in the customer journey. This means the customer feels they’re being treated less like a sales target and more like a “real live person”.

Omnichannel Marketing Companies

Globally there are 532 Omnichannel Marketing companies, and here is the list of the 5 most interesting ones:

1. Freshworks

Cloud-based platform for business communication and management solutions. The product portfolio includes Freshdesk for customer support, FreshService for online IT service management, Freshchat an enterprise chat application, FreshSales for sales CRM, Freshrelease for project management, Freshteam for employee recruitment, Freshconnect for enterprise collaboration, and more. It also provides solutions for customer and employee engagement.

2. Zeta Global

Zeta Global formerly known as Zeta Interactive and XL Marketing is a big data based marketing company that uses actionable data, engage and retain customers for Fortune 500 and Middle Market brands. Zeta Interactive’s set of proprietary solutions powers end to end marketing and CRM programs for some of the world’s leading brands.

With expertise encompassing all digital marketing channels such as email, display, social, search, and mobile, Zeta orchestrates acquisition and engagement programs that deliver results that are scalable, repeatable, and sustainable. Zeta Interactive is backed by the Franklin Square Group, GSO Capital Partners, GCP Capital Partners, and Madison Capital Funding.

3. Appier

Cloud-based multi-channel ad & marketing campaign management solutions provider. Uses Artificial Intelligence and RTB technology to track user behavior and acquire the most valuable audiences across devices which include mobile and PC wearables. Its programmatic platform, CrossX, enables advertisers for audience targeting, inventory, and bidding for cross-screen advertising campaigns.

AIQUA is a marketing automation platform to run and monitor personalized marketing campaigns via push notifications, email, and SMS. AIXON, ais a self-serve prediction platform using AI to provide insights and make recommendations to customers. Clients include Heineken, IKEA, Lancome, and game developers.

4. Weave

Weave provides omnichannel customer engagement software. It offers software and hardware solution that helps businesses to engage & communicate with their customers across the entire customer journey. It serves businesses such as dental, optometry, medical, and veterinary.

Weave Phones allows identifying new customers, Weave Messages enables text messaging, Weave Team provides team messaging solution, Weave Customer Insight provides customer insights, Weave Marketing helps to manage reputation, and Weave Analytics provides call & payment analytics.

5. LeadSquared

LeadSquared is a cloud based platform offering marketing automation and sales productivity solutions. The platform helps businesses to capture, engage and convert leads from online marketing.

It enables businesses to create landing pages, capture, track, and segment leads, send automated personalized emails to customers based on their online behavior on the platform, and get analytics to understand user behaviors. It also integrates with third-party software such as cloud telephony, chat, and Outlook.

Omnichannel Marketing Plan

An omnichannel marketing plan is a marketing communications plan which integrates optimzed marketing channel activity across the customer journey. It focuses on selecting the inbound marketing techniques, content types, and channels that will drive customer acquisition for defined product categories.

When integrating multi-channel offline and online activities, you need to consider all the touchpoints across the whole customer journey.

Integration is what makes an omnichannel marketing communications plan essential. It can help in different situations. For example,

• As an annual communications plan for a small to medium-sized business (SME/SMB)
• As an annual communications plan for one market or audience for a larger business
• As a longer-term customer engagement plan for the longer-term focusing on one market or audience

When creating your omnichannel marketing plan, always have in your mind that a successful plan needs the following:

• Clear, realistic goals which you can be confident of hitting
• The best strategy to achieve these goals against your competition
• Sufficient details of the tactics and actions needed to translate the strategy into action
• A method to check you are on track with your plans

Omnichannel Marketing Benefits

Improve customer lifetime value

An omnichannel experience puts the customer first, and it’s no wonder that customers want to stay with businesses that put them in the driver’s seat. It’s also not surprising that retail leaders see long-term goals as being critically important. The Coresight report shows that 53% of leading European retailers state that improving lifetime customer value is a reason for implementing an omnichannel strategy, while only 34% of other retailers feel the same. 

Reach new customer segments

An omnichannel strategy benefits businesses by enabling them to reach new customer segments. This benefit is nearly equally important to both leading retailers and ‘others’ (48% vs. 45%), but both numbers should be higher, as reaching new customers is a key to growth. 

