Multichannel Versus Omnichannel Marketing

You may have heard multichannel and omnichannel marketing used interchangeably, and you may have even used the terms that way yourself. As you begin to lay out your plans for a strategy in 2021, it’s a good time to learn the difference and what you can expect to gain with each option.

Multichannel Marketing is used to describe any marketing technique that uses more than one format or device to connect with customers. This can include a wide array of touchpoints, but it can be as few as two. An example might be a company that typically uses email newsletters to reach out to customers that expands to using social media.

Omnichannel Marketing has some similarities to multichannel marketing, but there’s a key difference: omnichannel uses a coordinated, connected strategy to reach audiences in a consistent and highly personalized way. For instance, a customer that browses your products on their smartphone and then puts an item or two in a cart will see those same items in the cart when they revisit your site on their laptop. A few days later, after they’ve forgotten about the items in the cart, they’ll see an ad on social media that suggests those very items.

The Benefits of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Prioritizing an omnichannel marketing strategy requires more effort, but there are several benefits:

• The ability to offer personalized content to audiences based on their shopping and browsing history.
• Your target market receives a consistent experience across all devices and platforms.
• Access to customer data allows you to segment audiences at a granular level.

It’s also important to note that while an omnichannel experience is valuable to your customers, an omnichannel customer is also more valuable to your brand. The Harvard Business Review found that omnichannel customers spend 4% on average per transaction and 10% more when compared with customers who accessed the brands using a single channel.

When you consider that research from Salesforce indicates that customers are a single bad experience away from choosing your competitor, prioritizing a personalized customer experience takes on a new level of importance. A 2014 McKinsey study found that consistency was key to preventing customers from moving on to a competitor.

Getting started with omnichannel marketing requires a few important components.

A Commitment to Data Analysis

Without understanding your customers and their buying behaviors, there’s little that an omnichannel marketing strategy could add to your process. You’ll use data to break down your market into segments and then tailor your messaging to those segments.

A Commitment to Connectedness

Data must be enabled to flow freely between devices and platforms so that customers receive a consistent experience across every touchpoint.

A Commitment to Automation

If omnichannel marketing sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it would be impossible to run a coordinated, connected strategy across every distribution format you’re using. Automation is critical to allowing data to fuel a better understanding of your audiences and deliver the right messaging to match their place in the buyer’s journey.

To learn more about omnichannel marketing and the possibilities for growing your brand through automated tools, contact us at DirectMail.io.