The pace of technological advancement is increasing exponentially—and it’s a double-edged sword for marketers. One major breakthrough is an improvement in the timing and targeting of communications. However, they're being swamped by complexity, with out-of-the-box tech setups, segmented data, complicated analytics, a burgeoning list of channels, and competing definitions of core marketing terms.
"Omnichannel" is a prime example of a marketing term whose meaning has been muddled by ambiguity. Many people believe that it simply entails using multiple channels to promote to a specific audience, but that's only the bare minimum of what omnichannel marketing can provide.
Let's explore what omnichannel marketing is, how omnichannel marketing platforms can change the game, the pros and cons of adopting an omnichannel marketing platform, and the top omnichannel marketing software platforms for the year ahead.
What are the Best Omnichannel Marketing Software Platforms You Should Consider?
eCommerce platforms, enterprise resource planning systems, retail management systems, and marketing software can and should be integrated with an omnichannel software platform. Even though the settings for integration can be different depending on the platform and the user, the goal is to connect all important sales channels.
With Brevo, you may communicate with customers by email, text message, online chat, and other channels. The platform allows you to be available to your customers wherever they are. Its omnichannel capabilities revolve around four primary tenets: email marketing, SMS marketing, chat, and the inbox. With email marketing, you may raise brand recognition and improve sales with enticing email messages that can be sent quickly. SMS marketing helps you communicate more directly with clients for urgent messages or time-sensitive offers. The chat function enables you to be immediately available to site visitors who have questions while browsing. You can even keep your workers organized and aligned with a shared mailbox. Marketing automation is a key feature of Brevo that allows you to automate certain processes in your pipeline by defining an automation workflow. Sending emails and SMS messages, sorting contacts into various lists, and changing information in your contact database are all examples of these operations. The platform offers beginner and advanced automation workflows, as well as automation performance optimization. Omnisend is an email marketing platform used by eCommerce merchants to increase revenues. Customers can get timely and relevant messaging across channels and throughout the consumer experience using Omnisend. The goal of the program is to improve the shopping experience for all users, whether they are newcomers, members, or regulars. Omnisend allows you to combine many notification channels, such as email, text message, and online push into one streamlined process. Pre-made templates for messages, headers, and process parameters are available on the platforms, letting you be fully operational in a short time. Any modifications can be made easily using the platform’s drag-and-drop Automation Editor. You may also automate workflows based on specific triggers to increase revenue. Automation splits and A/B split testing can even help you optimize and increase your bottom line. Freshworks is business software used by more than 50,000 businesses globally. Freshchat, a Freshworks pillar, offers a unified approach to customer assistance. Using Freshchat, you can condense all your consumer contact channels into a single inbox. The platform makes it easier for the sales, marketing, and support teams to respond to client requests in a strategic and efficient way. Your app, site, Facebook Messenger, and other means of customer interaction will all funnel into a central address. You may even improve customer service by launching chatbots across platforms as needed. Freshchats centralizes all your digital messaging channels like WhatsApp and SMS while adding a human touch to your website and in-app self-service solutions. It also improves the customer experience by offering non-code, easy-to-build chatbots. Shopify is not just a remarkable eCommerce platform but also an exceptional omnichannel marketing tool. Shopify Plus, specifically, is an eCommerce platform that enables shops to sell without having to deal with corporate management, all while providing a superior consumer experience. Shopify Plus increases desktop and mobile conversion rates. With a storefront that is mobile-friendly and conversion-optimized out of the box, clients can make purchases from any device fast and easily. It also helps in converting followers into brand ambassadors. You can automate your email and text message campaigns with Shopify Flow, helping you reach and convert more prospects. With Shopify Plus, you can link your POS and ecommerce systems, enabling you to become an omnichannel shop and approach your customers as one, regardless of where they make their purchases. BigCommerce blends enterprise-level features with a versatile platform and an extensive selection of third-party apps. They provide the best option for both online and offline sales by merging an impressive online shop with your physical location. BigCommerce and Feedonomics have partnered to deliver the best possible omnichannel selling experience by synchronizing your product catalog across all sales channels. Through this collaboration, you will be able to display your product in front of the right