What does it mean to be a customer-focused brand? Here’s a few stats:
A common tactic among the most customer-focused brands? Omnichannel.
Becoming an omnichannel brand requires more than a simple declaration — a brand can’t just say it’s omnichannel, it has to be omnichannel.
If that sounds too much like some kind of new age guru speak, let me elaborate.
So many of today’s companies, in an effort to increase customer growth and revenue, are racing to embrace personalized omnichannel marketing. After all, the companies that are likely to achieve the best business outcomes are the ones that can deliver 1:1 customer experiences seamlessly across all channels. Yet, not all companies that go omnichannel match those same results.
That’s because to get the most out of personalized omnichannel marketing, companies must put the customer at the center of everything they do. They must be customer obsessed.
Let’s look deeper into why customer-obsessed companies get the best results from omnichannel marketing.
Most retailers are now multichannel, where they sell their products across more than one channel. Very few, however, are truly omnichannel. Discover what it means to be considered an omnichannel business.
If your aim is true omnichannel customer engagement, bringing your message to the customer on whichever channel they prefer is a good start. But it’s not just about your breadth of channels — it’s also about the kind of messages you’re delivering on those channels.
The right message, to the right customer, at the right place and time is what marketers are really striving for when they pursue an omnichannel strategy.
But real-time 1:1 customer experiences require lots of high quality data, as well as a unified data structure that allows businesses to consolidate all their data sets to attain a 360-degree view of their customer.
Customer-obsessed firms, which are already much more mature in their customer centricity, understand the importance of fully integrated data.
Recent research from Forrester Consulting revealed that 70% of customer-obsessed firms have an “established, fully documented, unified data model that can integrate data from multiple customer-facing sources.”
When you have a deeper understanding of your customers and their needs, and when your data is activated in a way to reveal engagement opportunities, you can start to deliver personalized omnichannel experiences that really move the needle in terms of growth and revenue. So, to get the best results from your omnichannel marketing strategy, lean into your data and get it organized.
Once you achieve a results-bearing omnichannel marketing strategy, you might be tempted to take your hand off the wheel and switch on auto pilot. After all, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Well, as the world’s most successful brands know, nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to marketing and customer engagement.
Technology, industry trends, consumer demands, economic conditions — these things are always changing, always in flux. To ensure continued success, consumer-facing businesses must be prepared to adapt, change, and evolve. They must have a growth mindset.
Growth in this context doesn’t just mean growth in scale and size of the businesses, it’s also about growth in innovation and how you maximize value for your customers.
Research from Forrester Consulting indicates that customer-obsessed companies are “productive, innovative, and forward-thinking,” and are “focused on growth through delivering value to customers.”
Of these companies, 74% intend to improve their “ability to innovate,” and 67% are likely to “improve customer experience to drive growth.”
There’s no guarantee that an omnichannel marketing strategy that works today will work just as well in the future. Your true north star, of course, is the customer — align your omnichannel strategy around delivering value to the customer and innovating to ensure the best customer experiences possible, and the revenue will follow.
Although the following statement might seem like a given, it bears repeating: the purpose of an omnichannel marketing strategy is to engage more customers and drive business results. So if your brand is pursuing an omnichannel approach to customer engagement, it should yield increased customer growth and more revenue.
Unfortunately, not every brand that goes omnichannel gets the results they desire. Customer-focused brands achieve better results thanks to omnichannel marketing, and they deliver more revenue-driving experiences.
So what’s the difference between companies that do omnichannel well and those that don’t? And why don’t we see every company increase revenue, drive customer loyalty, and improve CX by using an omnichannel approach?
Answering these questions was exactly what Emarsys set out to answer when they commissioned Forrester Consulting to “determine which companies were using omnichannel strategies to effectively deepen customer relationships to drive business growth.”
Download the report HERE.
The report indicates that customer obsession is undoubtedly a differentiator in a company’s ability to accelerate business outcomes through omnichannel marketing.
But this particular finding only scratches the surface. Get the report to learn more about the key differences in the omnichannel strategies and outcomes of customer-obsessed versus non-customer-obsessed companies.