Increase operational efficiency

Some omnichannel strategy benefits that businesses might see include increased operational efficiency and reduced costs. With an omnichannel strategy, businesses only need to collect a customer’s data once, rather than at every touchpoint. Creating a holistic overview also means that companies don’t need to worry about creating and implementing strategies for every channel.  

Increase sales

Increased sales is a great benefit for retailers who need a revenue boost. A Harvard Business Review study showed that omnichannel customers spend 10% more online than single-channel consumers. This is one area, though, that leading retailers (42%) aren’t as focussed on as ‘others’ (57%). It’s clear that leading retailers are prioritising long-term growth, and are viewing omnichannel strategy benefits as being strategic and structural. 

Improve inventory turnover

The days of retailers losing business due to items being out of stock may be ending. An omnichannel strategy benefits businesses by providing them with a better overview of their inventory, and the ability to fulfil orders from anywhere. An omnichannel strategy makes it easier for businesses to optimize stock levels and develop smarter replenishment practices.

Omnichannel Marketing in Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies have been lagging behind other industries in providing an omnichannel experience since face-to-face communications are beneficial as part of service delivery. Although most businesses have begun to increase online services, many consumers still use traditional channels when interacting with them, for a variety of reasons.

Pharma and healthcare marketing notoriously relies on complex customer journeys. This has never been the case more than now, with increasing customer expectations of omnichannel decision-making.

One of the key drivers for the shift to omnichannel marketing activities is the recognition of the benefits to be had from adopting a patient-centred approach. This has been met with scepticism in its ability to drive actual business growth.

To understand this better, The Aurora Project, a global benchmark survey comprising 2,346 pharma industry respondents from 84 countries identified five key activities to take patient-focus and profitability to the next level.

1. Engage patients: While some respondents believe pharma is doing enough to engage patients, others feel more needs to be done. Specifically, patients bring unique insights based on their experience with a drug and its current therapeutic environment. They can highlight areas of unmet need that clinicians may have underestimated.
2. Budget/resources: An appropriate budget to act on patient-focused ideas is vital with a focus on early investment in patient engagement and interaction. In the long run, spending money on those things that help patients in the short and long-term DOES lead to better business results as prevention measures or vaccinations do in real health care.
3. Measurement: It was felt that the power of big data can be harnessed to assess whether patient adherence and treatment persistence have improved in order to develop more direct relationships with patients and is an area with room for significant improvement.
4. Training: Something to keep in mind is that every mistake from any company will affect trust in pharma as a whole – and thereby limit the possible success for all others. For this reason alone it is important that sufficient training is given to employees on how to behave in a patient-focused manner. Ultimately, pharma can’t afford to make mistakes that might reduce patient trust and,
   therefore, better training in patient focus is fundamental.
5. Focus across all departments: The general consensus is that everyone should be doing their part to engage in patient-focused efforts, thus embedding patient focus across an entire company. It is only through the integration of different functional expertise and methods can you gain a comprehensive patient understanding and approach.

When looking at each business or experience metric you can see the interdependencies that exist. Being patient-centric is necessary for companies that truly believe in the concept of making a positive impact in the lives of their customers. Business growth will happen because of it. By taking into account patient opinions on key decisions companies are able to build strong connections.

Omnichannel Marketing Software

1. Contalog

Contalog’s Omnichannel retail software aims to unify management tasks such as inventory management, inventory maintenance, order processing, shipping, invoicing, and customer information processing for many online and offline sales channels into a single control panel.

The omnichannel platform comes with an advanced analytics tool that helps businesses gather important user information, preferences, purchase frequency, etc. to provide personalized recommendations to attract the customer to shop more.

2. SAP Hybris

Omnichannel eCommerce solutions such as SAP Hybris have proprietary products for businesses to boost sales, marketing strategies, and their billing capabilities. Hybris is built on SAP and aimed at large businesses that sell across multiple online and offline sales channels. Using the Hybris brand can provide more targeted and relevant content to better connect the brand to customers.

