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The Omnichannel Data Opportunity

Marketers can now reach most customers nearly anywhere and at almost any time. And the interactions that take place across all those touchpoints leave a trail of data. But what will marketers do with the insight revealed by that data—if anything?

Rather than continuing to operate siloed feedback loops, the time has come for marketers to embrace an omnichannel mind-set and apply insights from every interaction to the entire customer relationship. “Marketing isn’t about an email or a direct mail piece or a retail insert anymore,” says Andy Bear, executive director of marketing solutions at Quad/Graphics. “Those all support the same objectives: talking to the audience and advancing them along the path to purchase.”

JustAnswer is one company applying omnichannel strategies; specifically, to build loyalty for repeat transactions. The company’s business is matching consumers with experts who can address a particular problem or need. First-time customers are typically in a crisis situation, desperately combing search engines for help. JustAnswer’s goal is to find the right outreach channel to spur repeat visits. “We’re trying to show how we can bring value every day, not just in the way they found us, when their hair was on fire and they needed information very quickly,” says Kara Douglas, senior manager of marketing communications at JustAnswer.

 

Instead of focusing as heavily on search for acquisition and email for loyalty as it had in the past, JustAnswer is blending them, as well as expanding its use of SMS as both a service delivery and loyalty channel. The company has also rolled out experimental micro-conversion landing pages to attract potential email subscribers, even among those who have never made a transaction through the service. Marketers at the company will use the data gleaned from customers’ behavior at each touchpoint to inform its other channel strategies.

Like the marketers have done at JustAnswer, it’s possible to build a marketing organization that can not only communicate more effectively with customers across channels, but also learn valuable lessons from their customers at each step of the relationship. Here are five actions marketers can take toward building that team and implementing an omnichannel approach to data collection and sharing:

Start collaborating internally
A coherent omnichannel strategy depends on internal collaboration and tightly aligned goals. Marketers must think in terms of overall marketing objectives, not individual, channel-based initiatives. This applies not only to communication channels, but to conversion touchpoints, as well. Consider the situation when brick-and-mortar stores aren’t in synch with a retailer’s website. “When e-commerce is siloed, then the e-commerce general manager has little incentive to drive in-store sales, because in-store sales don’t hit his P&L,” says Jonathan Treiber, CEO of RevTrax.

This omnichannel transformation has to be backed by incentives, policy, and sentiment. “Marketing channels can be very proprietary in organizations, which is why marketing professionals should be compensated based on marketing success, not vertical success,” says Quinn Jalli, senior VP, strategic initiatives group, at Epsilon. “It’s no longer acceptable to hide or not share insights across channels.”

Embrace complexity
When devising omnichannel communication strategies, move past the artificial restrictions of the past. Many marketing tactics rely on binary calls-to-action: buy now, or don’t; subscribe to a newsletter, or don’t. These binary choices may be effective in email campaigns and for A/B testing purposes, but extending these choices to multiple channels will help marketers take advantage of omnichannel’s potential.

So, instead of always boiling down an entire relationship to a single take-it-or-leave-it offer, invite a more open-ended discussion with multiple options. “You need to give consumers unlimited choice to say what they like and don’t like,” Jalli says.

Engaging on social media is an excellent way to develop qualitative, non-binary insights. Using social as a listening channel, for example, collecting feedback and input about items such as product mailers or promotional text can help refine communications across the board.

Even as marketers extend to more open-ended discussions, they need to ensure that there is consistency in their communications, and that the path to purchase and conversation has clear and coherent next steps despite the mix of channels customers and prospects may be traversing. “That next-best offer needs to be the same across the board,” says Mathieu Hannouz, evangelist for Adobe Campaign.

Refine attribution
An omnichannel strategy makes attribution even more important. Not for compensation and incentive reasons—that channel-specific thinking is outdated in an omnichannel world. But understanding how total engagements, from search engine impressions to direct mailers to in-app advertising, affects consumer response is crucial to future optimizations.

Attribution also helps inform how marketers should target and deliver future messages. Over time marketers can build a comprehensive picture of the channels their customers and prospects prefer at each step in the buying journey.

