From multi to omnichannel marketing

Photo by Pickawood on Unsplash

Not all marketing strategies deliver the same rates of returns. Omnichannel marketing outperforms single channel at the rate of 2.5x.

To get to that, it’s not enough to build an easy-to-navigate eCommerce site supported by marketing campaigns that reach out to them on various channels. All those components have to be integrated to work together through an omnichannel strategy.

The ROI of Omnichannel Marketing 

The returns of omnichannel marketing over single channel are quite impressive, according to the data offered on Clickz:

• Engagement rate: 18.96% on omnichannel vs 5.4% on single-channel

• Purchase frequency: 250% higher on omnichannel vs single-channel

• Average order value: 13% more per order on omnichannel vs single-channel

• Customer retention rates: 90% higher for omnichannel vs single-channel

One channel doesn't cut it

Most eCommerce businesses today do not rely on only one digital marketing channel. When competing for customer attention, you need to reach out to them in different ways in the hope that what they didn’t click on an email may still get a click on SMS or an ad served on social media.

 In a survey by HBR (Harvard Business Review), 73% of respondents said they use multiple channels during their shopping journey. That includes email, SMS, MMS, social media, as well as searches on the site.

The challenge for retailers is maintaining coherent and consistent communication that makes the most of the different ways of connecting.  A Facebook or Instagram ad may be what first grabs the customer’s attention, though they may need some follow up to convert to the level of putting together a shopping cart with an email or MMS  message that offers personalized recommendations.

So why do we call this omni and not just multichannel?

Multichannel marketing is simply messaging that a brand uses across various channels to try to increase its reach. In contrast, omnichannel marketing is not just about sending the messaging out across the different channels but linking up the data on feedback on each one back to the customer to personalize the experience through responsive adaption. 

Customer interests are not static but constantly changing as they respond to contextual triggers. Brands that utilize omnichannel use big data analytics to update customer data and adapt  each message that goes out accordingly. An omnichannel approach adapts to such shift to make marketing messages as relevant as possible.

Timely texts

Emails remain an important marketing tool for all businesses, especially eCommerce. However, widespread smartphone use makes texts a very effective way to get attention, as they work off a device many people keep at hand for most of their waking hours. 

Text messages the perfect medium for sending time-sensitive information. That includes:

• Announcement of new product drops, especially if one of the benefits you offer SMS subscribers is early access to what’s new.

• Promotions for  same-day  flash sales, particularly if they are set for certain times like noon to three. 

• Notification that something they wanted to order is now back in stock or is now on sale.

• An urgent notice that their selections in a cart they abandoned are in danger of selling out.

Channeling Success with Targeted Communication

Targeted messaging is much more effective than generic messaging. The basis of that communication is identifying customer segments, and it can get even more relevant with personalization with product offerings and promotions selected specifically for that customer’s interests.

No matter how responsive your customers are to emails or texts, it’s important to remember that a single channel does not fit all customers under all circumstances. You need to adapt to the needs and context of the moment to deliver the right message through the right medium.. 

For example, you could have a customer who has subscribed to both emails and texts. Even though sending an SMS is fast and easy, it's not an appropriate medium for longer messages. You also can use both channels for reminders say of an upcoming promotion or a price drop on something they have looked at but didn't end up adding to cart or that they added it to the cart but failed to complete the transaction.  

On that basis, you can get the right offer to the right person at the right time, and through the right channel.

Related:

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The Ad that Delivers What Women Want

 "What does woman want?" That question  perplexed that father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud. It continues to puzzle marketers today, as we saw in What Women Want to See in Ads.

 The truth is that the answer was set out well over 500 years ago in one of the legendary knight stories, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell: Spoiler alert: when the knight was given the choice of having his otherwise hideous-looking wife beautiful at night or during the day, he lets her make that decision and  was rewarded with beauty 24/7. 

But that insight of 1450 has been lost over the generations as marketers seek to push on women what they want instead of empowering them to make the decision for themselves. But one swimsuit company got smart about it and so has seen a very positive response to its ad on Facebook:

We proudly want to introduce ModLi.

A different kind of swimwear.

Sometimes - the usual bikini/one-piece is just perfect. Whether you are sun bathing, in a hot-tub with friends, going to the beach with your partner, etc...

And for "other" situations in life, ModLi is perfect.  Playing with your kids on the beach, going to the pool with family, swimming, water sports, or just walking on the coastline.

Benefits:

- Sun Protection (UPF +50 Reducing harmful rays by 98%)

- No wardrobe "Malfunctions"

- Comfortable "It's like the difference between wearing work clothes and sweatpants"

- Lab Tested Fabrics

- Designed by professional designers with customer requests in mind

The ad served on Facebook garnered 6.7K reactions, 683 shares, and 1.2K comments, a sample of which you can see below:

The large number of likes on many of these comments indicate that they do accurately reflect the feelings of many women. They like having  the option to choose if they wish to cover up or not without being judged for those choices. 

Read more in  The Answer to What Women Want in a Swimsuit Ad

Big data alone is not enough for an agile enterprise

Ever get a promotional email or ad that has no relevance to you? We all have, and it’s usually due to the marketing algorithms used to analyze big data inputs responding incorrectly to the wrong signal. For example, eBay started applying algorithms to the tags used to track customers in 2007 to measure the relevance of search results on its site. After a couple of years of success, the results became less accurate and seemed more random and arbitrary. The algorithms no longer worked because one of the tags had shifted. Events like that one resulted in customers seeing search results or receiving marketing emails that made no sense to them.

“The algorithm is not a human brain and doesn’t realize that the parameters have changed when tags change,” Ratzesberger observed. If a change is made to a variable, everything “downstream” from that variable must change, too, or the complex results can backfire.

The solution to this entire problem of achieving agility at scale is the Sentient Enterprise, a concept that Ratzesberger developed with Dr. Mohan Sawhney, a professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. 

Read more here

What to Ask Yourself About Your Content Marketing

My guest post for Level343.com explains what to expect from content marketing and the questions to go through to be sure it is as effective as possible. "Engagement is what we’re all after, particularly when we publish online and hope to get likes, pluses, comments, and shares. When planning what to include in a piece intended to serve as content marketing consider: who, how, what, which, where, when, and why."  Read more at 
 http://level343.com/article_archive/2012/08/30/key-questions-for-content-marketing/