3. Netsuite

NetSuite is an Omnichannel eCommerce software that meets B2C and B2B business needs. Netsuite offers intuitive device optimization experience that provides the resolve for customers to connect with the brand through any means. Netsuite’s B2B solution combines B2B experience with B2B expectations, providing the best customer experience.

4. Intershop

Like SAP Hybris, Intershop is an Omnichannel trading solution provider, primarily for large scale businesses. It helps businesses brand themselves, market products, and plan sales strategies. Intershop is available in the cloud, and enterprise deployment models provide the flexibility to choose the preferred server environment according to business needs.

5. Goecart

Goecart is one of a number of multichannel eCommerce solutions that combine the online and offline sales of a business. Goecart also offers a set of management controls such as CRM, inventory tools, order processing systems to take care of management tasks related to the Omnichannel approach, mainly to fulfill orders.

Why is Omnichannel Marketing Important For Your Agency?

1.Shopping is Omnichannel

“Omni” meaning “in all ways or places” could not more perfectly define the shopping experience consumers have now. Consumers are making purchases on the train while commuting to work, via their Amazon Alexa device in their living room, at the mall in-store, via their music streaming service. Anywhere they are able to, consumers are making purchases. 

A brand can cover all its bases with a multichannel marketing solution, however, the back-end integration needed to tie the entire experience together will be lost. 

So, although it may seem obvious, The number one reason why omnichannel marketing is important is that today’s shopping experience is omnichannel. As advertisers, it is our job to stay one step ahead of consumers to ensure we are meeting them with product offers and ads whenever appropriate. Our advertising process must mirror the way in which consumers are shopping in an effort to stay ahead of the competition and top of mind with consumers.

2. Data Collection and Analysis

As mentioned above, omnichannel marketing is important because it gives advertisers a robust full-picture analysis of their advertising campaigns. Gone are the days of analyzing each channel individually, organizing multiple spreadsheets and decks evaluating which tactics or campaigns were successful in driving ROI. 

An omnichannel marketing solution gives you a unified 360-degree view of consumers engaging with your brand – across every step of the customer journey. A single analytics tool, allows you to connect and visualize consumers’ behavior and interest across all campaigns, which allows for you to better adapt your campaigns in the future to meet their preferences. 

3. Personalization

In a recent study, 90% of consumers say that messages from companies that are not personally relevant to them are “annoying.” And, as demographics skew younger, the necessity for personalized ads is even more important. In that same study, 67% of Millennials and Gen Zers stated that they expect offers from companies to always be personalized. 

With this information, it’s clear that having a personalized ad experience is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity for brands. This is a rather lofty task for advertisers to take on. But, with a structured omnichannel marketing solution in place, serving personalized ads across a multitude of devices and channels is possible. 

4. Better Synergy Across Departments

There’s a historic division between sales and marketing teams within (most) organizations. No matter the reason for this, an omnichannel marketing solution can help propel synergy amongst members of your organization. 

When in place, omnichannel marketing ensures that every step of the customer journey mirrors the same messaging, product offering, and tone. If a consumer is speaking with a customer representative, they will know which products that consumer already purchased.

Sales teams can send more tailored emails as they’ll know which products or services the consumer is browsing. Whether it’s an email, customer representative call, advertisement, or billboard – the tone is the same. Overall, this unity across departments leads to a better customer service experience and better brand awareness for your company. 

5. Cost-Effective

There’s nothing more frustrating to an advertiser than wasted ad impressions. Omnichannel marketing solutions take the guesswork out of where you should place your ad. The data and analytics tools ensure that you are reaching an engaged audience, on their preferred channels.

And, as those consumer preferences and audiences change, so too will your ad placements. If one week your Facebook ads are out-performing SEM, shift budget quickly and easily to ensure you’re taking advantage of that active Facebook audience. 

You no longer have to wait for a pre-paid campaign cycle to end, with omnichannel marketing solutions, those dollars can easily be shifted to tactics or channels that are performing better. This ability to rapidly change and respond to your campaigns to meet consumers allows for a better overall ROI for your company – another reason why omnichannel marketing is important not just to advertisers but to the organization overall. 

How Has Omnichannel Marketing Evolved?

