Saying that today’s consumer wants it all isn’t an understatement, it’s a fact. Building real brand loyalty means you need to be the business that gives it to them.
Modern-day consumers expect to view your products online, download exclusive offers to their phones through your loyalty program while they browse in your online or brick-and-mortar store, and then boast about their purchase on Instagram. They also anticipate a nearly effortless return and exchange experience if they prefer a different product.
While most competitive brands realize the need for an omnichannel strategy, many stop short of developing a plan to maintain a consistent brand image across all channels. A recent McKinsey Research study found that brands like The Gap, Williams Sonoma, and Crocs – once known for their brilliant marketing strategies – are now falling short of creating a fully cohesive omnichannel experience, and the fractures are showing in revenue.
So what defines a top-notch omnichannel experience in modern commerce? How can you avoid the pitfalls where other brands are stumbling?
Here are 3 of the most important areas on which to focus your attention, and some tips on how to build a unified, high-performing omnichannel experience that boosts both customer experience and customer loyalty.
The 3 C’s: What Makes a Great Omnichannel Experience
1. Consistency
Maintaining consistency is extremely important when implementing an omnichannel strategy. Creating experiences based on a unified brand presence is part of building a strong brand your customers recognize and understand across all touchpoints.
With today’s hectic schedules and busy lifestyles, consumers rarely complete a purchase during the same cycle in which they first began shopping and infrequently finish a purchase using the same device or access point. A decision to shop for new running shoes often starts on a smartphone, gets comparison shopped on a tablet, gets put into a favorites list on a laptop, and then gets purchased in-store once they’ve tried on the shoes to verify fit and style. Therefore, if you’re not offering a satisfying and similar level of service and satisfaction across all those touchpoints, chances are, you will lose that purchase somewhere in the mix. The service and experience you offer on all channels also need to flow effortlessly.
Brands that struggle with providing this cohesive flow often suffer from “Fractured Brand Syndrome.” This syndrome is often the result of a brand struggling to make the most and best use of their customer data or falling behind on their data analytics. Siloed data – customer data stuck in different departments and not stored in one ecosystem-wide CRM – is frequently the culprit behind Fractured Brand Syndrome and can be the biggest enemy to a successful omnichannel brand strategy. The key is to have a CRM system like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform, which frees your data and provides a 360-degree viewpoint of your customers.
2. Convenience
Maintaining consistency is important when implementing an omnichannel strategy. Creating experiences based on a unified brand presence is part of building a strong brand your customers recognize. While this includes consistency in brand styling, iconography, messaging, and tone, it goes deeper than that.
Customers today expect a “picking up where I left off” experience whenever they access your brand. Nothing frustrates modern shoppers more than having to start all over again, whether it be entering their demographic information, their search criteria, or their unsaved login information. You need to build an omnichannel whose touchpoints offer a consistent, fulfilling experience whenever they interact with your brand. The need for convenience is a major component of lasting customer loyalty. 86% of consumers indicate that a brand that consistently provides a convenient, easy-to-navigate online shopping experience is one to which they’ll stay loyal.
3. Communication
Customers are looking for useful, personalized communication from the brands to which they are loyal. As a result, brands that keep customers updated generate higher ROI, and this combination builds real Customer Lifetime Value.
Today, brand-to-consumer communication can take many forms: emails, apps, SMS texts, coupons, special offers, blog content, white papers, podcasts, etc. The key to effective communication lies primarily in personalization. Customers today expect that whatever communication they receive will be content that is anything but generic. Instead, it should be specifically curated for their tastes, preferences, and behaviors. This includes coupons that reflect their search histories and favorited wish list items, newsletters that showcase their interests, and email drip campaigns that connect with them on topics that add value to them in some way. By utilizing collected customer data, your brand can continually segment your audience and develop specific content that highlights the strength of your brand by its ability to focus customer communication.
Building a Robust Omnichannel Experience: Key Takeaways
Implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy can seem overwhelming to businesses concerned their brand might get stretched too thin. However, by adopting a comprehensive CRM into your approach and focusing on some key areas of customer experience, it’s entirely possible to achieve. Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind:
- Understand Your Customer’s Behavior: Find out how customers behave across all channels and how much time they devote to each platform. Create a comprehensive plan to translate the experience throughout all touchpoints.
- Utilize Data While Strategizing: Using data will help you better understand your customers’ current behavior and predict future interactions and outcomes. Based on that, you can plan a suitable solution to address their preferences.
- Categorize the Buyers and Personalize the Journey: After analyzing your customer’s data and using tools like zero-party data to understand them from a deeper level, categorize your customers based on common behavioral patterns. From there, create a personalized journey for each type of customer.
- Send the Right Message to Your Audience: Context is a crucial part of a meaningful omnichannel marketing strategy. Sending the right message to relevant users when and where they are most active helps you best engage with them.
- Choose the Right Marketing Automation Tools: Opt for marketing tools that help you execute, monitor, and measure your strategy. Do your research and pick a CRM like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform, which provides a multitude of functionality and integration opportunities for your brand.
- Become a Customer-Centric Organization: A customer-centric organization helps the business engage with customers. If your employees are not trained to focus on the overall experience of customers, no marketing tool or strategy will be beneficial.
Are you interested in diving deeper into your retail marketing challenges? Schedule a 30-minute chat with one of our specialists. We can review your unique situation and suggest approaches that can set you on the path to success