Omnichannel marketing is an increasingly popular topic in digital marketing today.
And it is easy to see why: Customers expect to reach brands across different channels, both online and offline, and receive a consistent experience. An omnichannel strategy makes a brand fit-for-purpose for today's world, ready to delight customers.
The topic is still poorly understood, however. In this presentation, we will pin down the definition of omnichannel marketing before working through a blueprint that any brand can put into practice.
Unichannel, multichannel, omnichannel: What are the key differences?
Omnichannel and the customer journey
The 5 key components of an omnichannel strategy
Customer data
Technology
Partners
User experience
Measurement
How to create an omnichannel blueprint for your company
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Hi! I’m Clark Boyd
- Lecturer and Subject Matter Expert with DMI
- Advisor and Industry Mentor at Columbia Business School
- Chief Strategy Officer at Cadeera
- Course Leader at Cambridge University and Columbia
University business schools
- Former digital strategy lead for American Express, adidas,
and General Motors
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/clark-boyd-digital/
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COMING UP
1. What does omnichannel actually mean?
2. Omnichannel and the customer journey
3. The 5 key components of an omnichannel strategy
○ Customer data
○ Technology
○ Partners
○ User experience
○ Measurement
4. The omnichannel blueprint
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Omnichannel is an integrated marketing strategy
that puts the customer in control.
The customer can access a brand where, how, and
when they want, online or offline.
They will be addressed consistently and the brand
will use their data to personalize the customer’s
experience.
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In 2007, the average customer used 2 touch-points when
buying an item.
Today, consumers use an average of 6 touch-points when
buying an item.
Source: Marketing Week
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Have you ever had a frustrating experience with a
brand, where they seemed not to know you even
though you had recently interacted with them via
another channel?
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Of those companies
identified by Aberdeen
Group as being
top-performers in
omnichannel strategy, 85%
conduct regular training of
customer care agents in the
handling of omnichannel
communications.
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Omnichannel marketing harmoniously integrates multiple functions.
The different channels are all connected to each other.
It allows customers to research, purchase, communicate, engage
with, and consume the brand - across online, mobile, social and
offline physical channels.
Sounds great!
But it involves tough choices:
- Which channels are profitable?
- Which customer segments deliver most value?
- Is it worth being present everywhere?
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Omnichannel entails marketing playing a bigger role
within the business.
Rather than optimizing at the fringes, we must help
coordinate the digital infrastructure of the
organization.
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67% of North American consumers say that they would
be “comfortable” sharing personal data if the company is
clear about how the data will be used.
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Important customer questions to answer
for an omnichannel strategy:
- What information do they need before
making a purchase decision?
- What are their customer service
expectations?
- Are they willing to pay for extras?
- Do they have particular financing needs?
- Will they want to pick up or try on items
in store?
- What delivery options would they like?
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Adobe Analytics: Customer level data about brand interactions across multiple channels and
devices is all stitched together into a single “surround sound” view of each customer (“Person ID”).
Piecing Together the Customer Journey
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The number of orders placed online and picked up at
bricks-and-mortar stores by customers grew by 208% during
the pandemic.
Adobe Analytics
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A Customer Data Platform is defined as a
marketer-managed system designed to collect
customer data from all sources, normalize it and
build unique, unified profiles of each individual
customer.
The result is a persistent, unified customer
database that shares data with other martech
systems.
The CDP Institute’s list of requirements for a
platform to qualify as a CDP:
● Ingest data from any source
● Create unified profiles of identified
individuals
● Store ingested data indefinitely
● Share data with any system that needs it
● Capture full detail of ingested data
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Companies with extremely strong omnichannel
customer engagement retain on average 89% of their
customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak
omnichannel customer engagement.