Consumers want to interact more and more with their favorite brands, which is why they are using more and more different channels. For those who still think it’s not a necessity to be present and connected on multiple channels, think again!
An omnichannel campaign is the key to a successful customer experience and allows companies to maintain a meaningful and lasting relationship with their customers.
7 steps to launch your omnichannel marketing campaign
1. Define your omnichannel campaign objective
The first step in developing your campaign will, of course, be to define your primary objective. Not sure where to start? Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you pinpoint your omnichannel campaign objective:
- What need will you fill with your campaign?
- What problem will you solve for your customers?
- What concrete results do you want to achieve with your campaign?
- What actions do you want your customers or future customers to take with this campaign? Do you want to convert, retain, reactivate, attract, educate, sell, or inform?
It is important to determine these elements beforehand in order to have your desired end result in mind. This way, you will ensure that all the elements of your campaign work together to achieve this goal.
2. Determine your target
The second step is to determine who your campaign is aimed at. The information you should have about your audience depends greatly on your initial objective. For example, if your goal is to sell, it will be much more relevant to know the consumption habits of your customers. Here are some questions to ask yourself to target the right people for your omnichannel campaigns:
- What types of people do you want to target? Established customers, prospects, people who don’t know your brand yet, etc.
- What are their motivations, interests, preferences and consumption habits?
- How often and in what way do they usually make a purchase?
Of course, segmentation is a good way to target several groups differently, by adapting your message to each of the targeted segments based on one or more criteria. For example, you can segment your audience by preferred channel, by city for a local campaign, by similar interests, etc. These customer groupings will certainly help you categorize your actions.
Also, for an omnichannel campaign, you need to check your target’s preferred channels. In other words, what are the channels on which your customers search for information, make purchases and talk about your products? These questions will also certainly help you with the next step.
3. Determine your channels
The best omnichannel marketing campaigns leverage the benefits of each channel into an effective combination. As mentioned in the previous point, by knowing your customers’ behaviors well, you can then determine the ideal channel for them according to their interests and consumption habits. All this, in order to align with your initial objective.
Whether it’s email, social media, SMS, your website, online advertising, your stores or push notifications, you need to choose the combination of channels that works for you, as well as your audience.
4. Choose the right tools
Of course, we take into consideration that you already have a platform like Dialog Insight for broadcasting and for creating your campaign across multiple channels. If you don’t, the choice of a tool would have to be made at this stage.
Now that you have defined your objective and know enough about your clientele to know on which channels you need to reach them, you are in a position to choose a tool or tools that correspond to your needs. We invite you to consult this comparative chart of the Dialog Insight platform’s functionalities with several other solutions on the market. It will help you make an informed decision.
5. Adapt your content formats
If you want to add channels to your arsenal, your content must be readable on all available platforms. So, if you’re adding SMS or a mobile app to your existing channels, make sure all your pages are responsive to provide a flawless experience on any device that can be used to browse your campaign. Unresponsive content can be enough of a source of abandonment from your target audience.
6. Align and personalize your content
The next step is crucial and it’s all about aligning your campaign. As mentioned above, there must be consistency between all your channels, so your alignment will be very important. Each channel must be optimized and each piece of content must be optimized for the channel used. Also align all your content with the different elements of your campaign: the campaign objective, your target, the customer journey, etc.
Personalization is the key to success for this step, so don’t be afraid to use digital signage to always be as relevant as possible. This is the best way to tailor your content to all of the above. Because even though you have segmented your target, every customer is different and should be treated differently. So personalization is your best option to optimize conversion.
7. Launch your omnichannel campaign
Before you go live with everything, it’s important to do one last check and make sure your campaign is aligned with your initial goal. We’ve thought of everything, here’s a checklist of important elements in a campaign:
- Do your channels support your message?
- Have you adapted your message for each channel?
- Is your content responsive so that it can be used on all platforms?
- Have you verified that all personalization elements are working?
- Do your message, content and channels work together to meet your objective?
- Is your content adapted to your target and its profile?
In short, go through the elements mentioned in this article and now you are ready to launch your omnichannel campaign!
It’s also important to make sure that your customer service is up to par. When done right, customer support will help solidify your brand awareness and contribute to the success of your campaign. It’s the final element that closes the loop on the impeccable experience created.
Finally, creating an omnichannel marketing campaign can be a good solution if you want to test on a smaller scale before expanding your omnichannel marketing strategy globally. The Dialog Insight team has even detailed tips for creating a successful customer experience by adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy in another article.
