Omnichannel marketing is as much a philosophy as it is a marketing strategy. This is primarily because it requires marketers, CRM managers and sales teams to think differently about their customers.
It also requires an acknowledgement that the power dynamics in the sales process have changed. Historically businesses – and especially sales people – held all the information. They decided how much knowledge to share with customers and which products to push.
The sale mattered more than suitability.
Customers now have unprecedented access to information and choice. They can take the time to understand their needs and requirements before they ever get in touch with a potential provider or buy from a website.
That means the hard sell or pushing what you, as a business, want your audience to see is far less effective than giving them what they want.
This may seem counterintuitive as it may mean certain products or services never see the light of day. Another way of looking at it is you get to streamline your offering or reduce you stock levels by only selling what your customers want to buy.
Omnichannel marketing uses your data to determine which messages, offers, products, services and content is most relevant to your audience, on an individual basis.
Multichannel Marketing vs Omnichannel Marketing
This is like comparing apples and a cosy blanket.
Multichannel marketing is a method of execution. It’s about leveraging all your available channels to get your message out to your audience. Omnichannel marketing is utilising those channels to create a consistent, customer-centric, brand experience.
The key difference is blanket communication compared to a holistic, personalised experience.
Omnichannel marketing utilises all the channels you use now but changes the narrative, putting each customer at the centre.
This can only be achieved through a high level of personalisation. Which means you need a high level of customer data.
Regardless of your industry, customer data is something you should have in sufficient supply to start to craft personalised marketing journeys for your customer and prospects.
Even B2B businesses can adopt an omnichannel approach. Which isn’t too difficult considering not every prospect is going to want every service. There may have to be some multichannel leg work or some paid ads to begin with to capture initial interest.
But once the database is established, personalising communications across your channels is possible.
For B2C businesses like eCommerce businesses and sports betting and gaming operators, this process gets much easier.
Data on product searches, sizes, colour preferences, purchases, games played, deposits made etc. will already exist within those businesses.
The challenge is bringing all that data together into one place and turning it into something useful.
Creating segments to put your audiences into different buckets allows you to quickly and clearly understand where their interests lie.
Whether it’s a specific sport or a specific team. Or a particular product range or set of sub products within a range. The deeper you can go the more you understand.
Understanding what your audiences are interested in is the first crucial step in adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy.
Data and Omnichannel Marketing
So to effectively build any kind of omnichannel marketing strategy you need reliable data.
But more than that, you need reliable data to create a personalised omnichannel marketing experience. It’s not enough to know what customers may be interested in buying. Or what kind of game or sports an SBG player enjoys.
Personalisation means understanding who they are as well as what they like. The devil is in the data. Take time to deep dive into the customer data to gain valuable insights.
Sports betting and gaming operators can establish the difference between a player who supports a team and a player who is a fan. Bets on specific players suggest a deeper understanding of the team’s performance.
This insight can inform your communications and any incentives, offers or rewards you want to give them.
The more data points you can identify, the more useful the data becomes.
Once you’ve analysed and segmented your data to the point that you can start talking to your customers on a more personal level, you’re ready for step two.
Asking them for data.
First party data is great but it’s retrospective and therefore you need to continually feed the machine to keep it relevant.
Zero party data – data supplied by your customers or players – is invaluable because it shows intent.
Building a rapport with your audience puts you in a position where you can specifically ask them for their data.
Providing what you’re asking for is specific, reasonable and with a clearly defined purpose (and they value your service), they will provide the information.
Equipped with both your first party data and their zero party data, you are in a very strong position to adopt omnichannel personalisation.
Omnichannel Personalisation
Blending your customer first party and zero party data gives you the truest Single Customer View possible. Short of your customer giving your real-time life updates.
Knowing customer preferences as well as customer behaviours on your website or app makes it significantly easier to predict needs and wants.
Those insights are what drives omnichannel personalisation. As soon as a customer or player hits your website or app they can get a unique experience.
They can be presented with products or games that reflect their interests, purchase and behaviours. And with each visit that experience becomes more and more refined.
This doesn’t prevent the user from searching for something new. In fact, this should be encouraged. The more customers and players interact with the platforms they’re using the more data you can gather.
The more data, the more personal the experience becomes.
Repeat customers or returning players should hit your website or open your app and feel understood and valued. The ones edging closer to loyalty will feel a sense of belonging.
Omnichannel personalisation will create a more loyal and motivated customer base than any incentive or gimmick ever could.
Investing in customers and delivering value through a personalised experience deepens the relationship and builds trust. Once they trust you they’ll advocate for you. That’s when you start getting engaged customers without even trying.
You can use those insights to hyper-personalise all your customer communications. Use all the learnings your consolidated data provides and apply them to email, web push, app push, SMS and social media.
The Right Message on the Right Channel
It’s important not to use all channels to communicate all things. Spamming your customers, no matter how well intentioned, will drive them away.
You need to consider four things.
- What do you want to communicate?
- What channels do you customers respond to?
- What channels do they use when communicating with you?
- What channels have they opted in to?
This last point is especially important as pestering your audience on channels they don’t want to use is a great way to annoy them. You also open yourself up to potential legal woes.
Understanding what you want to communicate should inform the channel you use. An item back in stock or a goal scored is something that can be sent via a push notification. If they’re not opted in for push, or you don’t have that functionality then SMS.
If someone’s about to exit your site without converting an in page email or a web push may be enough to keep them on the page.
And, using the data you already have, those messages can be personalised. Not only with the products they were looking at or added to their basket, but with their name too.
The deeper the segmentation, the more sophisticated the communications can be. And the more value you can add.
There is, of course, a fine line between helpful and annoying and most forms of communication are interruptive by nature. That is to say, you’re interrupting whatever your audience was doing with your communication.
So, on that basis, whatever it is you want to say to them; it better be good.
Building data lead Omnichannel Marketing
To create consistent, valuable and engaging omnichannel marketing campaigns, you need to get your data together in one place.
More than that you need to continually ingest, analyse and segment your data, then build the campaigns. And it has to be done in real-time. Anything less and you run the risk of sending campaigns based on obsolete data.
Customer interests, needs and wants can change incredibly fast. Without the ability to keep your Single Customer View updated continuously, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant.
To learn more about how you can consolidate and leverage your customer data to retain your customers and drive conversions, request a demo of our omnichannel customer engagement platform with built-in CDP.
