What is omnichannel marketing?

The best way to understand omnichannel marketing is to break it down into smaller pieces. First, we have ‘omni’ meaning combining from or of all things. When we add in the channel piece to omnichannel, we are now referring to the concept of using all channels to create a single, unified experience for customers. This includes online and offline channels – websites, email, physical stores, etc – and all devices from desktop to mobile and all smart devices in between.

Omnichannel marketing, then, refers to the use of both digital and traditional marketing channels to deliver a seamless message and consistent experience. The experience adjusts to customers based on their journey, and is consistent regardless of the point of engagement.

When planning for omnichannel marketing, it is important to think holistically about the customer journey and all of the places where people interact with your brand. Having a strong understanding of where customers engage will also help to inform how to collect unified customer data and ensure that your communication channels are designed to work in concert – not in contrast – to one another.

The key difference between multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing is the ways in which systems work together to engage customers. While both approaches are similar in the sense that they aim to engage customers on various channels, omnichannel marketing focuses on the integrated and consistent nature of engagement on these channels and multichannel is a less-connected approach that is more focused on distribution across channels.

Where multichannel marketing puts the decision of how to engage in the hand of the customer, omnichannel marketing ensures that no matter which channel a customer chooses, the message will be seamless and consistent with what they have seen elsewhere.

There are several benefits to omnichannel marketing that make the effort and planning that go into it worthwhile. The first, and most important benefit, is customer satisfaction. With the focus of omnichannel marketing being on the delivery of seamless information and experiences, brands are able to deliver exceptional customer experiences – which is the leading deciding factor for consumers when they are evaluating and choosing to work with a brand. 

The benefit of customer satisfaction is also important from a business success and revenue standpoint. With satisfaction comes customer retention and loyalty which can have significant impacts on revenue – some studies showing that an increase in customer retention by just 5% can lead to profit increases between 25% to 95%.

In addition to customer satisfaction, additional benefits brands achieve when executing omnichannel marketing include:  

• 360-degree customer view: Through omnichannel marketing, you can not only collect customer data from disparate channels, but you can unify them as you are bringing together device IDs, cookies, POS data, loyalty program information, and more. All of this aids in the creation of a full customer profile which then leads to stronger personalization efforts, better campaign design, and more – all of which contribute to high conversion rates.
• Teamwork and synergy: Integration is at the heart of omnichannel marketing and not just from the end-user standpoint, but from an internal process standpoint as well. With an omnichannel marketing strategy, teams will need to work together to coordinate campaigns, messaging, and distribution, while also sharing the same customer data – thus increasing collaboration as teams work towards a common goal.
• Cost-effective marketing: The data collected from omnichannel marketing will help identify exactly what is working and driving engagement and what’s not. Having this data means that brands can tailor strategies more effectively as they will have deeper insights into what channels or methods are delivering higher ROI.

Having a headless content management system (CMS) in place allows marketers and content teams to create content once and display it across all devices and channels. Since omnichannel marketing is all about seamless distribution of messaging and information, a headless CMS helps teams efficiently and effectively distribute content across channels while also being able to collect customer data from those touchpoints that feed into the 360-degree customer view.

The short answer is yes. Any business that is trying to grab the attention of consumers in an age where customer experience is a key influencer in decision making should have a plan to execute omnichannel marketing. That being said, it is important to have the right strategy and tools in place first to make sure that your experience executing omnichannel marketing is as seamless as the experience you aim to deliver to your customers. Reach out today to talk to one of our experts about your omnichannel marketing needs, or learn about our Sitecore Business Optimization Strategies (SBOS) team and how they help our customers mature their marketing efforts with Sitecore technology.