Omnichannel Marketing Explained

Not to be mistaken as a synonym for multichannel, omnichannel marketing is a ubiquitous approach to marketing that benefits consumers and brands alike. Here, we explain exactly what omnichannel is, how it differs from other marketing strategies and discuss its key benefits and implementation.

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing refers to the concept of providing a seamless customer experience across digital and traditional marketing. The Latin term ‘omni’ refers to ‘all’, which when applied to marketing describes the idea of using all channels to provide a unified service offering.

Utilising data collected across platforms and through every interaction a customer has with a brand, the entire process is intended to ensure as consistent an experience as possible. Whether a consumer engages with your brand via a website or in-store, each interaction should be tied to the rest of your channels.

Given the holistic nature of omnichannel marketing, identifying all potential touchpoints someone could interact with your brand via is key. Establishing this will better inform where to collect unified customer data and ensure that your channels are working in harmony with one another.

What’s the difference between omnichannel, cross-channel and multichannel?

While omnichannel is similar to multichannel in that they both seek to engage customers across various platforms, they do have some fundamental differences. While omnichannel centres around the customer and delivering a more unified and consistent experience, the primary focus with multichannel is to target consumers on different platforms.

Likewise, cross-channel marketing involves engaging consumers across channels, however its key difference from multichannel is that these different channels of communication are connected. Linking various platforms like social media, retargeting and email, consumers’ data is harnessed to offer a more joined up experience, typically being used to send further information designed to engage a customer and encourage sales. For example, being served ads on social media after abandoning a cart, or a user receiving a push notification on their phone that they can redeem a voucher in-store. In these examples, different channels communicate with one another to provide a more holistic experience.

Omnichannel picks up from cross-channel, linking the remaining siloed areas of marketing together to provide one unified experience. It builds on cross-channel in that it appreciates that customers don’t follow one linear process, and therefore intelligently gathers information about a customer across various platforms to establish a clearer understanding of that consumer’s buying habits, using this to inform future marketing. When you know exactly what a person wants, how they respond to different platforms and where they are, you can make the whole experience all about an individual person’s wants and needs.

Overall, omnichannel is the most advanced iteration of marketing on offer in that it provides unparalleled ubiquity. Beyond simply merging several channels, each of these channels interact with one another and work seamlessly to provide a consistent experience across online and offline.

Benefits of omnichannel marketing

Though undoubtedly an ambitious approach, the benefits of omnichannel marketing are far-reaching. Just some of its key benefits include:

• Attribution insights – In tracing and collating engagements across each of your different channels, brands are able to gain a much sharper insight into the customer journey and how users prefer to interact with your offering. This oversight that omnichannel allows for means that identifying opportunities for growth is more accessible than ever, enabling you to pinpoint what channels are performing best and how you can capitalise on these areas early on.
• Integration – Promoting better internal synergy and collaboration, in working towards a common goal and coordinating across campaigns and messaging, teams save valuable resource while moreover delivering a better experience.
• Enhanced customer intelligence – Because each channel feeds into another, brands are able to better inform customer profiles and therefore enhance personalisation opportunities and campaign targeting, all of which facilitates a smoother customer journey.
• Higher ROI – By placing customers at the heart of a brand experience they are much more likely to engage and therefore purchase from you. Omnichannel enables this by allowing for much more specific personalisation, as well as providing a clearer view of what platforms have driven the best return and therefore where to invest more resource into. Having this data allows for brands to adapt their strategy as informed by this, in turn supporting future revenue growth.

Omnichannel marketing strategy

At Sagittarius we specialise in empowering brands to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, merging digital strategy with distribution chains.

A key aspect of this involves using a headless content management system (CMS) such as Sitecore. Given omnichannel marketing revolves around the smooth communication of information across platforms, having a headless CMS enables teams to distribute content across channels more efficiently, while simultaneously collecting customer insights from those touchpoints, all of which feeds into creating a holistic service offering. As Sitecore platinum partners we’re well versed in harnessing the full potential of this intelligent platform in order to accelerate omnichannel marketing strategies.

Remarkable are one of the world’s leading digital experience agencies. As a double Platinum Sitecore and Optimizely partner, we offer technology solutions to help brands build experiences that convert.