Because attribution can look like a massive, boil-the-ocean project, it’s best to start with manageable connections and form strong opinions about them before attempting to create a Grand Unified Theory of channel attribution. “Small bites and quick wins are important in omnichannel attribution,” says Christopher Matz, VP of retail and consumer goods analytics at Merkle, adding that in some cases internal data isn’t enough to ensure proper attribution. “[Marketers] may need third-party data and panels to make a match between marketing activity and purchases.”

Build context through location
The skyrocketing growth of mobile marketing and email means that audiences are no longer in a fixed, predictable location when hearing from a brand. That puts a premium on understanding location, and how location affects response and the overall context of the relationship.

Consider beacons and wearable tech, which can reveal not only where customers are, but also how long they’re spending in a location. This, in turn, lets marketers make inferences about what those customers may be hoping to accomplish. “With beacon data, if you know a customer is lingering for a long time in the small appliance section of the store, you can drive an email or a direct mail piece about small appliances,” says Jay Henderson, director of strategy at IBM Commerce. “It’s about finding these insights and bridging the gap into action.”

Additionally, location-based campaigns lend themselves well to quick wins. “Just knowing a customer has recently been at a store is a valuable piece of information that is often overlooked,” Henderson says.

Over the long term, detailed location data can inform much more than the choice of digital interaction channel. “When you have an understanding of a consumer who shops at Target and commutes by train, you can apply that to TV and email campaigns, but you can also apply it to retail site selection and product development,” says Duncan McCall, CEO of PlaceIQ. “That’s when it gets exciting.”

Retargeting and remarket everywhere
Retargeting is more than a way to chase customers around the Internet with entreaties to complete a suspended transaction. Build a picture of all the offers, communications, and inquiries you know customers have received but not viewed, opened but not acted on, and seen but not clicked. With those insights you can then customize a message in a channel with proven relevance to each consumer that fills in those gaps and ensures that they understand the value you place on their business.

It may sound complicated, but it can boil down to the obvious-yet-overlooked strategy of finding a new approach to reach people who have simply tuned out one or more channels. “Start engaging off-line. Follow up with direct mail if they’re purchasing your goods and services but never open an email,” Epsilon’s Jalli says.

Learning when to cut losses and move on is also an important element of any omnichannel retargeting or reactivation strategy. “Retargeting works if it’s smart, but too many display retargeting systems don’t know that you’ve made a purchase on another site and will keep sending ads for weeks after,” says Meyar Sheik, cofounder and CEO of Certona. “It’s wasted impressions.”

One way JustAnswer cut its losses—and reduced IT and email service costs—was by purging long-term unresponsive customers from its email database. The move cut the size of the email database in half, and freed more energy and resources to focus on loyalty strategies for more engaged customers. This approach gave JustAnswer a six-fold improvement in click-through rates, with open rates up 46%. “ISPs are starting to look at engagement as a metric to decide whether to put your email in inboxes,” JustAnswer’s Douglas says. “With all the competition for inbox space, we need to find the best use of our time.”

Pay attention in-store
Brands should avail themselves of every opportunity to integrate on- and offline insights. One approach is to combine in-store shopping habits with loyalty data and use that information to ensure that online marketing and merchandising skews to more relevant product lines.

The direct, low-tech approach is also still valuable. Outdoor retailer Moosejaw has a host of omnichannel technologies informing email, merchandising, and offer strategies. But in-store, associates are trained to be proactive when it comes to interacting with omnichannel customers. When a shopper is seen actively engaged with a mobile device in-store, “our shop staff proactively approaches the consumer and addresses questions around product availability, product performance, and pricing,” says Dan Pingree, Moosejaw’s VP of marketing. “It drives demonstrable benefits and a more loyal customer base.”

As Moosejaw learned, using insight and initiative across channels doesn’t have to be a bank-breaking experience. It’s as much a matter of training and attention as it is about technology. “The costs of entry have gone down significantly,” Jalli says. “Omnichannel opportunities exist for those on the cup-of-coffee budget.”

Looking for the complete PDF? Find it here.

 

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