6 Ways to Improve the Omnichannel Customer Experience

The world of marketing is an industry that is constantly evolving over time, and with every passing moment, there are new channels, techniques and tips being developed in order to best serve your target market. The omnichannel customer experience is an idea that encompasses this idea very well, and if you don’t adapt to the changing times, you may well be left chasing your competitors in the dust. In this article, we’ll look to define what the omnichannel customer experience is, and explore five of the best ways to improve it as part of your business’ wider strategy.

What is the Omnichannel Customer Experience?

Omnichannel marketing (also spelled as omni-channel) is an incredibly popular strategy employed by businesses, wherein all of the different channels used to interact with the customer base are seamlessly integrated; to create a more consistent brand experience. A common example of this is when businesses combine online and offline strategies in the promotion of a particular product range.

Take for example a clothing store selling their winter range; an omnichannel approach would see the offline, brick-and-mortar shop clearly displaying these products with banners and mannequins. Meanwhile, the online half of the business could promote this range through the website, via an email marketing campaign, through their app, and more. No matter which channel the customer sees this promotion on, they will be experiencing the same brand messaging, tone and style- hence, the omnichannel customer experience.

We can see that omnichannel marketing primarily takes a consumer-centric approach, an approach that brings results. Studies from Omnisend show that marketers using three or more channels, when compared to those using single-channel strategies, earned a 287% higher purchase rate. This highlights the value this strategy represents in terms of attracting your target consumers and bringing in conversions.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel

It can be easy to confuse the concepts of multichannel and omnichannel marketing, but they differ in one key area. As previously discussed, omnichannel marketing is focused on the idea of providing the customer with a single, holistic experience across all of the channels used. Multichannel marketing, however, provides the customer with a similar variety of channels, but without integration. There is no clear, shared strategy between these different platforms, with each one taking a different approach. It’s for this reason that many consider omnichannel marketing to be the superior strategy; a singular approach that utilises several arms of marketing to achieve a shared goal.

Improving the Omnichannel Customer Experience

Curating the best customer experience possible for your business’ audience is a sure-fire way of boosting performance. We acknowledge that doing so can be quite challenging, so below you can find five top tips on how to improve the omnichannel customer experience:

1. Defining your Brand

The whole point of an omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t just in the number of channels, it’s in the vision that is shared between them. Before you do anything, you need to make sure that your brand has a consistent tone, style and voice. This isn’t just limited to the visuals of your marketing efforts, but also in the approach to:

• how content is written and delivered

• how you address the customer

• the general mood of your promotions.

A clearly defined brand means you can apply the same approach across all of your channels much more effectively.

2. Define your Customer’s Journey

An omnichannel customer journey is like a map of all the hoops a customer will jump through when interacting with your brand or business across all of your different channels. Understanding this journey is key to providing a high-value omnichannel customer experience for your audience. The customer’s journey in your strategy should be one that takes advantage of all your channels and allows the consumer to shop in their own way, across all their favourite channels, in a consistent and satisfying way. By mapping all of the stages of the customer journey; from the discovery of your brand to the purchase of a product, you can choose the appropriate methods of marketing to adequately engage with your customers at the right times. This is where you can start to apply more consistent brand messaging when interacting with customers, which ties in neatly to this next point.

3. Providing Offline & Online Consistency

Taking a consistent approach across all of your online marketing platforms is one thing, but maintaining this consistency in offline activities is something that many businesses fail to achieve. Consumers in the modern age aren’t looking for a seamless shopping experience across offline and online channels: they’re expecting it. Whether it’s through the integration of technology on shop floors in the form of click and collect models, or in the voice of your brand being clear on your website and in your shop window, continuing your brand’s story across these two channels is vitally important in delivering the best omnichannel customer experience.

4. Put your Customers First

Perhaps an obvious point when discussing a topic with “customer experience” in the title, but one of the best ways you can improve the omnichannel customer experience is by centring your strategy around your audience’s needs and desires. Have you identified what your consumer’s preferred channels are? Do you have a clear understanding of the types of personalised interactions your customers are looking for? Where your customers go and what they’re looking for are two important questions that, if answered correctly, will allow you to create an omnichannel customer experience of greater value for your audience.

5. Segment your Customers

There isn’t a single business or service in the world that caters to one exact type of person; your customer base is made up of individuals with shared characteristics, and your omnichannel marketing strategy should reflect this. Segmenting your audience can help you to build clearer profiles of your audience and the types of things that they would get a lot of value from in an omnichannel customer experience. By segmenting your audience into granular, clearly-defined groups, you can better market to more people and provide a more holistic omnichannel customer experience for your consumers. Traditional ways of segmenting your audience include:

• Location or geographically-based marketing

• Psychological or behavioural-based marketing, such as a person’s shopping habits or most frequently visited websites.

• Targeted demographics, such as a consumer's occupation, age, gender and lifestyle choices).

6. Data Analysis & Integration

Having an omnichannel marketing strategy is a bit pointless if you don’t have the proper resources needed to track performance- but collecting this data is only the first step. You need the right tools to measure the right metrics, and to do this you need to integrate your marketing tools. As a business, you should be looking to deploy analytics platforms that can bring you all the information you need seamlessly in one place, in real-time, to meet the needs of the consumer in the moment.

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