On average, companies employing omnichannel customer engagement strategies tend to retain 89% of their customers. In today’s digital landscape, crafting a winning omnichannel strategy is not just an option—it’s a necessity. Join us as we explore the key components, best practices, and actionable insights to building an omnichannel strategy that stands out.
Assign Specific and Measurable KPIs
For your omnichannel strategy to be successful, you’ll need to set some goals to strive towards. To develop those goals, use the SMART goal framework: SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The goal(s) you create for your marketing campaign will drive the kinds of content you create.
Specific: What are you trying to achieve?
Measurable: What data will you collect to measure your success?
Achievable: Is your goal possible?
Relevant: Does your event goal align with your broader marketing goals?
Time-bound: What’s your timeline to achieve your goal?
Understanding the metrics you’re tracking is essential for effectively allocating resources and engaging the right channels in your omnichannel strategy. By identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) upfront, you gain insights into which channels are driving the most value and where to focus your efforts for maximum impact.
Key Performance Indicators:
- Number of signups
- Website visits
- Number of downloads
- Shares on social
- Revenue numbers
- List growth
- Engagement on socials and email
- NPS score
- ROI
- Conversion rate
For example, if you’re tracking website traffic as a KPI, you’ll want to engage channels that drive visitors to your site, such as social media, email marketing, and search engine optimisation (SEO). If your KPI is email open rates, you’ll prioritise optimising your email campaigns and segmenting your audience to improve engagement.
Let’s consider an example: Suppose you’re launching a new product and want to track sales as a KPI. You might discover that social media ads drive the highest conversion rates, while email campaigns generate the most leads. Armed with this knowledge, you can allocate more budget to social media advertising and fine-tune your email marketing strategy to capitalise on its lead generation potential.
Optimise your Omnichannel Strategy Across Every Stage of the Customer Journey
To effectively navigate the intricacies of the customer journey, it is imperative to strategically integrate diverse marketing channels that cater to each stage of the process.
Beginning with the awareness stage, channels like social media and content marketing can cast a wide net, capturing the attention of potential customers. As prospects move into the consideration stage, email campaigns or webinars can provide more in-depth information, nurturing their interest and guiding them toward a decision.
The decision and post-purchase stages benefit from channels like personalised email follow-ups, retargeting ads, and customer support to solidify the relationship and encourage brand loyalty. By adding a marketing channel tailored to each stage, businesses can ensure a cohesive and targeted approach, fostering engagement and conversion throughout the entire customer journey.
Email Marketing
- Deliver personalisation at scale: Email is perfect for when you need to deliver tailored content and offers on a large scale. Dynamic content helps you tailor copy, imagery, and links that will resonate with customers on a certain service or plan.
- Easily segment your audience: Leverage email marketing tools to segment your audience based on various criteria such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement level. You can even introduce your own preference centre so you can segment your audience by communication preferences. This way you’ll be increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns and improving overall engagement.
- Drive repeat purchases: Nurture relationships with existing customers by sending follow-up emails, product recommendations, subscription renewals or exclusive offers. By keeping your brand top-of-mind and providing value to your customers, you can encourage repeat purchases and foster long-term loyalty.
- Drive SMS opt-ins: You can add SMS opt-in as a CTA in email signatures, or send out an email asking for their communication preference. By leveraging email to promote other channels like SMS, you can expand your reach and create multiple touchpoints with your audience, increasing overall engagement and conversion opportunities.
Social media
- Increase your brand awareness: You can generate hype around your brand, by sending out promotional messages, announcements, or exclusive offers to raise awareness among potential customers and keep your brand top-of-mind.
- Ideal platform for purchase inspiration: Use social media to inspire potential customers in their purchase journey. Share visually appealing product images, user testimonials, and lifestyle content to showcase the value and benefits of your products or services, motivating users to consider making a purchase.
- Encourage user-generated content: Encourage your audience to invite, create and share content related to your brand. Prompt your followers to share their experiences, participate in contests, or leave reviews – fostering a sense of community and motivating users to consider making a purchase.
SMS Marketing
- Reduce abandoned carts: Harness the immediacy and directness of SMS marketing to send timely reminders to customers who have abandoned their shopping carts. A well-timed SMS with the right incentive can help turn a lost sale into a conversion.
- Remove friction in customer journey: Whether it’s sending order updates, providing shipping notifications, or offering quick and convenient customer support via SMS, integrating this communication channel ensures a seamless interaction.
Automation
- Save time and money: By streamlining repetitive tasks and communication workflows, you can allocate your team’s time more efficiently and reduce operational costs, ultimately improving your bottom line.
- Provide a seamless customer journey: By ensuring consistency in service across different touchpoints, you can provide a smoother customer experience. By automating interactions such as personalised messaging, targeted recommendations and order tracking notifications, you can ensure customers get timely, relevant information, enhancing their journey and brand satisfaction.
QR codes & Forms
- Make product or service info more accessible: By strategically placing QR codes on packaging, promotional materials, or in-store displays, businesses can seamlessly provide customers with detailed specifications, pricing, reviews, surveys and other relevant data instantly accessible via a simple scan.
- Create a personalised experience: You can personalise your entire customer funnel using QR codes by linking customer segments to relevant content. QR codes enhance customer experience by delivering tailored content like personalised landing pages, exclusive discounts, and targeted product recommendations.
- Encourage more signups with forms: QR codes are potential lead-generation magnets. You can use a QR code to direct visitors to fill out forms, take surveys, or provide feedback, helping grow your email marketing list and subscriber base.
By implementing these omnichannel strategies, you can drive more engagement, and maximise ROI across every stage of the customer journey.
