All marketing can increase returns, but omnichannel marketing revs it up to 250% higher purchase rates and 90% higher retention rates.
To achieve that, It’s not enough to build a great eCommerce site, set up marketing campaigns that utilize both email and SMS, and target customers with social media ads. You need to have all those components integrated through an omnichannel strategy.
Why one channel doesn’t cut it
Most eCommerce businesses today do not rely on only one digital marketing channel. When competing for customer attention, you need to reach out to them in different ways in the hope that what they didn’t click on an email may still get a click on SMS or an ad served on social media.
In a survey by HBR (Harvard Business Review), 73% of respondents said they use multiple channels during their shopping journey. That includes email, SMS, MMS, social media, as well as searches on the site.
The challenge for retailers is maintaining coherent and consistent communication that makes the most of the different ways of connecting. A Facebook or Instagram ad may be what first grabs the customer’s attention, though they may need some follow-up to convert to the level of putting together a shopping cart with an email or MMS message that offers personalized recommendations.
The ROI of Omnichannel Marketing
Here’s what the data says about the impressive returns an omnichannel strategy delivers for businesses:
- Engagement rate: 18.96% on omnichannel vs 5.4% on single-channel
- Purchase frequency: 250% higher on omnichannel vs single-channel
- Average order value: 13% more per order on omnichannel vs single-channel
- Customer retention rates: 90% higher for omnichannel vs single-channel
So why do we call this Omni and not just multichannel? Merely using various channels doesn’t necessarily translate into omnichannel marketing. Here are the five key components of omnichannel marketing:
From multi to Omni: the adaptive difference
Multichannel marketing is simply messaging that a brand uses across various channels to try to increase its reach. In contrast, omnichannel marketing is not just about sending the messaging out across the different channels but linking up the data on feedback on each one back to the customer to personalize the experience through responsive adaption.
Your customers’ interests are not static but constantly changing as they respond to your messaging and other contextual triggers. Brands that utilize omnichannel use big data analytics to update customer data and adapt each message that goes out accordingly.
That’s why the most successful eCommerce businesses don’t just use a multi-channel approach, but an omnichannel approach to maximize conversions and sales. It would not be possible without the power of big data analytics and automation that Remarkety packs into its marketing solution.
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Timely Texts
You can’t even think of running an eCommerce without an email marketing strategy. But given the rise of smartphone use, you want to win your customers’ attention while they are the device they have in hand for most of their waking hours.
SMS/MMS are increasingly being utilized by marketers because they are so effective at getting customer attention. They are designed specifically for the device that so many people literally have in hand for just about all their waking hours, which makes them perfect for time-sensitive messages, including reminders about abandoned carts.
Here are some relevant stats:
- 62% of smartphone users have made a purchase on the device.
- 56.7% of customers report that mobile is their primary way to shop, and 36.7% use a mix of mobile and desktop.
- SMS open rates can be as high as 98%!
- 90% of smartphone users say they open their messages within just 3 minutes!
- Text messages enjoy a 19% click rate for links, far above the 2% rate for emails.
- 70% of customers consider texting a good way for businesses to be in touch with them.
- In 2020 66.5% of shoppers subscribed to texts from a larger number of brands than they did the year before.
That makes text messages the perfect medium for sending time-sensitive information. That includes:
- Announcement of new product drops, especially if one of the benefits your offers SMS subscribers is early access to what’s new.
- Promotions for same-day flash sales, particularly if they are set for certain times like noon to three.
- Notification that something they wanted to order is now back in stock or is now on sale.
- An urgent notice that their selections in a cart they abandoned are in danger of selling out.
Remarkety not only allows you to automate such texts but also to easily track your results. You get access to a dashboard that shows you the relevant numbers: how many people got your message, how many people opened it, how many clicked the link in it, etc. to give you insight into the effectiveness of your content and reach.
Automated Segmentation and Personalization
Targeted messaging is much more effective than generic messaging. The basis of that communication is identifying customer segments, and it can get even more relevant with personalization with product offerings and promotions selected specifically for that customer’s interests.
But where to start? Segmentation is not all that simple, as there are various ways to divide people into groups.
Basic segmentation categories include the following:
- Age and gender
- Income bracket
- Geographic location
- Household situation, i.e. single, with a partner, with children, etc.
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Segmentations get even more complex when you start considering individual behavior that includes:
- Preferred devices, i.e. PC, tablet, smartphone
- Participation in social
- Taste, style, interests, and motivation
On top of the difference between individuals is the consideration of differences in their relationship with your products or stages of the conversion funnel. Variables on that end include the following:
- Your most valuable customers who spend the most with you
- Customers who buy regularly but are not your biggest spenders
- Customers who only buy when they receive a promotion
- Customers who purchase only specific categories of items
- Shoppers who have signed up for communication but haven’t bought anything yet
- Customers who have only bought once but have since become inactive
- Customers who have put things in their cart but failed to purchase them
It is simply not humanly possible to keep on top of all these categories for all your customers. But it is possible with automation, and that is what Remarkety delivers.
Remarkety’s data on your customers is limited to your own first-party data but draws on second-party and third-party data to identify segmented lists for specific groups of people. In addition to segmentation, templates with dynamic name tags allow you to insert the recipient’s first name in both your email text blasts.
Remarkety also enables you to set up dynamic, personalized promotions and coupons that allow you track their use to see what motivates each customer to convert. Because they are unique to individuals and campaigns, dynamic coupons help identify what pushed a particular customer to convert. Then businesses can apply the promotions that get results for the targeted segment.
Channeling Success
No matter how responsive your customers are to emails or texts, it’s important to remember that a single channel does not fit all customers under all circumstances. You need to adapt to the needs and context of the moment to deliver the right message through the right medium.
Even if your customers have subscribed to SMS, sometimes you may still want to use email for longer messages. Or you may want to offer a more gentle reminder for an abandoned cart before or after you send a text reminder.
Retailers who use Remarkety’s service can seamlessly link up their SMS to their email and social marketing campaigns to be able to reach their customers on their preferred device and in their preferred channels.
For example, when it comes to motivating a customer to revisit products abandoned in a cart, you can send one message via email, another via text, and even show the products in an ad on Facebook or Instagram to try to get attention through all your different channels.
That’s why Remarkety makes it easy to integrate your SMS campaigns with your email campaigns and even your social media, so so that each channel informs the other to achieve more targeted messaging.
Motivating Customers
Every marketer knows that one sure-fire way to grab customers’ attention and motivate them to complete a purchase is by offering a coupon. Online coupon usage has been growing steadily in the United States over the past several years, rising from 126.8 million in 2015 to 145.3 million in 2021, according to Statista estimates.
Drawing on the transactional history of your customers, you can send highly personalized and targeted offers that fit their preferences and needs. Remarkety automates and improves on that data insight by tracking each marketing message and its response.
With its much more extensive data on customer behavior built up over years of serving hundreds of different eCommerce businesses, Remarkety can accurately predict which offer will draw a particular customer’s attention. Dynamic coupons reveal which promotions convert your customers, and adaptive marketing can apply the best offer.
Remarkety’s automated tools capture insights in near real-time to allow the eCommerce to adapt its messaging to fit the needs and position of their customer at that moment. Its solution is what allows your business to integrate all your channels to achieve a complete view of your customer and reap the rewards of omnichannel marketing.
