Speaking of omnichannel customer journey, we have already anticipated the need to implement omnichannel marketing strategies, which can intervene in the user's lifecycle, recognizing the user and offering him or her a unique experience across all channels.
To do this, some strategic and design directions are needed.
Omnichannel Marketing what is it ?
Omnichannel digital marketing involves the ability to orchestrate customer interactions with the brand under a single direction, automating interactions across all available contact channels: online and physical stores, direct marketing via social, email, text messaging, and apps. To implement an omnichannel marketing strategy, you therefore need technology, but above all, you need internal coordination within the company that funds shared goals across divisions: a fundamental part of what is now called Digital Transformation.
In a study conducted by Forrester on behalf of Accenture and Hybris, an attempt was made to describe the complex omnichannel marketing landscape from both consumer and business perspectives.
The goal is to find insights for retailers who want to break down some technological and organizational barriers to invest in an omnichannel experience.
Here we describe a world made up of players not yet fully aligned toward a customer who, on the contrary, has quickly adapted to the comfortable experiences offered by a few big players. The result is that what are great endeavors for many retailers are experienced by people as pure commodities.
The omnichannel experience is thus a strong differentiator of brand perception.
Omnichannel marketing: the contribution of marketing automation
Marketing Automation certainly enables you to solve some important challenges of omnichannel marketing, let's see which ones:
- It intervenes promptly where the user is at that moment: take the example of someone browsing in-store looking for details of a product they want to buy. Location and browsing information allows Marketing Automation to notify them of the presence of discounts or concessions at that very moment on that very device (perhaps with a text message).
- Take timely action on the user's preferred channel: email, social networks, apps are all viable options. Every consumer has his or her own information habits. Marketing Automation makes it possible to communicate on a per-channel basis, depending on what we know about each one's behavior. If a user doesn't open email, it doesn't mean that he or she is not loyal to a certain brand; he or she might simply be very selective about his or her email. Perhaps he might be less so on social media where he likes to be entertained. Messages should be delivered where they are most welcome.
- Be consistent in communication: Marketing Automation allows you to manage all channels centrally so that there is no misalignment between campaigns, discounts, tone of voice, etc.. This maximizes efforts and reduces error margins.
- Reduce the cost of personalized communication: collecting user information across all channels allows us to personalize each and every message wherever it is delivered, from Facebook post to email, without manual operations.
- Reduce the stress of unnecessary advertising: orchestrating channels also means reducing stress for people who will be contacted in a personalized way, where they prefer, without being bombarded with unnecessary and irrelevant messages.