If, before the age of digitization, traditional marketing has still been based on the fact to be seen by appropriate target groups in catalogs, on posters and flyers, television or radio advertising, to bring customers into the stationary stores, in the course of time every trader has discovered the potentials of an online store and online advertising.

Unfortunately, however, many of them are still treating online and offline as separate disciplines. It almost seems as if many companies are still in a readjustment process, trying to figure out how to cover all channels with an efficient strategy and how to make optimum use of the interdependencies.

Nowadays, consumers grab more and more often their smart phones or tablets to learn about products or compare prices (“ROPO – Research Online – Purchase Offline”) prior to starting their shopping spree in retail stores. To meet the buyers exactly where they are located in that specific moment, a network of all channels is inevitable – even better when combined with optimum measurement.

That’s simply because the in-store and online trade, combined with an optimum omnichannel marketing strategy, complement and inspire each other and allow traders to benefit from it.

Obviously, online and offline trade increasingly merge, despite media discontinuity making this route more difficult. A deliberate multi-channel strategy for your performance marketing is therefore a must to meet the demands of your customers and to reach them anytime on different devices via different channels.

The intelligent integration of online and offline trade not only increases your sales but also creates valuable synergies, while strengthening customer loyalty, not only regarding your brand, but the stores as well.

Why Your Online Store Needs Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing (also referred to as cross-channel or multichannel marketing) is focused on delivering a consistent, branded, and personalized advertising experience across the multiple platforms used by customers. 

By using an omnichannel marketing strategy, your business can put ads in front of people for products that are relevant to their interests and purchase history. Matching potential customers with the right products and offers makes conversions more likely and increases the efficiency of your advertising spend. The lower your cost per acquisition (CPA), the more profit you get to keep. 

Most of us have experienced omnichannel marketing in some way. You might click on an ad for something interesting you see on social media, then sign up for a coupon on the store’s website via a pop-up. If you don’t buy the product, you might get an abandoned cart email with a discount offer or you might continue to see display ads for the product on other sites you visit which might convince you to go back and make a purchase.

If you do make a purchase, you’ll probably get an email with suggestions for related products and get future sale announcements. You may even get a postcard or catalog in the mail.

How Can Omnichannel Marketing Help Grow Online Business?

Omnichannel marketing means that a brand must be present on different platforms. This will allow users to interact and land on the store’s official website through any of the available channels.

What’s interesting is, when a customer clicks an ad, each of their social accounts becomes available for further advertising of the brand.

As a result, each channel updates according to the last customer experience. With each touchpoint, there is an update, and a unified experience is created across each channel.

With omnichannel marketing, your customers can interact with you through different channels. Moreover, it’s easier for them to buy your products and services.

With omnichannel marketing, you always remain relevant, especially in a highly competitive market. It gives you a better chance against your competitors because you will always be in the face of your potential customer.

What is The Future of Omnichannel Marketing?

We discuss some of the opportunities in data-driven marketing, as well as key focus areas to properly automate data collection so it can provide conclusive, useful results.

Marketing Opportunities in Big Data

Omnichannel marketing relies on big data to guide cross-channel optimization decisions. Without being able to see trends and patterns, marketers cannot plan and optimize their own campaigns. In today’s digital market, it becomes easy to be dazzled by the bells and whistles that many available data platforms claim to have, and the choices may seem simple.

However, choosing what data to focus on should take time. It’s easy to get distracted with vanity data that isn’t actually explaining behavior that marketers can use to optimize campaigns.

While choosing what data to analyze takes time, once it’s set up, automated data should be available to help marketers rapidly make decisions while optimizing in-progress campaigns. For instance, if we use Google’s Keyword Planner on our PPC campaigns, we know that the data is pulling real-time recommended keywords based on search behavior. This allows us to optimize our campaigns accordingly.

While there are several different data sources available, few allow marketers to properly automate data collection. Being able to automatically receive data helps marketers cut down on analysis and interpretation time. What’s more, manually running reports or collecting data individually creates opportunities for user error, leading to data discrepancies that can drive improper analysis.

Any automation that’s available should be utilized when it is helpful for the campaign. One such area of automation that is becoming more common in marketing data is artificial intelligence (AI).

