Delivering a quality customer experience is at the top of every marketer’s list of priorities. This is because the customer experience encompasses so much today for so many industries. In banking, retail, restaurants, etc. everyone is vying for customer interactions, which now come at a premium.
At this point, customers are tuned into way more than just transactions. If the opportunity presents itself they’ll engage with their favorite brands literally anytime and anywhere. To deliver two-way communication this requires meeting your customers where they are, in-person and online.
It also requires having a firm understanding of your customers, including their preferences and what drives their behavior, which is the foundation of omnichannel marketing. When you know who your customers are, how they spend their time and where they spend their time, you can establish a brand presence across every key marketing channel so you don’t miss any opportunities to connect and engage with them.
This is why an omnichannel marketing approach continues to play a major role in how many brands embrace the customer journey. It offers companies a way to create marketing touch-points that work together on every channel, in a world that is more digitally connected than ever before. Customers are coming to expect more consistent and personalized brand experiences across every encounter with a company.
To deliver on these expectations let’s look at three important aspects that omnichannel marketing affords companies to help them continue increasing traffic and building customer loyalty.
Use data to inform the customer experience
According to Dimension Data’s Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, 81 percent of executives say they recognize that customer experience is a competitive differentiator, yet 44 percent say it’s too difficult to execute well.
Most companies may say they have data, it’s just that it’s in silos and not accessible in real-time. However, with the right customer data management and analytics tools, companies can fit all this data together to win at the engagement game. The kind of data you need for this is:
- Demographic data
- Device data
- Location data
- Transaction data
- Social media data
Now you have a shot an not only understanding the wants and needs of current and prospective customers, but you can begin to tailor and personalize their experiences to help set your company apart.
Create multiple customer journey paths
A recent Walker Study found that customers highly value great customer experiences and that by 2020, customer experiences will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
Marketers first job is often to get prospective customers to notice their brand. Next, it’s for them to purchase with your company. And after that, you’re working to create loyalty that will sustain a lasting relationship. That’s why your marketing efforts, including customer acquisition and retention tactics need to accommodate multiple customer journeys.
As customers move from unknown to known, more data can be captured and analyzed to create a more comprehensive customer picture that allows for the execution of personalized content and offers. This is where you can see the differentiation of the journeys, as a prospect will need to be influenced in a different manner compared to a repeat customer. So as you engage customers across multiple channels, it’s paramount that your marketing initiatives need to successfully nurture new and existing customers along their various journeys.
Personalize marketing offers
McKinsey reports find that personalization has a direct correlation to incremental revenue and increased conversion rates – yet about 40% of consumers indicate they only sometimes receive personalized messages that truly feel personal, relevant, and intriguing.
Personalization has moved beyond just adding the customer’s name in your marketing offer. To effectively impact behavior a dynamic and highly personalized approach based on complete customer profiles must be utilized by companies. You need to create a high level of familiarity for your brand to stand out among the competition.
Your accumulated data combined with analytics and artificial intelligence technology will provide the type of insights necessary to predict, design and target customers to deliver high effectively experiences that resonate with their ever-evolving expectations. That’s the power of omnichannel marketing to provide personalized, seamless customer experiences.
