Frustrated with the IOS privacy changes and updates? It’s time to learn about Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing explained 

Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that integrates and automates platform to platform ensuring the end-user experience is seamless. What this looks like for us as consumers when we experience an omnichannel-driven marketing campaign might look like this. 

You see a product via a Facebook ad which you click and decide to add it to your cart, you get to checkout and decide to think about it overnight, it is late anyway. In the morning you jump straight into work on a desktop, and you have an abandoned cart email from the company letting you know your item is still waiting for you, you click the link and are relieved to see your cart is still has your items in it, losing your items across devices is your pet peeve. Before you decide to make the purchase you receive an SMS from the company, they have supplied a discount code ready to use for the same purchase waiting for you in your cart. You have now in the space of a day had three separate interactions with the company across different platforms and devices, all of which were able to integrate with each other through automations which provided you with a seamless experience to help you make a purchase decision. 

Omnichannel vs Multichannel

How does an omnichannel approach differ from a multichannel one? Simply put a multichannel approach doesn’t include those seamless integration features. Multichannel marketing means using multiple platforms to market your business. You might do this already by pushing your social media content to both Facebook and Instagram when you post in the app. You then take that short-form video and post it on Tiktok. This is you marketing via multiple channels however it is all manual work, even with a scheduling tool as these three platforms are not speaking to each other when you make these organic posts. They cannot pick up where another has left off. See the difference? 

Why an Omnichannel approach is important

Having well-put-together platforms can make or break your sales funnel, even with the most unique and well-devised marketing campaigns if your systems don’t work, you will not convert sales. It is just like our example from before: if you added 10 items to your cart and returned to it on a different device later only to find your cart was empty, would you give up? Would you find all 10 items again? How does it impact your purchase intention? I know I am busy, I probably would give up and say I will look for them later knowing months will pass before I need those items and circle back to completing a similar purchase probably with another company that made it effortless for me to complete my purchase.

Ways to implement an Omnichannel marketing approach 

A few ways you can begin to move towards an omnichannel approach is to ensure you first have a multichannel one, find platforms that offer integration and will enable you to connect A to B to C and create that seamless experience for your customers. Two of my favourite examples of omnichannel platforms for e-commerce are Shopify and Klaviyo.

Hopefully, this article was able to clarify omnichannel marketing enough to assist you work towards implementing it.