Establish Data Sources

Whether or not AI is available, the key first step in setting up omnichannel marketing analytics is to establish key data sources of focus. What are all of the media platforms that customers may be seeing your marketing messages or campaign collateral? This could include:

• TV
• Radio
• Mobile Apps or Alerts
• Paid Search
• Organic Social Media Content
• Website Features
• Influencer Campaigns
• External Press Coverage
• Paid Social Media
• Media: YouTube videos, podcasts, etc

The best data analytics and collection platforms are ones that intelligently use an organization’s own user data with big data sources and trends. Once each channel is outlined, it’s time to outline how a user will use that channel to reach the single goal we’ve set for the campaign.

For instance, if the goal is to sign up for a webinar, we can use unified link tracking across all platforms to determine sources of traffic in analytics. From there, the data  taken from this action on each platform can be properly set up and automated.

Establish Modeling and Attribution

Having the correct data attribution and modeling is key for optimizing a marketing campaign. Without all data channels working together with the correct attribution, the ability to have multiple channels of data is completely useless. Only when marketers have data that is being categorized and displayed properly are they able to make good decisions about their campaigns and customers’ expectations.

Data sources are getting smarter about attribution and even automating it for marketers. For instance, data-driven attribution in Google Analytics notes that a customer may interact or see your brand’s messaging across several platforms. It properly gives credit to each channel that helped a user eventually convert. Prioritize using data collection tools that use automated means of proper attribution.

Continuously Improve Data Quality

A marketer’s insights are only as good as their data. Be sure that all data is as accurate as possible. Use data checking and validation when possible to cross-reference data against available databases OR have an outside team or other employee run their own data analysis to verify the original data setup is correct.

Don’t get lazy with data collection. Just because it is automated, it doesn’t mean discrepancies won’t continue to pop up.

How do I Generate Content For Omnichannel Marketing?

How do you keep your content flowing seamlessly between channels? Here are a few tips to help you get started implementing an omnichannel strategy for your content:

• Create a brand persona. Give your brand a personality. Create a persona that defines your brand and speaks to your target audience. Then tell your brand story through the words of that persona.
• Develop a style guide. When you start developing content, a style guide is important. When you want consistent branding, it is a must. Decide on fonts, brand colors, logo, layout, types of graphics, every little thing that will allow you to remain consistent across all channels.
• Define your brand voice. Is your brand funny? Friendly? Down to business? Down to earth? Decide what your brand voice is and let it be reflected in all of your content. If you are casual on your blog, using slang and contractions, then don’t get stuffy and business-like on your social media. Many companies find a happy medium with a relaxed yet professional tone, but you know your brand best so find its voice and let it ring.
• Stay consistent. The importance of consistency across channels has been addressed, but it is so important it needs to be said again. Keep everything consistent especially when it comes to your content! Use the same logo (or logo version) and the same messaging across all digital content channels. Take a page from the books of major corporations like McDonald’s and Apple. They have consistency down to an art.
• Plan, plan, plan. It’s hard to successfully pull off omnichannel marketing if you don’t have it baked into your content strategy. Your content marketing strategy is not a fly by the seat of your pants endeavor. It takes planning and intention. It can be a pretty major project, so you may want to get the help of a content strategist. This person will help plan your content and oversee content management while making sure that your messaging and branding is consistent across channels.

What Are Some Winning Examples of Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?

if you still aren’t quite sure about omnichannel marketing, here are some great examples of omnichannel marketing in action.

Amazon

What began as an online-only venture has quickly turned into one of the greatest omnichannel examples in commerce. Not only do customers have access to their profile via the Amazon website, but they also have access to this same information via:

• The mobile app
• Alexa devices
• Smartwatches
• In-store

Customers can take their Amazon card with them virtually everywhere, thanks to the brand’s seamless omnichannel approach. Not only can they place and track orders, but they can now choose to pick those orders up in-store, at various “lockers,” or still have them delivered to their doorstep.

Need a repeat purchase or something added to your shopping list? Easy—simply manually add it via your smartphone or instruct your Alexa device to add the item to your shopping list for you.

