Why email marketing is a crucial pillar of omni-channel marketing

If you’re reading this, you might be wondering ‘what is omnichannel marketing’? This strategy refers to giving customers a seamless, consistent, and personalized multichannel customer experience and it all starts with email marketing! Omnichannel marketing lets you reach more people and can increase purchase frequency by 250%, and has a 90% higher customer retention rate. You can utilize multiple channels including email, SMS, and social media marketing but they’ll be interconnected with a unified overarching strategy. 

Customers value the consistency that comes with an omnichannel marketing strategy because they never have to worry about whether or not they’re being told the right information. They also feel more comfortable buying from a company that has a unified strategy because it shows that they value the messaging that they’re putting across and it is perceived as more professional and organized. A brand image that is consistent across all platforms gives customers a feeling of familiarity and relationship. With omnichannel marketing, many lead marketers say that they get increased customer engagement and a higher revenue generation when compared to other strategies. 

Having a strong email marketing strategy is necessary for omnichannel marketing because it allows for hyper personalization and drives the highest ROI among other digital channels. Email marketing allows you to reach a wide audience while also keeping the messaging personal and relevant to your customers. 

An email marketing strategy based on behavioral targeting can be used in an omnichannel marketing strategy to help grow your business. Keep reading to find out why it’s so important and how you can leverage email marketing to push your omnichannel marketing strategy. 

Personalized Marketing 

Omnichannel marketing is ALL about personalized communication with your customers. Subscribers want to feel like they have a personal connection with the brands they purchase from and that these brands care about catering to their subscriber’s interests. A 2019 survey shows that over 60% of customers in the US and the UK expect personalized messaging from brands. Omnichannel marketing requires more effort from brands to fully understand the journey that each customer goes through on various platforms when making a purchase. While they want to feel a personal connection with brands, they don’t want to be bogged down by unnecessary emails that are not relevant to them. You don’t want a customer to lose interest in your brand because your email marketing strategy is too aggressive and not targeted enough.  

Email marketing lets you send out campaigns that are highly personalized (and scalable with automations). A good email service provider (ESP) will let you segment on data like browsing and purchase behavior as well as demographics in order to tailor your emails specific to subscribers. You’re cutting through the noise and speaking directly to the customers that you want to speak to.

Email marketing offers the highest conversion rates compared to social media and search results. That’s because, with other digital platforms such as social media, you don’t get to choose who exactly is viewing your content, but with emails, you can easily tailor and add personal touches to the content for each of your customers. 

Here’s an example of a personalized email that you could use as part of your omnichannel strategy. 

Behavior-Based Targeting

Targeting customers based on their past behavior goes hand in hand with personalization. With 60% of people wanting a personalized experience from their favorite brands, it means that they’re okay with having their past behavioral data used so that they can have a better shopping experience. With behavior-based targeting, you can automate your emails so customers get notified once they complete a specific action. You must analyze their previous purchasing and engagement data so you can create emails that keep your customers interested and also push products that they have a higher chance of purchasing. 

A strong email marketing strategy makes it super easy to automate your emails to target customers based on their previous actions and engagements with your brand. You can always dive deeper into learning specific email marketing tactics to optimize your strategy for engagement. For your omnichannel marketing strategy, the goal is to provide a good overall customer experience across all your marketing channels and maximize engagement to drive purchases. Email marketing lets you do this based on a behavior-based targeting approach. 

Related: Ultimate Guide to Segmentation for Targeted Email Campaigns

Below is another example of how brands can use an omnichannel strategy to push content and create synergy throughout their preferred channels. 

Beachbody starts off their campaign with email marketing and includes information about new programs and nutritional information, and also provides a clear CTA so customers can quickly access their website. It’s crucial to have a clear CTA so that customers are driven towards your site. The result is a personalized integrated campaign that is customer-centric and provides a good customer experience. 

For your brand, you can leverage this strategy by analyzing what emails your customers have previously opened, and what CTAs they’ve clicked on to get a better understanding of what emails you should be sending them in the future. This way, they’ll only be receiving emails that they’ve shown interest in and it will strengthen their relationship with your brand. You’re also more likely to convert more subscribers to buying customers since they already feel connected to your brand and have more trust in the products you’re pushing. 

Wrap up

Omnichannel marketing starts with a strong email marketing strategy! To provide consistent, persuasive, and a seamless experience for your customers, you need to be using data from various channels to create strong email marketing strategies that you can leverage to push forward your omnichannel marketing. Few channels provide the flexibility and ability to personalize and use behavior-based targeting in the way emails do. Personalized marketing and behavior-based targeting are key to keeping your customers interested and increasing your conversion rates so more subscribers turn into purchasers.