The customer journey for physical goods used to be relatively straightforward. Consumers would make a shopping list, go to the store, pick up products, check out, and go home.
With advancements in commerce technology, an abundance of online and offline channels, and variations in customers preferences, no two customer journeys look alike. Yet customers still demand highly personalized marketing messages and shopping experiences everywhere they shop.
Consumers can buy whatever, wherever, and whenever they want. As a result, seamless omnichannel experiences are no longer a novelty—they’re the expectation.
Businesses providing these cohesive and integrated shopping experiences are winning over competitors. In fact, consumers spend up to 1.5x more with companies that offer fluid, personalized, and seamless customer experiences.
This guide shares how to build an omnichannel marketing strategy, complete with examples from omnichannel brands that have reaped the rewards of one.
Table of contents
- What is omnichannel marketing?
- How omnichannel marketing works
- What are the benefits of omnichannel marketing?
- How to build an omnichannel marketing campaigns
- Omnichannel marketing examples
- Omnichannel marketing FAQ
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing refers to an integrated approach that uses many channels, such as social media, email, and SMS, to reach a customer. The goal is to create a consistent brand experience, no matter where a customer interacts with the company.
Brands use omnichannel marketing to create a seamless user experience across all touch points. This could include things like providing customers with the same product selection, pricing, and promotions across all channels, as well as offering customers the ability to purchase items online and pick them up in-store.
Not to get confused with multichannel marketing, omnichannel is highly personalized, consistent, and regularly updated marketing based on your shoppers’ needs—not on the needs of your channels. It puts customers at the center, offering them a seamless experience across all the sales channels they’re using and presenting them with the right information at the right time.
How omnichannel marketing works
SAB reports that customer touchpoints have more than doubled over the past five years. Today’s consumers expect seamless and cohesive shopping experiences, no matter where or when they interact with your brand.
Omnichannel marketing mainly relies on data. Only when you know your customers inside out can you be proactive with the marketing messages they’ll respond best to, on the specific channels they’re using.
Consider an enterprise retailer that sells through its online store, marketplaces, brick-and-mortar stores, and social media storefronts. With omnichannel, each one is seamlessly integrated with the other.
Potential customers might see your social media posts and start a subscription. From there, the brand can send push notifications through mobile apps when they’re near a physical store, cross-sell related products through Facebook ads, or send targeted email campaigns to people who’ve abandoned their cart without making a purchase.
What are the benefits of omnichannel marketing?
Increase visibility and brand awareness
More and more customers are shopping both in-store and across online channels, and it can be challenging for brands to fuse the experiences.
If you’re a retailer with physical stores and ecommerce stores, omnichannel marketing offers an opportunity to create integrated experiences that provide consistency and boost brand awareness. It meets the demands of today’s tech-savvy consumers through highly personalized, consistent, and regularly updated marketing, helping you stand out from competitors that haven’t yet made the investment.
Capture shoppers where they buy
One of the benefits of omnichannel marketing is that it ensures your marketing isn’t disjointed across platforms—which can also pay dividends for your store in the long run.
Not only do omnichannel customers not shop exclusively on one platform, they also don’t shop linearly. Instead, they bounce from one channel to another before making a purchase. In a Salsify report, respondents from the US, the UK, Germany, and France reported they engage on at least 11 different touchpoints.
What’s more, 80% of consumers say convenience, knowledge, and friendly service are the most important elements of a positive customer experience. The same report also found that 43% of shoppers would pay more for greater convenience. In other words: today’s consumers have new shopping patterns, and they favor convenience now more than ever.
Improve customer loyalty
Closing the first sale is the first hurdle any merchant has to cross. Once you’ve surpassed this, don’t ignore your existing customer base. Use your omnichannel marketing campaigns as a tool to turn one-time customers into repeat shoppers. These people account for 21% of a brand’s total customers yet drive 44% of their total annual revenue, on average.
McKinsey found that omnichannel customers shop 1.7 times more than those who use a single channel. They also spend more than their counterparts, justifying the expense in omnichannel marketing that meets customers on the channels they’re already using—not just those that are easiest for you to post on.
How to build an omnichannel marketing campaign
1. Define your customer journey map
The goal of omnichannel marketing is to meet shoppers with highly personalized messages at every phase and channel of the buyer’s journey. This means it’s essential to understand your customers and reach shoppers wherever they are—be it a brick-and-mortar store, a live event, social media, in-app, or on your website.
Customer journey maps define the typical order in which these experiences take place. For some brands, one sales channel comes way before another. “When we were doing pop-ups and in-person events, we realized we were making sales for all the month after because we would meet people in person,” says Myriam Belzile-Maguire, founder of Macguire Shoes.