LiveOnNY

Omnichannel marketing examples aren’t limited to big-name stores. In fact, many nonprofits are taking advantage of the omnichannel approach to help spread awareness for various causes. Take the LiveOnNY campaign, for example.

This campaign was started by LiveOnNY and Blue Fountain Media to help not only spread awareness about organ donation, but to bring the topic to life through their website and social media campaign. The campaign shares first-hand experience of organ donation, while also encouraging others to contribute their own stores through user-generated memes via social media.

Walgreens

Another excellent example of an omnichannel marketing approach is the Walgreens rewards balance program. Much like the Starbucks loyalty rewards program, consumers can earn rewards points in a variety of different ways, including:

• In-store purchases
• Online purchases
• Activity tracking by connecting fitness apps to the Walgreens app
• Filling out vital health information surveys
• Getting in-store vaccinations and more

Once a consumer has collected enough points, they can turn them into cash by redeeming them during purchases in store or online.

Chase Bank

Retail isn’t the only major industry that can benefit from an omnichannel marketing strategy. Many big financial institutions have started adopting an omnichannel marketing approach as well. Take Chase Bank, for example.

While Chase has thousands of locations in the United States alone, they also invite their customers to utilize both its website and use their mobile app to conduct their day to day banking. In fact, many smaller banks have done the same thing in an effort to ease the day-to-day processes for their consumers.

Being able to transfer money via mobile device is much easier than having to log in to your account on your desktop computer, as is being able to deposit a check through the app instead of having to talk with a teller face to face.

Value City Furniture

Our final omnichannel marketing example comes from value city furniture. They recently implemented an “easy pass” to help shoppers online and in store.

When it comes to some merchandise, customers want to be able to see the product before they commit to purchasing it. The brand’s easy pass features help to keep a shopper’s data all in one place, so, if they’re given a quote in store, they can have that added to their online account in order to make a purchase from the comfort of their home, allowing them a chance to “think on it.”

It also works in reverse. If a consumer has a digital Wishlist, they can have a store employee bring up their account, so that they can finish their purchase in store after they’ve had a chance to look at the product in person.

How do You Optimize Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?

To perfect your customer experiences, it’s necessary to determine in advance how channels should be used, who will manage them, and how they can be tested for efficiency. Here are five essential steps toward optimizing your omnichannel strategy.

Define a purpose for every channel.

Do many customers call you for service? Are customers receptive to marketing information on your social channels? Knowing the answers to such questions can help you decide how channels should be used.

For example, large call volumes might mean that it’s necessary to implement customer service on faster, more cost-effective channels such as live chat, Facebook, or Twitter. And if customers are most eagerly responding to brand content on social channels, more time should be invested here rather than SMS or email, for example.

Let customers know how to contact you.

If you have amazing service on multiple channels, let your customers know. Keep your channel information updated at all times so that people know how and when to reach you when they search for you online. For example, your website should prominently feature all your channels of service and mention support hours when applicable.

Make your channels work together.

It’s only an omnichannel experience when customers are able to navigate seamlessly. Consider what happens when a customer needs to switch from one channel to another. Will the same agent handle the case? Will the customer have to repeat information?

Design an effortless experience that allows the customer to make the switch without losing time. A CRM solution is ideal for keeping customer information centralized and enabling agents to make updates in real-time.

Train agents to master their communication skills.

Every channel has its own unique characteristics, so agents must be prepared to master them. For example, live chat and social media will require excellent written communication, whereas the voice channel necessitates an ability to bond with customers using a friendly, approachable tone. Train agents to work well on every channel, and also enable them—whenever possible—to spend more time on the channels that best match their personalities.

Analyze each channel’s performance.

To understand if your omnichannel strategy is working, analyze your data. How quickly are cases resolved on each channel? Are customers satisfied after each interaction? In addition to studying your key performance indicators, look closely at your call and written transcripts to determine which keywords reappear. These terms will reveal frequent customer sentiments and enable you to improve your service based on what customers need.

The CMO Club points out that 55% of companies have no multichannel strategy in place. Yet, SDL states that 90% of customers expect consistent interactions across all channels. By optimizing your strategy, you will stay ahead of the game and give your customers the service they want. To deliver the very best customer experiences,

Why is Omnichannel Marketing Key to Customer Engagement?

