Omnichannel marketing involves the integration of multiple support channels into a single system to create a seamless and engaging customer experience. This means integrating every touchpoint where a customer might interact with a business to create unified brand messaging across all channels, regardless of the sequence in which a customer touches them on their journey. In contrast to the multichannel approach, wherein different marketing channels behave as stand-alone entities (for instance, a brand’s eCommerce store and its physical retail locations), an omnichannel strategy seeks to unite these facets of a business together into a single, cohesive unit. Whereas multichannel marketing starts with the business and moves outward, omnichannel marketing starts with the customer and moves between channels. A CRM, like HubSpot, consolidates the relevant customer information into a single, easy-to-access location, streamlining sales and support processes and enhancing your omnichannel marketing efforts.

Increasingly, customers expect a highly personalized and streamlined purchasing experience – meaning the omnichannel approach is expected as standard, especially from big-name brands. Using marketing channels effectively to provide a relevant and tailored customer experience is more important than ever, as 73% of customers report that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service. This shows that business performance is tied to providing a fluid and adaptable service experience.

The Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

Data Gathering

Businesses that conduct their marketing operations on an omnichannel model enjoy better engagement with customers, as well as improved retention. 89% of customers are retained by companies that use omnichannel marketing, compared to just 33% when employing a weak omnichannel strategy, or not having one at all. Operating across multiple channels enables businesses to cross-reference data on customer behaviors, preferences and grievances, thereby providing valuable insight into how needs vary across different channels. This data can be categorized in order to form the customer base into segments, and these segments can then be marketed to on a highly personalized and individualized basis. During an in-store visit, for example, a sales agent can pull up a customer’s transaction history and use information on their purchasing habits to recommend products. Additionally, by establishing an infrastructure to resource these channels simultaneously, marketing efforts remain effective even if one or more individual channels fluctuate in popularity with customers.

Enhancing Marketing Effectiveness

Omnichannel marketing is also a sure-fire way to improve customer satisfaction. As many as 71% of shoppers who use their phones for research report that their device has become an important part of the in-store experience. It is important, then, to integrate different channels effectively to allow customers to get information and support when, where, and how it is most convenient. This not only increases the likelihood of customers completing a purchase, but also protects long term customer retention and helps to unify brand messaging. 

By integrating all channels into a centralized infrastructure, customer service agents become more productive and efficient as communications with customers become streamlined, and gaps are plugged when a customer switches between channels. Rather than begging each support interaction with a blank slate, customer support agents are able to consult the history of a customer’s previous touchpoints. This streamlines interactions, and helps customers feel seen and valued. Integrating channels in this way serves as a strong point of differentiation from competitors who may be taking a simpler multichannel approach.

How a CRM Can Boost Your Omnichannel Marketing Efforts

Highly Personalized Customer Experiences

You’ve likely heard of or used one of the major CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho or Microsoft Dynamics. These platforms provide a meeting point for business performance and customer engagement to overlap. A CRM is able to simplify the process of crossing marketing channels, providing automations and tools such as chat bots to streamline communications and reduce the manual input required to manage relationships with customers. CRMs provide the main benefit of recording and tracking customer data, including any interactions with your sales reps or customer service representatives. This gives your organization a full view of customer interaction timelines, which can then be used to provide a highly personalized customer experience, consolidated on a central platform. The CRM will record information of customer transaction histories, website visits, and email interactions. 

In a B2B context, this helps sales reps to identify and target individuals with buying authority and determine through customer behavior the best time to make contact and best channel to use. The consolidation of customer data into a central platform helps customer service agents to add a human element to engagement with customers. This is achieved by making interactions more relevant, informed, and helping to build a relationship that is not simply transactional. This information helps to inform the execution of increasingly relevant and valuable marketing campaigns – presenting prospects with the content they are more likely to engage with, via their preferred channel.

More Effective Sales Efforts and Customer Relationship Management

CRMs provide a single hub location for the consolidation of all relevant customer data. This allows the relevant stakeholders, such as your marketing, sales, or customer service reps, to access all important customer data in a central location. This provides useful analysis of the different touchpoints your customers are using across their purchasing journey, throughout landing, buying, and exiting. This has the added benefit that, instead of outsourcing separate support services, such as email, calls, and socials, they are all integrated into a single platform, allowing the customer journey to be tracked accurately across all channels from within the CRM.

HubSpot Tools to Enhance Your Omnichannel Marketing

Consolidating and tracking your customer interactions in a central location has become more important than ever, in a landscape where ‘consumers are constantly reading reviews, checking product features, comparing prices and making purchases across multiple platforms.’ HubSpot is a market leader in the CRM space, providing a number of tools and features that make it easier to execute a truly omnichannel marketing strategy.

Marketing Automation

One of these feature sets is marketing automation. HubSpot enables your organization to automate tracking and responding to events across the customer lifecycle that would otherwise be laborious and time-consuming. In the case of products or services that have a long sales cycle, this is especially useful. You can set up automation rules in HubSpot that score leads based on their interactions with your organization and any materials that are sent as part of your omnichannel strategy, and leads will then be automatically enrolled into various campaigns upon reaching a predetermined score threshold. This significantly reduces the labor of having to manually track leads and their interactions and enroll them in campaigns. When leads perform certain interactions, workflows will be triggered to guide them through the pipeline towards becoming a client.

Web Features

Furthermore, HubSpot provides tools for creating landing pages and even blog posts with built-in SEO features to ensure your content ranks optimally. When users visit your blog posts and other content, their activity will be logged and subsequently build an activity timeline that helps to inform your interactions with leads. This information is crucial in a consumer landscape where customers expect a highly personalized and seamless purchasing experience – HubSpot notes that ‘when your support team lacks context, your customers suffer.’

Customer Support

HubSpot also provides marketing tools for omnichannel messaging through Service Hub. This tool integrates email, chat, and Facebook messenger – allowing your customer service agents to move seamlessly between channels when responding to support tickets and queries. This supports asynchronous messaging, where a customer may raise an issue in a channel that is different to where the resolution is needed. As many as 86% of shoppers regularly move between two channels, e.g., using a phone to look up products while in-store, so it is important that your service reps have the agility to respond to customers across channels.

Using a CRM to Execute a Successful Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

CRMs are a near-crucial tool for managing your customer relationships in the current digital landscape. By consolidating the information from customer and lead interactions into a single, centralized platform, you can streamline and enhance the effectiveness of communications and more easily track lifecycle statuses. A good omnichannel experience is characterized by convenience, consistency, relevance, and agility – and a robust CRM, such as HubSpot, helps to build meaningful relationships with customers by reducing friction and enhancing your omnichannel marketing efforts. Here at RFDM, we spend a lot of time working in CRMs for our clients and love helping businesses to select and set up the CRM that is right for their unique needs. Get in touch today to find out how we can help with your CRM needs and give your omnichannel marketing a boost.