“People try the product, so we felt like having a retail presence made sense in our business, especially when people want to try shoes for the first time, at least once. And then once they know they like the brand and they like their quality, and then they feel more comfortable buying online.”
You’ll need concrete evidence to support customer journey mapping. Rely on the ecommerce analytics already available to you and supplement it with qualitative data from customer feedback surveys and quizzes.
The goal is not only to know what channels your target market uses throughout the sales journey, but the emotions and challenges they’re facing with each interaction. When are they aware of the problem? What’s the first step they take? What’s the final decision-maker that convinces them to buy? Outline the channels or touchpoints that occur at each stage to build your customer journey maps.
2. Decide on your marketing channels
Your customer journey map and will lead you in the right direction when determining marketing channels, but consider integrating the following into your omnichannel marketing strategy:
- Social commerce. Marketers can direct shoppers from photos on social media directly to product pages, and consumers can also buy directly on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
- In-app. Mobile devices are a powerful shopping tool, and now it’s possible to create your own mobile app, market, and make sales right within your Shop app.
- Email marketing and SMS. Capturing email addresses and numbers across channels and during a potential online purchase helps brands and retailers nurture customers to purchase.
- In-store experiences. Loyalty programs, digital kiosks, and buy-in-store-ship-it-to-your-home are all ways brands and retailers can engage consumers in person.
3. Clarify your messaging
Consistent messaging helps to establish your brand identity. The goal is for someone to see your omnichannel marketing campaigns and know exactly who your brand is, what it stands for, and why they should consider your products when they’re looking to solve a problem or achieve a goal.
Develop a brand messaging strategy that outlines these three core pillars. Touch on things like:
- Brand positioning. How does your product compare to what’s already on the market?
- Brand personality. Are you fun and cheeky, or corporate and professional?
- Visual elements. What colors, fonts, and photos will you use?
- Brand values or mission. What’s the overarching goal that underpins everything you do?
Bear in mind that what you say will change depending on your target customer’s stage in the buying journey. If you’re doing omnichannel marketing for a coffee brand, for example, people who’ve opted into your email list might want more product-specific data than your social media followers. But underpinning both campaigns is your mission to become more sustainable and engage Gen Z audiences with tongue-in-cheek comedy.
4. Build your tech stack
Retailers today have never had a better marketing toolkit. The rise of omnichannel retail helps ecommerce merchants, brands, and retailers meet shoppers wherever they are, which helps them take advantage of growing customer spending.
Look for omnichannel marketing software that helps segment your customers based on the actions they’ve already taken and the data you’ve collected. The last thing you want is to drive the hard sell with Facebook ads that target people with no idea of what you are selling. A much more effective omnichannel approach is to retarget those who’ve already visited specific URLs on your website, such as /category/t-shirts, and show them t-shirts popular with people of a similar demographic.
Shopify Plus stores already have the capability to collect customer data across multiple sales channels from a single commerce platform. From there, choose an omnichannel marketing app that can integrate with your store and run campaigns across multiple channels, such as:
“As a Shopify Plus customer, we have access to the tools, apps, and integrations needed to succeed in a multi-channel world,” says Kerri Economopoulos, managing director at Titan AV. “Allowing us to put the customer first and deliver a seamless experience across all channels that builds trust and loyalty in our brand whilst driving growth for our business.”
One of the more advanced tools of omnichannel marketing is mobile location data combined with first- and third-party audience data. Geo-targeting technology can help target specific consumers during the “moment of truth,” like when they first stepped foot into your brick-and-mortar store.
But be sparing and strategic while using geofencing marketing or mobile GPS. You want to make sure the shopper has consented. Often you can get that consent when offering store Wi-Fi or when a user downloads an app. Then, in the customer’s mind, it makes sense that you would provide offers or suggestions because they’re an active participant.
5. Test and analyze marketing attribution
Data collection—including traffic, on-site interactions, personal data, purchases, and searches—is critical to powering ecommerce omnichannel personalization. The same goes for tracking your success with the right metrics.
Consumers come in contact with retailers and brands across multiple touchpoints, including online, offline, in-store, word of mouth, billboards, and in the metaverse. Some perform better than others, as Amit Mahtani, owner of Bagels on Greene, explains: “If something is a bestseller in the retail side, it's not necessarily going to be a bestseller online, so make sure you track them individually.”
But figuring out what data to use and how to track it is only going to get more complex, especially with Chrome phasing out third-party cookies. First-party data collection will become increasingly important for merchants, and AI solutions will lead the way to do some of the heavy lifting and help scale marketing automation.
