4 Ways to Optimize Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns
The buyer journey is no longer a single, straight line. The explosion of digital platforms means consumers now engage with brands through numerous platforms, including apps, websites, social media, email, text messages, and live chat—often simultaneously.
An omnichannel marketing approach allows customers to engage on their own terms, increasing engagement and customer satisfaction. However, brands often struggle to juggle data and information from multiple platforms, resulting in missed marketing opportunities and revenue losses.
Omnichannel marketing has increased dramatically in recent years. In fact, the number of companies investing in omnichannel experience increased from 20 percent in 2012 to 80 percent in 2020. That number is likely to continue to rise as more users switch between platforms, devices, and even IP addresses.
How can brands allow prospects and customers to engage on their own terms and track the ever-expanding amount of data? The answer is customer data platforms, or CDPs.
A CDP serves as a single source of truth, helping optimize your omnichannel campaigns and deliver a better user experience. Here are four ways a CDP can support and drive your omnichannel strategy.
1. Improve Omnichannel Consistency By Segmenting Audiences
As the number of platforms increases, so do the number of channels brands must navigate. Rather than juggling best practices for a dozen different platforms, leverage CDP to create a consistent experience based on user preferences, whether users follow you on Twitter, talk to your chatbot, or sign up for your newsletter.
For example, you can use data from your CDP to create dynamic experiences that personalize your website, landing pages, and app.
Start by building a comprehensive view of who your customers are and what they want. What challenges do they face? Where do they want to talk to you? Where do they look to solve their problems?
Then, create attributes for different segments. For example, perhaps your hospitality brand targets both families and organizations looking to host business retreats. Creating separate personas and analyzing the needs of each will help you understand where to post and what to say.
Once you understand who your audience is, pay attention to what channels they prefer to communicate and use a consistent voice, assets, and approach.
For example, if business customers prefer LinkedIn and email, you can use a more professional tone on those channels while using a lighter tone on Twitter and in your chatbot.
The goal is not to deliver the exact same experience across all channels; rather, aim to understand which segments of your audience use which channel and deliver a consistent experience. When users know what to expect, they are more likely to remember and trust your brand.
2. Use Omnichannel Campaigns to Follow Customers Throughout Their Journey
Much like the sales and marketing funnel, the customer lifecycle is no longer a straight line from first touch to conversion. Thanks to the digital transformation, users often cycle through several platforms and return to previous touchpoints multiple times before converting.
Using a CDP, brands can track progress through their journey and design multi-step, personalized journeys across various channels. This creates a holistic experience that helps customers feel heard and understood.
For example, marketing could create different content or email experiences based on how often a user visits your website or where they are in the buying process. A user that visited your blog three times, for example, is likely closer to conversion than a first-time visitor.
The CDP can also help you design omnichannel experiences in advance by creating predefined triggers, such as sending an email when an enterprise user visits your demo account or reminding a retail customer to stock up on a consumable product after a specific time frame.
Don’t forget to follow users even after conversion. Following up on multiple channels with current customers can prevent churn and highlight upsell opportunities.
3: Focus On High-Value Channels + High-Value Customers
Omnichannel campaigns aren’t just a nice to have feature—they drive real results. One study found that omnichannel campaigns deliver a 250% higher purchase rate than single-channel campaigns.
Brands can increase this rate further by analyzing CDP data to highlight the most high-value customers and channels. For example, CDP data can show you how the highest value customers navigate the buyer journey so you can streamline the process.
You might notice enterprise customers have the highest order value and lowest churn, making them a high-value customer. Based on campaign data, you can then invest in the campaigns that drive the highest number of conversions in that group.
Or, your data may show users who watch videos from Instagram are more likely to convert. As a result, you choose to retarget Instagram users who interact with video content.
CDP data can also help fine-tune your marketing budget. By tracking historical customer data, you can see which campaigns and platforms have the largest impact on revenue and invest additional resources into those channels.
4. Uncover New Platforms and Audiences
Testing new channels and platforms requires investing time and resources—with no proof of results. Using data about what channels your users prefer, marketers can see what platforms their users prefer and invest money in those areas, rather than playing an expensive guessing game.
For example, a retail brand might assume its older customer base isn’t active on TikTok. By tracking the buying cycle across platforms, they might discover their audience is active on the platform. Alternatively, the brand might find other audiences on the social media sharing app to target.
By gathering data first, brands can reduce the risk of expanding their omnichannel campaigns into different platforms and markets.
CDP Data Drives Returns for Omnichannel Marketing
Today’s customers can interact with your brand in more ways than ever before. For consumers, that’s a good thing. For brands, however, it can become difficult to manage.
Omnichannel marketing requires a deep understanding of who your customers are, what they want, and where they prefer to communicate. CDPs provide the detailed data brands need to deliver a consistent omnichannel experience that optimizes marketing efforts and increases revenue.
Get access to real-time data on customers and prospects to drive your omnichannel marketing forward with Zeta Global CDP+.
