Our customers are taking increasingly complex journeys consisting of multiple online and offline touch-points. They interact with brands through any channel or device they wish (email, web, social, mobile app, direct mail, call center or in-store), and therefore its a strategic imperative that marketers are able to utilize data from all these channels and execute campaigns in an omnichannel way.
Without the ability to capture and act-on the available data points it creates disjointed and impersonal experiences that can frustrate buyers and damage a potential conversion.
Transitioning your marketing to an omnichannel strategy comes with headaches however. For example, Jane could have a product advertised to her on her preferred social platform (via her smartphone). She might then view the product on your website later that evening and add it to her basket (via her laptop), but then pause and close the web browser. Two days later she purchases the product (in-store).
Piecing Jane's journey together requires the ability to unify online and offline data, resolve her identity across her devices and make the data usable in your marketing channels. This could be to either replicate her successful conversion for future customers, or to intervene in her journey with triggered campaigns that could quicken or enhance her buying cycle.
With 80% of marketers unable to realize a Single Customer View across online and offline channels, it therefore comes as no surprise that marketers are struggling to keep up with the relentless zigzagging of Jane's touch-points and optimize her purchase journey effectively.
Watch the Customer Journey Optimization Webinar
In this webinar we'll take you through some groundbreaking principals that will help to set the building blocks in your organization to transition to an optimized, always-on and omnichannel approach to your campaigns and customer journeys.
Digital personalization platforms are fantastic for intervening in the digital journey using online behaviors and there is an abundance of ROI metrics as proof points that real-time digital marketing tactics can improve conversions. An omnichannel approach for multi-channel brands however needs to ensure that the online and offline worlds are blended together as one.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is essential for your omnichannel strategy therefore because it unifies all the online and offline information into one place and makes it accessible to all your marketing channels. This provides you with everything you need to know about each customer and connect with them in the most personalized way possible.
In the example of Jane, this could be enhancing the personalization and recommendations on the website by using her entire offline purchase activity. Understanding that she commonly purchases at a particular store could impact the placement of a 'Click and Collect' option, and automate the recommendation of her favored store, as well as the availability of the product at the store. Similarly, cross-sell recommendations could be presented (beyond a generic "this is what other customers usually purchase" message) to add to her basket value. And in a truly omnichannel way, this data could also be presented at the point-of-sale to the in-store salesperson to better make recommendations as well.
Optimize your omnichannel marketing potential with a Customer Data Platform
A Customer Data Platform empowers you to create omnichannel marketing campaigns and spend less time focusing on how you are going to send a message out and more time creating the message. This is because your data analytics, campaign management tools and the ability to send messages through separate channels is all in one location. The CDP creates an infinite loop of customer data flowing through the business that can be surfaced to every channel, person or customer-facing system that needs it ensuring consistency and personalized experiences.
Omnichannel marketing, in its essence, is all about targeting the right customer at the right time via every channel. And when it comes to relevant customer interactions, a Customer Data Platform allows you to fully optimize your omnichannel marketing with unified data, unified decisions and unified channels.
Want to know more? Download the Customer Journey Optimization eBook where we expand on this topic.
Evolving from a campaign mindset to an omnichannel customer journey culture requires a transformation of technology, data, people, processes and measurement. BlueVenn, as well as being an omnichannel marketing automation and Customer Data Platform vendor, works closely with clients, using state-of-the-art expertise to transform culture, data and your approach to direct marketing.
