A customer is central to any marketing campaign, and the customer experience drives changes to improve the strategy. Organizations across industries have understood the importance of customer experience. The key ingredient is delivering a personalized omnichannel experience.
Let us look at some numbers:
- 71% of Gen Z have said that they expect a completely curated digital shopping experience.
- 98% of Americans shuttle between devices on the same day. That means a prospect is switching between multiple devices before making the purchase decision.
- Customers are more likely to engage with a brand if they get a personalized omnichannel experience. Also, they are likely to spend 15-30% more than single-channel customers.
- Omnichannel personalization can result in a 5-15% increase in revenue across the full customer base.
The figures reinstate the need for cross-channel and cross-device methods when designing personalized customer journeys.
What is omnichannel personalization?
Omnichannel personalization tailors your prospective customer’s shopping experience on a specific channel based on their behaviour on other channels. It aims at providing a seamless experience to the customer, whether they are shopping from social media on a mobile device, the company website on a laptop, or their brick-and-mortar store.
For example, Joe is a Sales Director in an MNC. His company wants to hire a B2B lead generation agency, and Joe has been tasked with looking for one. Joe conducts online research from his mobile phone based on customer ratings and reviews. He picks three options and contacts each of them for personal interaction to gain further insight. Joe reports his findings to the management, and they finalize accordingly. The company then makes the purchase online.
Why is a seamless shopping experience the need of the hour?
Capturing, engaging, and delivering a seamless experience is the need of the hour to your customers irrespective of the channel is crucial for any business. As a B2B enterprise, you must provide a holistic approach that provides the customer with the freedom to connect with you in a way that suits them.
It is important to note here that the customer has become accustomed to personalized omnichannel experiences in their personal lives and expects the same in their business transactions as well. This shift in expectations has not gone unnoticed.
More and more B2B companies have begun to improve their customers’ experiences with them. Companies that invest in omnichannel personalization have been known to retain 89% of their clients. In a survey, 75% of B2B customers said that they would repurchase from a company that offers a customized omnichannel experience.
In reference to the example in the previous subsection, the B2B lead generation agency keeps track of all of its website visitors and also their search history (after taking due permission). Once Joe contacts them (which makes him a warm prospect), they keep sending him personalized offers on platforms that he and his company prefer.
How can you implement an effective personalized omnichannel strategy?
To start with, omnichannel marketing is not the same as multichannel marketing but an improved version of it. The latter lacks integration of customer touchpoints. It has also lost the race because of mismatched marketing campaigns across channels, customer service reps missing out on complete prospect information, and a lack of clarity on social media usage.
Let us see how it is done:
1.Identify customer behavior
The first step is to identify your target customer base and their behavioral patterns. This also includes every possible touchpoint of a customer’s purchase journey, such as a site visit, sales support, purchase, customer service, etc. Segment them based on this information. More detailed information will result in more precise segmentation.
2. Improve customer experience
The next step would be to refurbish each stage of a customer’s purchase life cycle based on your findings. Regardless of the channel, you will need to streamline the experience. You might need to adopt new technologies, with automation being the most essential of all.
3.Restructure your business
A customer-centric approach is the only way to move forward. And this can be done through cultural and digital transformation. For such an approach to work, you will need to restructure every department of your business. If you are a complete omnichannel agency, you will need to provide a seamless customer experience across all channels. It means that you will need to restructure the way you collect, process, and analyze customer data.
In the beginning, the omnichannel approach may seem tedious and pricey. However, in the long run, the change will bring more benefits. It will mean an improved, seamless customer experience and the elimination of shopping boundaries.