customers at the right time and in the right place to propel your digital business forward. Enhanced brand engagement across all platforms and shops is yet another benefit of the BigCommerce omnichannel platform. It can make your brand unique from the competition by offering consistent shopping experience across all the major marketplaces and social eCommerce sites. You can also connect your BigCommerce store easily with Google, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Mercado Libre. ActiveCampaign is a holistic automation, marketing, and CRM solution that enables you to provide exceptional customer service. It is an AI marketing platform built to meet the diverse needs of SMBs. ActiveCampaign allows intuitive, adaptive, and dynamic communication across several channels. Using social network marketing, the software generates persuasive emails to learn more about prospects. The platform’s modular design makes it easy to customize it with a broad range of add-ons to meet your specific needs. Depending on how you interact with leads, your skills will fall into one of four categories: reach, nurture, convert, and grow. The entire customer experience should be automated in response to clicks and swipes on emails, websites, and in-store purchases. The platform also provides free online training to help you become an expert at using it to its maximum potential. When it comes to improving your entire marketing process and developing strategies to outperform the competition, HubSpot is one of the best software options available. The cloud-based platform provides essential integrations and multifunctional features to facilitate collaborations and operations. HubSpot automation enables scalable marketing and sales outreach, as well as customer satisfaction through timely feedback surveys, support ticket response, and other features. HubSpot’s WYSIWYG automation builder is simple to use, allowing you to become adept instantly and begin developing complex automated systems with no prior training. Changes to campaigns and operations may be made in seconds, and marketing, sales, and customer support can be automated. HubSpot also offers omnichannel customer support. An integrated CRM platform enables you to connect with customers across all channels. With HubSpot, you can make omnichannel marketing plans that are based on how people interact with your content across different channels. Revealbot is an omnichannel advertising platform that simplifies ad operations. It uses AI to automate, streamline, and improve the performance of social media advertising. The platform lets you create and grow advertising campaigns and make your own metrics using data from other sources. Ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok are all managed and launched via the platform, while data from all these sources analyzed and consolidated. Overall, the system automates campaign growth. You may also create automations that are perfectly tailored to your goals. Choose from hundreds of pre-defined metrics and actions or design your own. With Gladly, you can centralize all your lines of communication with customers in one convenient location. It offers a focused, continuing conversation across all mediums. Its channels include voice, IVR, self-service, text, chat, in-app chat, social, and email. Additionally, Gladly has all the essential resources to deliver highly customized customer service. It gives you information about your customers, a history of your conversations, People Match, a knowledge base, payments, integrations, analytics, workforce management, and task management. Hundreds of businesses have selected Gladly to empower their employees into support heroes who nurture client loyalty and generate massive results. Gladly is unique in that it creates a profile for each customer so that you can tailor your responses to them regardless of the channel they use to contact you. Simplified inventory management is integral to Cin7. It integrates your items, sales channels, stock locations, orders, depots, processes, reports, and other systems into a unified automated solution. It provides a simple solution for retailers, wholesalers, and smaller manufacturers to keep orders and stock levels in sync throughout all warehouses and distribution centers. Whether you’re selling wholesale or retail, Cin7 streamlines your online marketing. It has all the boxes checked with regards to integrations, stock, price, and adaptability. Moreover, the platform makes sure that the right products are shown to the right customers at the right times. Cin7 integrates over 700 platforms and services, spanning eCommerce, marketplaces, third-party logistics warehouses, shipping, accounting, sales and marketing, and data analysis tools. It also has an extensive POS, logistics planning, and B2B sales capabilities for distributing to major retailers such as Amazon Vendor. 1. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
2. Omnisend
3. Freshworks
4. Shopify
5. BigCommerce
6. ActiveCampaign
7. HubSpot
8. Revealbot
9. Gladly
10. Cin7
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
In the eCommerce and retail sectors, the term "omnichannel" refers to a business strategy that integrates all available sales channels into one unified system. This may equate to having the same variety, price, and discounts across all channels: physical stores, eCommerce sites, and mobile shops. It could also mean giving customers an experience that is unique to them based on how they interact with your brand.
