WHAT IS OMNICHANNEL MARKETING?

Omnichannel marketing aims to offer customers a unified, attractive experience across all channels and points of purchase.

When is it omnichannel?

Shopping journeys are no longer linear, and the advent of e-commerce has made different “shopper journey” patterns possible. It is no longer a question of addressing customers solely at their point of sale or on their e-commerce site, but rather of creating a continuous, fluid and unified relationship at every point of contact.

Customer journeys have multiplied, which is why we need to multiply our points of contact. To successfully respond to these new, heterogeneous customer journeys in a qualitative way, it is necessary to centralize all the data concerning the customer. Whether it concerns a purchase intention, an after-sales request, a purchase history or a wish-list in preparation… This information must be able to evolve and be completed as it goes along, and the different applications of the retailer must be able to use it to personalize their message.

Omnichannel retail is therefore that which succeeds in unifying its data and using it to offer a coherent experience across all digital and print distribution channels. Omnichannel allows us to create more visibility, more interaction, more relationships, and therefore greater customer engagement.

Multi-channel communication is the most effective way of communicating a retailer’s digital strategy. This response to unified commerce is a strong expectation on the part of consumers in 2022, an expectation expressed in hollow when it is not met, so obvious is it from the user’s point of view. It’s the Uber effect: the demand for a “phygital customer experience”has risen considerably under the influence of a few star apps that have become the necessary standards. Customers expect connected journeys, and 76% expect consistent interactions between services.

Source : Salesforce, October 2020. « Comment les points de contact client évoluent-ils ? » 

Future of shopping will be hybrid

According to a study carried out by Opinion Way for OneyBank in July 2021, 83% of French people believe that the future of shopping is hybrid. Live shopping, social selling, streaming, co-shopping: sales formulas via new digital channels are multiplying all the time. Inspired by the Asian market, which is well ahead of the game, new points of sale are combining online practices with physical advice.
To implement a multi-channel approach, you first need to take stock of all the distribution and communication channels at your disposal.

All your channels need to complement each other to ensure a smooth customer journey. You need to rely on a cross-channel strategy to increase customer satisfaction: a customer should be able to add an item to the basket on their smartphone and complete the purchase later in the day on their computer.

A powerful commercial phenomenon in China, live shopping launched in 2016 during Alibaba’s Singles’ Day already accounted for 10% of Chinese e-commerce volume by 2021. By 2020, this market will have grown by 121.5% to reach $154 billion (source: KPMG). While conversion rates in e-commerce remain low, averaging between 1% and 3%, they oscillate between 15% and 35% in live shopping (Gartner study).

Live shopping is the fusion of teleshopping, social networking, entertainment and reality TV.

The physical store is not to be outdone. It represents the materialization of your image and values. It’s important to offer a unique experience to each and every one of your prospects, to encourage them to make a purchase.

How can marketing teams manage product data?

While implementing an omnichannel communication strategy has become a must, it also makes the production of this communication a highly complex exercise, since it becomes necessary to produce as much content as results from this multiplication: one customer x one product x one offer x one type of channel x one frequency.

This communication therefore needs to be driven by algorithms that draw on very rich and structured databases to be able to push out a highly personalized and qualitative response for the customer.

For many years, the food retail sector (GSA) has been accumulating a wealth of high-quality data on its customers’ purchasing habits, favorite products, frequency and timing of purchases, the types of offers that trigger them the most… This treasure trove of customer knowledge is a fabulous source for transforming even the most day-to-day retailing into a seamless phygital act.

However, once the type of “customer need” has been established, it’s important to have an equally high-quality, attractively-presented commercial offer to put in front of this well-defined customer. When it comes to product data, supermarkets and digital pure players are obviously much more advanced, as they have been working for years on the quality of their product information. A poor and/or erroneous product data sheet is a very influential factor on the conversion rate. In the same way, they have enriched their image databases to ensure a completely satisfactory online shopping experience. But what about supermarkets? How can a retailer who currently produces 500 or 600 promotional offers per week at national level move on to an infinite number of offers for an infinite number of customer profiles? This is the problem that ARISTID’s technological solutions can solve!