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by Arturo Mendiola

December 21, 2022

You may have heard the term, omni-channel marketing, but what does it really mean? The inception of the term was the dawn of brands trying to crack the code of going from single-channel to multi-channel, and finally to the proverbial peak of the summit – omni-channel marketing.

Switching from single-channel to omni-channel personalization is difficult for a brand, given the complexity of scaling content, insights, customer data, and intelligence across the enterprise.

But omni-channel personalization is more than a buzzword. Even though it’s difficult for organizations, omni-channel personalization is business critical for long-term growth.

The evolution from single-channel to omni-channel

Single-channel marketing is ubiquitous with organizations creating departments and operational models focusing on an individual channel within a channel mix. This often leads to siloed teams and disjointed journeys or customer experiences.

Multi-channel marketing aims to maximize the number of potential channels to reach and engage customers; however, they are not connected to one another. This strategy and approach can be effective, but certainly is not the most efficient way to drive conversion, nor does it provide an ideal experience for customers.

In multi-channel marketing, as customers traverse the various points of engagement, there are frequent restart moments. For instance, if a customer begins researching and discovering a brand’s product offering on a website, but then decides to call a sales rep to learn more, they'll have to restart the discovery process from ground zero once they connect with a rep. This is because the information and/or behavioral data (digital footprint) the customer created on the website was left behind, within the confines of the website, and not passed onto a system that a sales rep then has access to. There is a missed opportunity to create continuity of experience if the sales rep already knew who that customer was and what they may be interested in, saving time for both the customer AND the rep.

The final stage of evolution is omni-channel marketing, with a focus on infusing personalization for individual customers. According to Gartner, “Omni-channel is the synchronization of channels – mobile, desktop and store – to support the purchase process from discovery to conversion, along with fulfillment and post-purchase​.”

Omni-channel marketing takes orchestration of a brand’s entire channel mix and ensures all elements are working in unison. So, it’s a seamless and completely cohesive journey for customers as they flow through the funnel—from touch-point to touch-point jumping in and out of channels they’re engaged with.

A truly omni-channel connected experience captures the customer’s interactions from the website and passes them onto, or ensures the sales rep has access to them, so they can more effectively carry through the continuity of the experience between those two touchpoints.

Realizing connected experiences with omni-channel marketing

In today’s modern world of brand engagement and digital experiences, customers have short fuses and little patience for broken journeys. Omni-channel marketing is the basis of realizing connected experiences for your customers. This relies on an exceptionally designed, end-to-end customer experience. This means making sure that you continue a conversation with your customer when they jump in and out of channels.

There are three key customer expectations and demands of a personalized, connected experience:

1. Friction-free interactions
As customers traverse through your brand’s multitude of channels and touchpoints, it should feel like a continuous conversation from one interaction to the next — guiding them seamlessly along conversion pathways.
2. Contextual engagements
Context not only adds an additional layer of meaning and understanding across interactions, but also helps chain these interactions together to paint a clear picture of customer intent.
3. Anticipatory solutions
Piggybacking off the power of context, the trove of data collected from connected experiences powers the ability to assess individual customer needs and make predictions for them, anticipating their needs in real-time.

Connected experiences are activated via a data-enabled, integrated tech stack that seamlessly captures customer intelligence — from digital behavioral interactions to self-selected preferences and past purchase history — as a customer engages with a brand’s website, e-commerce destination, in-store/POS, account portals, apps and more. From there, the integrated stack takes this customer data and funnels it to key systems for continued customer engagement across sales, service and support, and marketing automation.

Sitecore and Salesforce leading the way in connected experiences

Of course, simply adopting technologies alone won’t drive world-class relationships with your customers, but it is the foundation to delivering the friction-free, contextual, and anticipatory moments upon which they are based. It comes down to identifying and employing critical technology platforms that marry back-of-house operations with the experiences your customers engage with daily.

The good news is Sitecore and Salesforce have made the expensive and time-consuming trial-and-error period of finding the right mix of technology obsolete with their complementary suite of integrated digital experience, support and service, and marketing tools, all powered by customer data and analytics.

We believe that a thoughtful meld and integration between Sitecore and Salesforce’s technology offerings will give businesses every edge they need to seize a leadership position in providing exceptional customer engagements.

Realizing every organization is unique and has its own set of nuances and business needs, we’ve created a whitepaper that illustrates how leveraging a curated mix of Sitecore solutions and Salesforce clouds could enable a fully personalized, connected experience.
Download it now to learn more.