Here are some insights that will shift your view and urge you to adopt omnichannel solutions

Ask yourself, where do customers shop?

According to the BigCommerce report, Gen Z are 2-3 times more likely to make a purchase through social channels, with Instagram taking the lead. When it comes to buying in a physical store, only 32% of customers are likely to purchase in-store. With digital paving the path, this pathway has become more relevant.

It builds customer loyalty

Aberdeen Group discovered that companies with a well-defined omnichannel customer engagement platform have a customer retention rate of 91%, compared to a 33% retention for companies with a weaker strategy. A report from IDC retail insights also found that omnichannel shoppers have a higher lifetime value of 30% more than shoppers who only use one channel. 

This suggests that customers love this approach as it allows brands to deliver personalized interactions that customers expect. Brands, through omnichannel platforms, can deliver on rising customer expectations while retaining loyalty.

To match current customer expectations

Digital transformation has not only transformed the way we do business, but has also transformed customer expectations. According to McKinsey, customers expect information to be accessible within a few clicks. Many customers use different channels to justify making a purchase through extensive research. 

Witnessing customer complaints in the process with an exceptional increase in volume of complaints has made us adopt an omnichannel strategy in order to better solve this problem.

It saves time and resources

Customers tend to get exhausted while switching between channels, and it can be tiring for teams as well, but did you know that it can tire your teams out too?

McKinsey coined this term called “the boomerang effect,” which is when customers keep coming back to a company multiple times for the same query. Omnichannel approach can unify customer interactions which means your agents don’t have to keep jumping between multiple tickets for the same queries, and your customers don’t have to return for the same question.

What Are Some Examples of an Omnichannel Marketing Experience?

Many brilliant eCommerce businesses are providing excellent omnichannel marketing experiences for their customers. Let’s see some examples.

1. Pura Vida

Pura Vida is a mid-sized Shopify Plus fashion store that shares marketing messages via social media, web push notifications, and email. The business has a smart Shopify omnichannel strategy. The welcome email gives a site-wide discount while the next are based on the first order and browsing history. Only preferred channels are used to distribute promotions and customer support messages.

2. Uber

Uber has redefined the taxi experience with innovative omnichannel marketing strategies. Once you’ve booked a trip with Uber’s amazing mobile app, customers can manage your experience in many ways.

You can choose a better car, share your location and trips with friends, reduce price with discount code, rate drivers, add tips, and even order food. Also, you can get a text from the driver when they have arrived. All ride-sharing businesses now copy the same model.

3. Inked Shop

Inked Shop, a fashion & apparel store, relied on traditional touchpoints like website and email before an omnichannel marketing strategy. The brand added SMS messages and web push notifications and generated higher engagement rates. It found that Inked Shop’s omnichannel shoppers preferred quick notifications and SMS in their brand journey.

The most successful marketing channels were: welcome push notifications, abandoned cart notifications, promotional push notifications, product delivery and promotional SMS messages.

4. Intelligent Blends

Intelligent Blends is a subscription-type Shopify Plus store selling premium coffee. The brand’s omnichannel marketing strategy goals are to maintain customer loyalty and boost product awareness. Intelligent Blends researched omnichannel customers and understood how to communicate with them. Three marketing channels were chosen to create an omnichannel experience: push notifications, emails, and SMS.

These channels were used to welcome new customers, recover abandoned shopping carts, and share personalized promotions and sales. It helped Intelligent Blends stay on top of “smartphone-only” customers’ minds.

5. IKEA

IKEA, the famous home furniture retailer, is a champion of omnichannel presence. The company integrates physical and eCommerce experiences to make one, familiar brand experience.

One example is a mobile app feature that enables IKEA’s customers to save digital catalog items in the in-store shopping list. Also, the brand opened pick-up and order points to bring deliveries closer to customers’ homes and improve brand experience.

IKEA is also known for an innovative omnichannel strategy performance measurement. The company has used Google Ad’s Store Visits to evaluate their strategy offline.

How to Implement Omnichannel Marketing

No matter the scale of your business, implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy may seem formidable.

