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Omnichannel marketing is all about the customer. The effort works to present a completely seamless, integrated experience from the moment someone comes to your website, through the browsing moments, into the shopping selection, and after the purchase. But how can you create such an experience at your online store?
Here are four tips to help you streamline your own efforts:
It stands to reason: if every customer interaction presents a cohesive, integrated business, the entire company must be working together to implement and sustain this effort for it to be successful.
This marketing effort cannot sit only on the marketing and sales department’s plate. It must extend to the customer service call center as well as to anyone in the field, in brick-and-mortar stores, or sitting at the IT help desk.
An omnichannel marketing strategy hinges on the fact that you have customer data at the center of everything you do. This allows every single member of your team to access that data and understand your customers better. This means that when a customer interacts with your support/customer success team, they’ll know exactly what the customer last purchased, what they last browsed, what they talked about with support already, and any other data you might have.
You want your customer to have a seamless experience from beginning to end. Making sure your whole company is on the same page is the way to do exactly that.
If all departments are working together, you create a complete and rich repository of customer data. Every interaction with your brand and products as well as detailed records of conversations or communications between your customers and employees are recorded and accessible for the next employee to see. That means more attuned customer service, more targeted upselling, and stronger long-term relationships.
How do you discover what the customer is experiencing? You have to put yourself in their shoes, and do so regularly, in order to really understand your omnichannel marketing efforts from the other side of the screen.
Put an internal auditing process in place, and perhaps recruit different individuals from your company to “be the customer” and interact with your company through different channels. Work to understand which channels your customers use the most often.
Some areas you want to be intimately familiar with include how customers research your products and services, enter an order, request a refund, and submit an inquiry to your customer service team. Be sure to use every channel you offer and evaluate the customer experience critically. Find ways to make each customer interaction more efficient, more user-friendly, and more positive.
Enlist internal and external support, and conduct these audits regularly to continuously improve the customer experience. Be sure to tap a wide variety of people because different human thought processes and experiences will provide you with many angles and areas to improve on, rethink, and reconsider.
Everyone asks for customer feedback, but you need to make sure you make the effort to really listen to your customers, implement their good suggestions, and be responsive to where they are struggling in order to make feedback truly meaningful.
Customer feedback can be solicited at various points of the customer journey, but the most common time to ask is after a purchase is made. Checking to make sure the customer is satisfied is certainly an important data point to collect; however, also be sure to ask when customers contact your call center or submit an online request. Make sure they got their questions answered or their problem addressed.
In addition, whenever interactions occur within your separate channels, feedback should be captured from those conversations as well.
Since omnichannel marketing is all about getting the perfect message to the correct customer at the right moment, you have to have a pretty fine customer segmentation strategy.
One way is to divide your customer base by recent shopping behavior. Reach out to those customers who recently purchased a product or service and suggest a complementary item. Tap those customers who have been gone for a while and invite them to re-engage, or offer a great deal to brand new customers who haven’t made a purchase yet.
In a similar way, you can look at spending patterns and discount usage. For example, a certain segment of your customer base may always spend enough to reach a free shipping minimum or another group may engage if you offer a special discount with a deadline.
If you can invite customers to share demographic and personal data with you, targeting products and services can become even more personalized. For instance, you can suggest appropriate seasonal clothing based on the geographical location or age-appropriate products if you know a segment of your customer base has children under the age of 5.
Messages can also vary based on the last behavior recorded. For instance, if one segment of your audience did not open your list email campaign, you may create a different message than the group that always reads your promotional email. Testing subject lines and time or day of delivery can help as well.
By employing these tips, you can successfully create a seamless customer experience for your organization. Doing so will reap financial rewards as well as build a loyal and long-term customer base.
An omnichannel marketing strategy is not just an investment in your customer experience, but an investment in your business as a whole. And when you invest in your customer, you give your customer the priority they deserve within your business. After all, you wouldn’t be where you are without them.
