5 Key Ingredients for Multichannel Marketing Success

Consumers don’t make purchasing decisions like they used to. So why do so many marketers act like it?

Today, the marketing landscape is flooded with channels, from display ads to television to email to voice-activated assistants. And customers are hopping across all of them to learn about your brand and your products.

Still, only about 14% of marketers said they take a multichannel approach in all of their campaigns. One in 20 doesn’t take an integrated approach at all.

Multichannel marketing means communicating with prospects and customers across all channels with an aligned message.

It is essential to meeting customers where they are with the correct message at the correct time in the correct place. It boosts brand awareness and allows leaders to better attribute the outcomes of their marketing efforts.

Here are 5 key ingredients for multichannel marketing success.

Collect Customer Data at Every Touchpoint

Multichannel starts and ends with accurate data and strong data collection habits. You can’t understand how to best communicate with your customer unless you know who they are.

Consider where or when in the buyer’s journey you can collect more information from your customers.

Let’s say you want to understand your customers’ social media habits and purchase behavior. You may wish to add fields to your newsletter signup form or purchase page, or survey your existing database in exchange for a coupon. You can also ask for information during an in-person point of sale. Remember that a later-stage prospect will likely feel more comfortable sharing information than a new prospect.

Fill In Your Data Gaps

Even the most robust brands are missing customer data.

That’s because your data only reveals how customers interact with your brand – not how they behave elsewhere. You also may only have part of a customer’s identity, such as a newsletter subscriber’s email address, but not their postal address or demographic data.

Patching those gaps with third-party data can be key to completing your customer picture.

Learn how to connect your customers across channels in our latest ebook.

Create a Single View of the Customer

Combining and aligning customer data from different sources is a huge challenge for brands big and small.

Only about one-third of marketers say their organization is able to create a complete, single customer view, according to Adobe and Econsultancy.

Creating a single view of your customer requires creating a unified system for storing and updating your data.

Using Identity Matching, each customer’s identity can be connected with a ubiquitous central identifier – such as an email address or hashed email – which can then be tied to the customer’s other IDs, such as their postal address, shopper ID, mobile ID and demographic information.

Align Internal Teams

A winning multichannel brand hasn’t just connected their customers – they’ve aligned their internal teams.

Orienting staff at organizations of any size presents a challenge. Social media marketers, email marketers, digital marketers, advertisers, account representatives, customer service specialists and salespeople – as well as outside consultants or agencies – all need to be on the same page.

Disjointed staff means a disjointed buyer’s journey. Brands need to ensure that they’ve drilled into their target audiences and that their teams representing the brand consistently on every platform.

Send a Consistent Message

Once your data is connected and complete and your team is on board, it’s time to deploy killer campaigns and great customer service across channels.

This means ensuring that the communications you are sending to your customers are consistent and complementary, whether it’s in an email or in a store.

For example, if a customer purchases an item in a store, they shouldn’t receive an email promotion for that same item a few days later. If they purchase online, the in-store return process should be seamless.

Shifting to a multichannel marketing mindset can feel daunting, but nearly all marketers recognize its importance. Multichannel improves brand visibility and loyalty and boosts the bottom line.

It’s time for brands to wow their customers with these aligned experiences.