For instance, your buyer may use a laptop to check stocks on your company's website, buy the item using a smartphone, and eventually pick it up at your retail location. By providing various channels of communication, an omnichannel approach improves and streamlines customer service. Back-end channel integration also gives you more flexibility because the customer can switch between channels seamlessly as they shop.
Thus, omnichannel marketing is an approach that crosses channels to optimize the customer experience and cultivate stronger ties across all possible channels and touchpoints. This encompasses both traditional and digital channels as well as POS systems and physical and online engagements.
The bedrock of omnichannel marketing is seamless integration, which facilitates the development of comprehensive customer profiles. This provides marketers with a better awareness of how consumers interact as they move from one channel to another.
Each channel helps in the formation of a unified experience. With omnichannel marketing, you can reach customers wherever they are and offer them a product or service that aligns with your brand.
What is an Omnichannel Marketing Platform?
An omnichannel platform is software that assists you in integrating and unifying your marketing channels to streamline your omnichannel sales strategy. Omnichannel platforms provide numerous services and solutions, including:
- Get real-time customer data through any channel.
- Engage with customers across any channel via automation.
- Employ CRM data to provide tailored experiences in all channels of the customer journey.
- Remain consistent in your communication.
- Integrate multiple channels on a single platform.
Companies with global reach such as Disney, Sephora, and Starbucks have long understood the value of providing a unified brand experience across all their touchpoints with customers. But omnichannel marketing strategies and platforms aren't just for enterprises. Most of the software available today is geared toward small to medium-sized businesses that aim to scale in the future.
The thing about omnichannel marketing is that it may easily fall short without the right platform. The platform's value to the business depends on its ability to effectively divvy up resources across many channels.
What are the Benefits and Challenges of Using an Omnichannel Platform?
You will reap the following benefits if you choose the right omnichannel marketing platform for your business:
Cohesive brand identity
Establishing a unified strategy across channels involves creating a distinct brand persona and voice. This impression should reflect market demands and objectives. Focusing on the full journey and adapting your approach to each channel will help you establish a coherent and successful marketing campaign. This will translate into stronger ties with your customers and more tailored communication.
Better customer experience
The buyer and the route they take to make a purchase are key to omnichannel marketing. If you make their experience better and smoother, you have a better chance of making them happy and loyal, potentially turning them into brand supporters.
Streamlined data
Rather than having data silos from various client touchpoints, you can consolidate your data, enabling you to gain more insights. By putting together data from different platforms, you can learn more about your customers and make more sales.
In-depth analytics
By monitoring consumer interactions across different channels, you can gain more credible insights into the consumer journey, customer preferences, and effective marketing initiatives. You can use these analytics to improve your advertising model and get more people to know about your brand.
Personalized messages
Integrating consumer data also helps in crafting more personalized communications. Personalizing your content makes it more relevant and appealing to the people already interested in your product, which can lead to higher conversion rates.
Effective lead nurturing
Since you're engaging with the customer at every step of the buying process, you can guide them more purposefully to the final purchase. Make use of the data at your disposal to convert site visitors into paying customers.
To give you a full picture of the omnichannel approach, we should also look at some of its drawbacks:
Costly
The right omnichannel platform for your type of business can put a huge dent in your budget. While there are free omnichannel platforms available, they only provide basic features. Premium services can be expensive and out of reach for many businesses.
Mobile threat
Smartphones are still frequently viewed as a concern by shop owners. Much effort is placed into "showrooming," in which a buyer looks at a product in a shop and then searches online for a lower price. QR codes on shelves and storefronts are a solution here. This way, consumers waiting in your store are routed to your website directly and not somewhere else.
Internal structural changes
Adopting an omnichannel approach necessitates certain changes to your management structure. Most businesses have both a traditional marketing team and an internet marketing unit. It is normal for these departments to work on their own, which means you need to disrupt your organization structure for omnichannel to work.
