Omnichannel Personalisation: Top 5 Best Practices You Can Follow

There are two major ideas in the marketing space today: data and personalisation. We are at a unique point where we have both the necessity and the means for extreme personalisation. This forms the basis of a customer-centric marketing approach. Our need for personalisation has risen to the extent that organisations are dissolving functional boundaries to align structures according to the customer's needs as part of their omnichannel strategy.

Omnichannel personalisation is the key to an impactful customer journey. Gartner defines omnichannel as a "seamless integration" of all marketing assets. Omnichannel personalisation processes use real-time data to provide your customers with a consistent marketing experience across all media. We can break down this definition into three parts: "data", "real-time", and "uniform marketing experience." 

Read on to find out why you shouldn't miss any of these aspects in your omnichannel marketing strategy and how you can reduce the chances of failure.

Barriers to Omnichannel Personalisation

While marketers have a consensus that omnichannel is the way forward, not everyone can fully implement it. Only 12% of advertisers feel that their strategies perform up to their expectations.

It makes for a curious case that even with an 83% majority of the consumer base willing to share data, we are not delivering to their expectations. Gartner suggests this is due to the underutilisation of AI, with as little as 17% of marketers using AI and Machine Learning. On the other hand, companies that are trying to implement machine learning find poor quality data a challenge. Others simply fail to scale. 

Let us look at some of the best practices you can implement to succeed with your omnichannel marketing strategy.

Best Practices for Omnichannel Personalisation

You can make the most out of omnichannel personalisation through strategic planning. Your best way forward is to focus on uniformity, appropriate use of technology, and designing interactions for a positive outcome. 

Here are the top five measures you can implement to get the best results from your omnichannel marketing strategy.

1.  Maintain Uniformity of Data Across all Channels

The biggest challenge you will face in maintaining omnichannel personalisation is bringing the data from all the channels together. With the amount of data you are generating, there is an increased chance of gathering poor data. It could be duplicate entries or incorrect or poor quality, including data with typos and misspellings. If you can't maintain data health, you cannot create 360-degree customer profiles and better understand their behaviours. Consequently, you will find it challenging to implement effective omnichannel marketing for your audiences. 

As a best practice, consider asking your visitors to signup so that you can identify them. This is the first step to personalisation. Next, encourage them to log in whenever they visit your website or app. Enforcing these two steps will help you track the visitor's journey across all your marketing channels.

You can also extend this strategy to various advertising platforms that should display the same personalisation they may have seen elsewhere on your site. Likewise, when a visitor lands on your page from a social media ad, they should find the same personalisations on your site as they have seen on the ad.

2.  Don't Overlook the Human Factor

Digital assets aside, personalisation in-store is as crucial as it is digitally. Consumers are thrice as likely to impulse buy in-store than on any digital platform. To capitalise on this opportunity, you need a trained sales force that aligns with the personalisation journey you have set for your customers.

Training needs to be an ongoing process. To be a top-performing brand, we encourage you to organise regular training programs along with a feedback system. A fundamental way to motivate your sales team to be pro-personalisation is to offer incentives based on the key performance indicators for your omnichannel strategy.

Moreover, omnichannel customer service can also improve sales and aid in upselling and cross-selling a recommended product.

3.  Aim for Long-Term Engagement

Instead of short-term sales, you should focus on establishing a long-term relationship. If you can guide marketing efforts to the customer as an individual, you can encourage customer loyalty and repeat purchases. To do so, you must establish a "conversation, not communication" policy. You can also set up a loyalty program coupled with your remarketing efforts.

4.  Leverage Marketing Automation

You need the right tools to make the most of an omnichannel strategy. An AI and ML-based engine can generate workable insights, while many available tools can automate omnichannel tasks. It is the best time to establish the foundation for AI decision-making by investing in omnichannel platforms.

Automation tools are essential to omnichannel personalisation due to the sheer amount of a user base, and picking the right one can be tricky. You can have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software or data analytics tools serve that purpose and build your technology stack from there. However, an easier alternative is having an integrated customer engagement platform, which can serve as an efficient all-in-one solution.

5.  Eliminate Data Silos

Your customer's omnichannel journey is likely to be complex and non-linear. The result is that all your data exists in silos across different channels. To make matters worse, you are generating more data than ever.

Silos arise when:

• Content is specific to a particular channel 
• Digital assets are spread across multiple applications
• Content is divided among different MarTech systems

You need proper tools to unify this data and present a single view of every customer. Combining the data acquired, you can get a 360-degree profile to design an omnichannel customer journey.

Automate for Omnichannel Marketing Wins

Omnichannel marketing is imminent. Customers demand to be treated as distinct individuals, and the businesses that respond proactively get immediate results. However, keep in mind that it is tricky to execute an omnichannel strategy successfully. Nevertheless, omnichannel personalisation is poised to define how we market our products or even our brands in the future.

While the trend presents some unique challenges, we have the tools to tackle them. iwinBACK's marketing automation platform can be your best tool in implementing your omnichannel strategy. 

Get in touch to learn more or book a demo to see the tool in action.