Why Omnichannel Marketing is the Secret Sauce

Recently, one of our writers was perusing trendy glasses on a modest little eyewear site called Warby Parker with a friend.

Writer: “Hold up, what’s the name of the frames this dude on their site is wearing? I kinda like those.”

Friend: “Let me check if it’s tagged on one of their Instagram photos.”

That’s omnichannel marketing.

Omnichannel marketing is creating a consistent, integrated experience for shoppers. It considers every interaction a shopper might have with your brand across all platforms. From brick-and-mortar to mobile shopping to social media and every gray area in between. 

Omnichannel Marketing In Real Life

Perk your ears fellow marketers, according to a V12data.com article, brands that practice omnichannel marketing see a 91% customer retention year-over-year as compared to brands that don’t.

The reason this is so effective? Well, the same article cited a Google Research statistic revealing that 98% of Americans switch between devices daily.  

Think about this. When you drop by Warby Parker’s site, you are being gently plunged into a cool, deep sky blue and white world. 

Whether you are on the desktop site, mobile site, or social media, you are met with the same crisp colors and economical description that reads something along the lines of: 

“Prescription eyeglasses starting at $95.”

It’s not fancy, but it tells you who they are without delay. Warby Parker goes to great lengths to assure customers are less confused, more engaged, and constantly enjoying streamlined experiences with their brand.

They send 5 frames to your door for free along with a prepaid return label so you can try them on at home. That’s as close to in-store service as you can get.

Open up a tab on your phone and punch their name into a search engine. Notice how you are transported to a mobile digital store that looks more like a sparkling app interface than a bleak web page. 

These streamlined features are part of Warby’s unified omnichannel strategy. They all act to propel you through their world without friction.

How to Build an Omnichannel Strategy

Enough about Warby Parker, my god. How can I create unified magic with my modest little online offering?

Countless Channels, One Place

Like an episode of Startrek, you want a central hub where you command your world from. Here, you will track, manage, and update features across web, mobile, social media, and anywhere else your customer lurks.

Shopify Plus offers a straightforward solution to omnichannel ecommerce. The service allows you to have a presence on 100+ social media channels and 80+ online marketplaces---and manage them all from one dashboard. In ecommerce, this is HUGE brownie points. 

Automate Tasks and Think Bigger Picture

Once you’ve got your presence where you want it, it’s time to get tastefully automated.

By building then automating certain tasks, you preserve time you can use to better your brand and think critically about the future.

Using another Shopify offering called Shopify Flow, you can start automating faster than you might think. Here’s a few of the things you can automate and track using Flow:

Shopify Flow’s dashboard has tabs for: Orders, Products, Customers, Analytics, Marketing, and Discounts. It also breaks down sales channels by your online store, wholesale, and Facebook.

Unify the Buying Experience

A crucial aspect of omnichannel marketing is the point-of-sale. The moment a consumer likes your product or service enough to  pull out their damn wallet and put some money on the line.

It’s asking a lot of folks to cash in a chunk of their hard-fought dough these days. So make it as painless as possible. 

To do that, you might want to look into Shopify POS (point-of-sale) which allows you to unify your online and in-store purchasing. Creating seamless crossover aides fickle customers. 

It lets them buy online and pick up in-store, or look around in-store and revisit the same offering online. Plus, it handles pesky returns and exchanges for you. No one likes dealing with those.

Centralizing your POS lets you engage more personally with the customer and all the points they may or may not decide to pull their wallets out.

Do It Once, Do It Beautifully

Gulp. Building an omnichannel strategy sounds kinda daunting.

Yet, you’re really only choosing one way to display your brand to the world and displaying it that one way in multiple places. It’s why humans build templates for things and teach standardized processes.

Pick your colors, write your copy and taglines, settle on a theme and aesthetic, and make it really good---then replicate it everywhere.

When you have your strategy in place, ask a friend to tackle your brand from every angle possible. Ask them about their experience. Did it feel like the exact same brand everywhere? Or a couple different brands with similar colors and ideas?