Omnichannel attribution is the practice of attributing sales and conversions to the channels that customers use. While it’s true there is no one-size-fits-all attribution method or collection tool for omnichannel marketing, most marketers will:
- Use cookies (for now), tags, user IDs, and UTM codes
- Set up conversion tracking and pixels (e.g., Facebook pixel, Google Ads conversion tracking, etc.)
- Integrate customer relationship management (CRM) and other marketing analytics platforms
The best method for collecting and analyzing attribution data is to use a tool that captures a comprehensive view of the customer journey, tracks various campaigns, and has robust reporting. Apps like Triple Whale and Polar Analytics can collate data from every marketing channel and sync it with your Shopify sales and conversion data. This allows you to paint a more accurate picture on how customers interact with your campaigns.
Examples of omnichannel marketing
Pinallli
Founded in 1984, Pinalli is a specialist Italian beauty retailer that offers over 40,000 products from 350 different indie beauty brands. With over 70 points of sale in Italy, in May of 2022, Pinalli focused heavily on the ecommerce side of its business with a new custom-built platform. Omnichannel marketing played a key role in turning this sales channel into a raging success.
Pinalli used Shopify Plus and Sintra, a Plus partner consulting agency, to optimize its marketing campaigns and integrate its own customer data platform for more accurate targeting.
“Omnichannel marketing requires consistency and seamless organization,” says its ecommerce manager Daniele Rosetti. “Every single touch point needs to be integrated into a unique system that encompasses our ecommerce and offline stores. Click and collect, price lists, promotions, digital totems, and logistics need to communicate in real-time through a stable and efficient infrastructure.”
As a result of its move to Shopify Plus and investment in omnichannel marketing, Pinalli almost doubled transactions and improved its conversion rate by 28%.
Animals Matter
Animals Matter started in the reverse order of many booming online brands. Back in 2014, the pet brand sold its products to retailers through catalogs. Problems arose when sales began to dwindle as customers bought directly from online marketplaces like Amazon.
In a bid to strengthen the brand and diversify its customer base, Animals Matter used ProductCart to list the products. Things still weren’t perfect; it had no supporting online presence. No email list, no social media feeds, no advertising—not even an online store that allowed customers to buy products without interacting with a brand representative.
Founder Scott Avera eventually turned to Shopify and upgraded to Shopify Plus a few months later: “They helped us go from just thinking we should sell direct-to-consumer to having social media channels, a Google integration, a Shopping integration, and email integration—they helped us get all these things in place and educated us.”
Animals Matter now has its own omnichannel marketing campaigns that run on autopilot. The brand has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google Ads. And it’s paying off: sales are increasing 45% year over year; returning customers are up 46%; and conversions have increased by more than a third.
OLIPOP
Some brands like Allbirds and Parachute Homes are opening their own stores to be closer to suburban shoppers. Others are collaborating with retailers to bring their products into physical stores, but not necessarily their own. Olipop is a good example.
Ed Kolovson, director of business insights at Olipop, tweeted about how expanding into retail has boosted the brand’s sales: “Olipop has increased door count by about 50% since the start of the year (excluding Walmart launch). … Sales have not declined one bit and Amazon sales have increased over 50% since the start of the year.
“Expansion into retail has led to more awareness and customers are able to try the product in stores first,” Ed said. “This has led us to an increase in first-time purchasers subscribing thus increasing our lifetime value.”
BUBS Naturals
BUBS Naturals sells fitness and nutrition products. It realized it needed to improve its marketing and boost its online sales. In a bid to find more customers, BUBS Naturals started using Shopify Audiences, which helped the brand identify groups of people who were more likely to be interested in its products. This made its advertising more effective and helped it reach more potential buyers.
TJ Ferrara, co-founder of BUBS Naturals, says using Shopify Plus allowed the brand to take control and make its online store much more profitable: “Shopify Audiences has helped us regain confidence with top-of-funnel advertising and reach qualified buyers with return on ad spend as high as 3x. The ability to leverage Shopify’s understanding of intent and create audiences focused on our products significantly enhances our acquisition efforts.”
BUBS Naturals also used new features to its online store. It set up different levels of discounts based on customer groups and made sure to turn off discount codes during big sales. With Shopify Plus, BUBS Naturals could handle all of these things on its own, without outside help.
This new approach was a big success for BUBS Naturals. Its online store conversion rate doubled. Its direct-to-consumer site’s revenue went up by 10%, and 84% of customers came back to shop again.
Make omnichannel marketing work for your brand
In today’s highly competitive retail landscape, omnichannel marketing is essential to a brand’s success. However, it’s not an easy endeavor, and it takes time, tools, and strategy to get it right.
Thankfully, Shopify Plus has its point-of-sale and ecommerce systems integrated into one easy-to-use platform. Shopify Plus helps merchants create a personalized and seamless experience for customers—no matter where they are engaging with your brand.