Omnichannel is a relatively new concept for today’s marketers. Despite its relatively new tenure in the marketing world, the idea of omnichannel has made a strong impact on businesses and consumers alike, and it doesn’t look like omnichannel is going away anytime soon. In a time where consumers constantly accessible through dozens of marketing platforms, marketers must embrace omnichannel now. Consider these three steps when starting omnichannel marketing, if you haven’t already.

Step one: Find Your DMP

With an omnichannel approach, a data management platform is a must-have for retailers. A data management platform (DMP) collects, manages, processes, analyzes, organizes and activates data. There are plenty of DMPs available to marketers, so choosing the right platform is imperative to your omnichannel success.

There are a few important qualities you may want to consider when choosing your DMP. Businesses should consider how the platform integrates 1st and 3rd party data, how the platform can be utilized, the platform’s cross-channel management abilities, and how easy the platform is to use.

Finding the right DMP can help businesses create a much more comprehensive, 360-degree profile of their customers, a key foundation for marketing personalization.

Step two: Develop Content

The key to a seamless, omnichannel experience lies within the content of the marketing messages that customers receive. Although consumers are receiving messages on different platforms, the messages must be unified and consistent with one another. All messages directed to customers must reflect products and ideas of the overarching marketing campaign.

Developing consistent messaging can be a stumbling block for some businesses. When faced with the dilemma of message uniformity and also personalizing content, marketers often decide to just “batch and blast” generic campaigns across the board. However, with carefully planned strategy and new technology, businesses can combine uniformity and 1:1 personalized marketing with much less effort and spend compared with several years ago.

DMPS and automation platforms can help pull in data from customers so that the right bits of content can be used in messaging, whether it be product offers, copy and language, or design.

Erik Schulze, VP at Yes Lifecycle Marketing, expects that personalization will only become more of a necessity in the next years. In a MediaPost article regarding email marketing personalization, Schulze said, “As the number of emails go up, the engagement with those emails goes down…it’s much more important to have a more personalized discussion or address personal needs.”

And email is just one of the channels marketers should be personalizing…

Step three: Consider all Channels

There are a variety of other channels that retailers should be taking advantage of for optimal coverage.

As the millennial generation becomes the primary target for retailers, companies must adjust their omnichannel strategies accordingly. Raised in an era that incorporates technology into everything, milennials are naturally tech-savvy. Their familiarity with technology will likely influence marketing strategies. Almost three-fourths of today’s consumers believe digital technologies will transform the way businesses use their channels to interact with customers.

Therefore, marketers should be able to access these customers through more, nontraditional channels. This opens more doors for businesses willing to market through social media, apps or SMS. Businesses that are unwilling to embrace new technologies will be left behind.

Despite the increase of technology in today’s marketing, marketers should not forget about old, traditional marketing channels.

Brick-and-mortars, the most traditional channel for marketing, are still important to customers. Brick-and-mortar account for over $4 trillion in sales: a majority of the retail market. Providing an enjoyable in-store experience is still vital for success in the marketing world.

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If you’re still looking for more ways to get started with omnichannel, check out some of our favorite omnichannel campaigns.
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If you are at all interested in implementing marketing personalization at your company, follow this quick 4 step guide.

1. Determine whether or not you really need it right now.

How do you know when you’re ready to start personalizing your messages? First, decide what state your company may be in. Are you a growing consumer facing business that has reached a plateau in revenue and is looking for a new marketing/growth strategy? Or maybe you’re in a slow moving industry and you want to jump ahead of your competitors. Perhaps there are more pressing issues that must be solved first, such as branding or strategy.

What most consumer facing companies have realized is that customers are almost expecting some kind of personalization during their digital experience. Recent studies have shown that 71% of consumers would be more likely to purchase from a brand if a company’s emails were tailored to their customers’ likes and preferences (source).

Marketing personalization could be your answer.

2. Do your research

research-science-image-small-res At this point, you’re still in the preliminary stages of determining whether or not personalization is a right fit for your company. It’s important to find out what you’re really looking for in a marketing personalization suite. Do you need a powerful e-mail, customer relationship management, and personalization tool? Or do you have an email deployment platform already and are looking to supplement your email service provider with marketing personalization?

If you’re still new to the world of personalization, we cover the basics of marketing personalization in our mass customization article. Additionally, here are some quick data stats on digital marketing to kick start your research.

3. Build a Business Case

Convince your boss you will need personalization by building a business case. Your business case must have buy-in from the CMO and the CFO. Make this happen by demonstrating the power of personalization as not only a customer experience management capability, but also a strategic investment to grow profitability by increasing revenue and decreasing costs with a strong ROI.

In building your business case, you can use metrics such as open rate, click through rate, and shopping cart basket items to portray a potential increase using personalization. Really think through how personalization can be beneficial for your organization. If you’re an apparel retailer who is constantly seeing shopping card abandonment, you may want to consider implementing card abandonment emails along with personalization such as “Based on your shopping cart items, we recommend:”

nectarOM founder and CEO Amrit Kirpalani explains how hyperpersonalizing will garner gratitude from not only your CFO but your customers as well in this Direct Marketing News article.

4. Choose a vendor

Personalization is relatively new in the digital marketing space, which means the companies that offer the technology are relatively young as well. Many companies will claim to have some degree of omni-channel personalization, but it’s very difficult to really evaluate a product without being extremely diligent in your research and taking a deep dive into each solution. It is very common for companies to offer pilots and short test periods before implementation, so take your time before signing the dotted line.