Omnichannel marketing, sales, and service facilitate engagement with leads and customers through various SMS, phone, email, and social media channels. This strategy helps brands reach more potential customers while keeping the content personalized and consistently branded. Using CRM software to integrate all these channels through one hub helps users manage brand voice and generate data-driven insights for lead nurturing.
What is omnichannel?
Omnichannel is a marketing, sales, and business term for integrating multiple channels to engage with customers. Channels include social media, telephony, email, SMS, and other digital platforms.
Omnichannel is a customer-centric engagement strategy that focuses on the experience your customers have with your business from the beginning of a sales process through to post-sale.
In terms of CRM software, omnichannel features are highly sought after to maximize customer engagement in the lead nurturing phase of the sales process.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that intentionally curates a brand experience for customers that stretches across multiple selling channels. Omnichannel marketing gives businesses more opportunities to target ideal customers directly and engage with them exactly where and how they prefer.
Teams utilize CRM systems to streamline sales processes and use available add-ons for marketing functionality. For example, sales reps can take calls through the CRM, while also deploying email campaigns and creating new lead profiles from social media. With the help of the right CRM software, businesses can do all of this while also centralizing knowledge bases and providing data to support the sales team.
Omnichannel vs multichannel
While it might seem like omnichannel and multichannel could be interchangeable terms, there are key differences. A multichannel experience for a customer is more channel-centric and focuses on customer engagement across many channels. This experience is meant to promote and sell a product or service independently through many channels.
Comparatively, an omnichannel experience is more customer-centric and focuses on customer support across many channels. Omnichannel connects different channels, devices, and platforms with the same information and adapts to the customer’s preferences based on behavior. Choosing a CRM with omnichannel features prioritizes the customer’s journey with your brand and uses data-backed customer insights to better understand marketing and sales strategy.
Benefits and challenges of omnichannel
The benefits of omnichannel marketing and the benefits of CRM slightly overlap in the way they both can improve the overall experience your customer has with your business.
Some standout benefits include:
- Boosts personalization: Prioritize customer experience with personalized or targeted content that is relevant and engaging.
- Increases brand awareness: When customers are targeted across channels with their experience in mind, they are more motivated to familiarize themselves with your brand.
- Offers convenience: Customers can communicate with sales or support reps through any channel without jumping to a designated portal.
As for challenges, omnichannel marketing might present the following:
- Consistency: It may take a lot of resources to ensure the brand experience is consistent for customers through all touchpoints.
- Data integration: When integrating multiple channels, there is a risk of delayed or missing data reporting if any system faces downtime.
Omnichannel examples
Social media
Social media can be a huge help in lead generation. When social media is connected to a CRM platform, reps and managers can track conversations about their brand. This way, the business has an unfiltered view of how their brand is received online. Channels like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are all powerful tools that can generate new leads directly into the CRM for further nurturing.
Phone
Telephony functionality can be a built-in or integrated feature with CRM software. It allows users to answer inbound calls or dial directly from the interface. This cuts out the time it might take to use a separate dialer or manually fact-check numbers. This is especially useful when all past interactions and notes are stored in the CRM software as well. Sales reps can access that information while on the phone with customers to troubleshoot in real-time.
SEE: Learn how customer service teams can support sales reps with our list of the top CRM software for contact centers.
Email is a go-to business communication tool that helps sales and marketing teams engage with new leads and current or past customers. Email marketing and drip campaigns are easy to deploy from CRM software. With preset templates and automations, various actions can trigger a drip campaign by sending customers engaging, targeted content.
Website
Your company’s website should provide you as much value and information as it does potential customers. With the help of landing pages, web forms, and live chat software, your website can be a channel for lead capturing and customer service. These forms and templates can be branded with your brand style and voice for consistent customer experience. CRM functionality can be useful for small businesses who want to level up their website and make it a functional communication tool.
Future of omnichannel marketing
The rise of online engagement and digital marketing makes introducing omnichannel marketing into your business strategy necessary. As more social media platforms gain popularity and convenience, which is a driving motivator, customers want you to meet them where they are.
The top CRM software options offer a variety of omnichannel efforts across a mix of channels such as live chat, SMS, self-service portals, and much more. I foresee this expanding even further with the introduction of AI functionality. With AI-generated copy for emails or AI chatbots, businesses can be active in these channels and respond quickly to customers to increase their satisfaction and retention rates.
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