Omnichannel Marketing – Are You Using It All?

According to Idealliance, people receive 1900 ads electronically and 520 promotional emails per month. Yet approximately 75% of direct mail is at least scanned, if not opened and read. 69% of Millennials report reading their direct mail, with most on the same day.

No wonder digital fatigue is happening!

Instead of inundating your prospective customer with sales messages at random, create an omnichannel approach to your marketing strategy. Essentially, this means really map out the buyer journey, notating each point where a consumer may encounter your brand, including after the sale. Then meet your consumer at each of these points, leading them through a journey to purchase your product. This concept is different than multichannel marketing, where the emphasis is on being everywhere your customer is, including digital and traditional advertising. Instead, omnichannel marketing is where each point in your marketing strategy builds on the last interaction with the consumer, where ever they may be, with a cohesive and integrated message.

Hubspot recently published a great blog sharing 7 brands that embrace fully the tactic of omnichannel experiences for their customers. Essentially the article shares that using all of your marketing assets in tandem (In other words, all working together towards one campaign) provides a seamless experience to the consumer. This builds brand equity, trust and most importantly, bottom line results.

To truly develop an omnichannel customer experience, a company must include every department that front faces to the consumer, including: marketing, sales, customer service, product development and support. As excellent example is from our own backyard, REI.

REI treats their customers like stakeholders, with cash back rewards for purchases, lifetime guarantees on products, and investment in technologies to improve the shopping experience. They recently developed an application to help shoppers within their stores find purchasable items. These same items are featured in their printed catalog, direct mail offers, in-store apps, kiosks and other shopping touch points. The application is tied into their point of sale inventory program to ensure that if a shopper finds an item online, it is in stock or if an item is out of stock, it is notated across platforms. Now that’s an integrated approach.

If you are still siloing your marketing efforts instead of creating a targeted, integrated, omnichannel approach, contact us. We have a marketing play book to help you think through each point in your customer’s journey to buy. Once this journey is identified, a marketing plan is easy to put in place.