Omnichannel is not a buzzword — it is a way of bringing every channel of communication with the customer together into a single system. The recently published report "A Marketer's Guide to a Growing Market" offers reference points for IT directors and marketers who want to make the move to omnichannel and scale up their customer interaction channels. Below are the key ideas we have put to use on our own projects, along with our experience of transforming offline companies into omnichannel brands.
What omnichannel means
Omnichannel is the mutual integration of scattered communication channels into a single system, with the aim of providing seamless, uninterrupted communication with the customer.
In practice it breaks down into five main tasks that have to be solved one after another. Let us look at each of them.
Task 1. A single store for the "relationship history" between consumer and brand
In the past, people tried to adapt heavyweight ERP-class solutions to serve as the single store for the "relationship history". Today, however, the general view is that CRM is the best fit for the job — it is the CRM that holds the entire history of the brand's relationship with the customer. On our projects, using a CRM system made it possible to consolidate data from both offline discount databases and websites.
An up-to-date, continuously accumulated record should contain at least the following data:
- on-site behaviour (UTM tags, visits, goals);
- RFM metrics (amount, recency and number of purchases);
- details of completed purchases (products, categories, stores);
- customer value (LTV, average order value);
- general attributes (gender, date of birth, city, country).
Task 2. Email marketing still works — but it can be made to work even better
Email marketing continues to deliver high conversion rates. Yet it is often underrated, and for many brands in Ukraine it remains a grey area of untapped opportunity.
Launching the simplest ready-made set of standard Mailchimp triggers connected to an e-commerce platform takes only a few days, but it can deliver a guaranteed sharp rise in conversion.
Several new technologies have also appeared in this area recently that can turn the existing user experience on its head. For example, the technology now allows a purchase to be made right while the email is being read.
Task 3. Unified business processes for online and offline
Offline should only work in cooperation with online. You will have to review every business process and automate it as far as possible. It is important to understand that the process of buying a product may begin on the website and end in a specific store within the retail chain.
- Online. The user starts choosing and placing the order on the brand's website.
- Offline. The process is completed in a specific store within the retail chain.
- Online again. Bonus points are credited and become available for the next purchase.
What helped us integrate and synchronise seamlessly with the offline systems was pairing the CRM system with the website we developed. The synchronisation covers the following systems:
- the delivery system;
- the payment acceptance system;
- discount card management;
- the store of personal and cumulative discounts.
Task 4. Personalisation
Personalisation is in fact not just smart digital advertising and well-configured remarketing that follow your customer around the internet. Ever since messengers established themselves firmly as communication channel number one, personalisation has typically been implemented in one-to-one chats.
With the right technology, you can pull all the information you need out of the data store and smoothly realise the full potential of personal communication directly with the customer. Pairing the CRM system with the e-commerce platform helps gather messages from different channels into a single window and distribute conversations among managers. The channels messages are collected from:
- WhatsApp;
- Instagram;
- Telegram;
- Viber;
- Facebook.
A brand that cannot reach its audience across every touchpoint risks being left without customers.
Task 5. Mobile thinking
Building a mobile app that delivers additional value is becoming a mandatory component of the omnichannel model.
A common mistake
Many companies simply duplicate the functions of the brand's main website inside the mobile app without adding any extra value. An app like that will simply go unused.
A new opportunity
Making personalised messaging available through the mobile app creates a new level of opportunity. But the intimate nature of this environment has its hidden pitfalls: communication here works in a completely different way.
We will cover this in more detail in one of our case studies.
Where to start
The strength of omnichannel — and at the same time its biggest drawback — is that it has to be designed and adapted to each specific situation. There is no universal recipe that will suit everyone as it stands.