Avoid the pressure of diving right in, hoping that you’ll enjoy the benefits right away. It helps to take a step back and get some perspective to make sure you get it right the first time.

All it takes is three admittedly challenging yet critical steps:

1. Identify your buyer persona. Develop a clear picture of who your customers are so that you can plan out how to anticipate and fulfill their needs.
2. Choose the right communication channels. More isn’t necessarily better. Focus on the ones that will provide the most value so as not to risk giving mediocre experiences.
3. Select your omnichannel marketing software. Choose an omnichannel marketing tool that will allow you to manage your entire digital marketing strategy on one platform.

Adopting an omnichannel strategy allows you to reach masses of audiences but still offer personalized experiences that inevitably nurture a healthy affinity for your brand.

A complete overhaul not just of your ecommerce email marketing strategy but of your entire business operations is undeniably daunting. Nevertheless, the pay-off will be worth the effort.

Although it might seem like just another buzzword, omnichannel isn’t just a marketing trend.

It is a response to the evolution of consumer behavior. And, in most cases, it is the only way to thrive in today’s chaotic digital commerce landscape.

Thankfully, this change is accompanied by increasingly smarter and more powerful tools to help businesses like yours succeed. Don’t sleep on it — the best time to start is now.

How Does Omnichannel Work?

Omnichannel marketing is the practice of carrying out marketing campaigns using all types of channels, platforms, and devices to promote your products or services to customers and prospects. Whatever the interaction or channel, the messaging, visuals, and overall experience of an omni-channel marketing campaign should be consistent and relevant to the individual.

Thus, a marketing approach that is omnichannel in nature creates seamless messaging across channels. Each channel works together—and we stress “works together”—to create a unified message and voice for your brand. For instance, an omnichannel marketing strategy would ban sending an SMS message about a particular product to someone who just purchased it.

Omnichannel is built on the premise that underlying data is automatically updated, triggering your messaging across all channels to adjust as well. It makes for an integrated shopping experience, from the first touchpoint to the last.

Still scratching your head? A few simple omnichannel marketing examples might help clear the confusion:

• A customer receives an SMS message about a promotion while shopping in store
• A promotional email alerts recipients to check their mailbox for a physical postcard with coupons
• A shopper is retargeted on Facebook with the product they abandoned in their online shopping cart

What is Omnichannel Business Model?

As a category of multichannel, omnichannel is built on multiple methods of promoting and distributing products, such as physical stores, websites and mobile apps, and allowing customers to reach out with problems or concerns by phone, email, webchat and social media, for example.

Omnichannel pushes past the operational tactics of multichannel into a business model that weaves those channels together and shares data between them, enabling customers to conduct business with companies however they want, whenever they want.

For example, if a customer who has started an interaction with a company on webchat submits information, such as an account number, then decides to end the chat and call customer service instead, that information can be transferred to an agent.

A company with strictly multichannel capabilities can accommodate the customer on both channels, but because it lacks back-end systems integration, the customer would have to re-enter the information using an automated system, such as interactive voice response, or relay it to a live agent.

Omnichannel retailing combines physical and online commerce, or e-tailing. Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy bet on an omnichannel retailing strategy after losing $1.2 billion in sales in 2012. Showrooming customers would comparison shop by first going into stores, and then check prices online and buy elsewhere.

Read Also: Business Coach

Best Buy revamped its outdated online shop by reducing the number of clicks it took to buy a product and adding an option to pick up an item bought online in a store. It also stopped operating stores and its online marketplace as separate entities, ensuring that inventories were shared.

To compete with online retailers like Amazon, Best Buy offered a price match guarantee and sped up product delivery. In May 2018, ZDNet attributed the retailer’s 7.1% growth in sales — its strongest since 2005 — to its omnichannel strategy.

A related omnichannel strain is omnichannel marketing — delivering personalized brand messaging across diverse channels — from email campaigns to social media to TV ads. A challenge for companies is figuring out which channels their customers use. Another is delivering a consistent experience across those channels.

Arts and crafts retailer Michaels Stores’ omnichannel marketing initiative combined online blogging and videos with projects and in-store classes, as well as social media marketing about monthly craft projects to engage customers. The chain saw significant audience growth as a result.