What Is Omnichannel Marketing? Includes Examples

Omnichannel marketing is a customer-first marketing approach that creates a seamless, connected experience across all brand touchpoints: online, in-store, and social media.

Unlike traditional marketing, which focuses on traditional channels like print magazines, TV, radio, and billboards, omnichannel marketing ensures every interaction feels personalised and consistent.

While omnichannel and multichannel marketing often get used interchangeably, they are, in fact, different. Here’s how:

• Multichannel marketing operates different channels separately, meaning a customer’s experience might vary between online and offline interactions.
• Omnichannel marketing integrates these channels to ensure a smooth transition from one to the next, with personalised engagement at every touchpoint.

For example, a multichannel brand might send a one-size-fits-all discount code via email.

Meanwhile, an omnichannel brand would analyse past purchases and send a tailored offer — perhaps a complementary product recommendation or an exclusive loyalty perk.

There are some businesses in Australia that are doing interesting things with omnichannel retailing. Here are a couple of examples in action:

Unsurprisingly, given the scope of the business, Woolworths has very much implemented a successful omnichannel marketing strategy.

Woolworths offers its customers myriad options for making their purchases, including online shopping, click-and-collect, and bricks-and-mortar shop fronts, all while earning and redeeming rewards via the Everyday Rewards program.

Woolworths integrates its digital and in-store experience through an intuitive mobile app that allows shoppers to track points, receive personalised promotions, and check inventory in real time. Their Everyday Rewards program ties directly into this, ensuring a frictionless journey from online browsing to in-store purchases.

Woolworths also benefits as it collects data while customers use the app, gaining valuable information on individual shopping habits. Woolworths can then use this information to further personalise its omnichannel campaigns for customer segments.

In turn, this creates a virtuous circle of data collection that leads to better personalisation. By leveraging customer data, Woolworths can refine its marketing strategy by turning insights into highly relevant, omnichannel experiences.

Country Road offers another successful example of omnichannel marketing. Their website showcases their full range of products, with the homepage directing you to their physical stores and online collections.

The editorial collections give a sense of magazine-style curation for the more discerning, fashion-conscious shopper.

Country Road’s omnichannel strategy revolves around lifestyle branding, seamlessly incorporating sustainability into its marketing. One example is their incentive-based recycling program, which rewards customers with discounts for returning worn clothing — boosting both engagement and brand alignment.

Omnichannel marketing has several benefits. First, it aids in making the first sale. By focusing on the buyer journey, you provide support to the customer throughout each step before the point of purchase, making them more likely to initially engage with your brand and follow through to a conversion.

Secondly, it aids customer retention and loyalty. Instead of allowing the product to speak for itself, the omnichannel strategy provides security, ensuring the customer feels they have multiple options for obtaining what they want and that they will find the perfect product or service for them.

A consistent brand experience, whether online, via email, or in-store, builds loyalty and trust. Customers are more likely to return when they feel understood and have multiple ways to interact with your brand.

The figures back this up; a report by ShipStation and Retail Economics found that omnichannel marketing, blending in-store and online shopping, had created $15 billion in non-food sales in 2023, accounting for 48% of the total sales made.

Personalisation is another key part of enhancing the customer journey. A Salesforce survey found that 73% of customers feel as though they are now being treated as individuals rather than numbers.

When you compare this figure to 2023, when it was 39%, it’s clear there has been a leap in the way that customers perceive they are being treated, one that we can attribute to the growth of omnichannel experiences.

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Retail is the main industry that has adopted omnichannel marketing. Major consumer goods are sold to consumers via brand experiences that offer multiple touchpoints for the consumer, giving them the opportunity to choose between an online or a brick-and-mortar store.

Even Amazon, seen by many as the touchstone of online retailing, has moved into physical retail spaces. Amazon’s expansion into physical retail with Amazon Fresh is a great example of omnichannel marketing.

Amazon integrated data from their online ecosystem into their physical stores — allowing customers to use their Amazon accounts seamlessly online and in brick-and-mortar stores and receive personalised promotions in-store.

Omnichannel retailers are finding consistent experiences across all channels to be the most successful method to deploy when building loyalty. In creating a consistent customer service experience across all touchpoints, you can build trust as the customer knows what to expect when they encounter your brand, which increases brand loyalty.

Disney is another master of omnichannel marketing, seamlessly integrating experiences across Disney+, theme parks, retail stores, and mobile apps.

Their MagicBands allow theme park visitors to link purchases, ride reservations, and hotel stays, ensuring a personalised, connected experience.

And, once again, wherever you encounter Disney, through whatever channel, you’re never left in doubt as to which brand you are experiencing.

If you are looking to shift to an omnichannel approach, the following steps are a quick guide for optimising this marketing for your business.

The first stage of any marketing journey is to consider where you are and what you are aiming for. By taking control of your marketing metrics, you can set realistic targets.

Within this, you can survey current customers for qualitative data to gain a more objective assessment of what you are currently doing well and what the customer might desire more of. On top of customer satisfaction surveys, you could also use Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback.

The next step towards understanding your customers is to consider how they interact with your brand from the first encounter so you can guide them through each step of their journey.

It is crucial to ensure personalisation at every stage of the sales funnel, from research to consideration to purchase and beyond, to encourage retention and loyalty.

It is important to ensure your whole marketing team is on board and in line with each other before you launch your omnichannel commerce strategy. Discern which communications are already going out so you can unify them to create a more cohesive message for your brand.

Once everything is lined up, you can set a date and launch everything. Since this is omnichannel, you will want everything to be set going in tandem. Ensure your entire team is on hand to smooth out any initial hitches in the systems.

Once your campaign has begun, you will need to continually review your metrics so you can analyse the impact your strategy is having in terms of customer conversion and retention.

If the figures do not reflect your expectations, you can pivot your approach in the area where you find that your standards are not being met.

To get an even better idea of how the personalised approach is working, you can test your strategy with a mystery shopper who can give feedback on how the process worked for them individually.

There are many tools that make managing omnichannel marketing much easier to manage. Here are just a few we’d recommend you look into using.

This AI marketing tool is useful for initial troubleshooting on your website to provide the real-time customer service that consumers expect.

Customer attitudes towards AI are continuing to improve; Salesforce found that 46% of those surveyed would willingly work with an AI agent to obtain a faster service.

A strong CRM platform centralises customer interactions, enabling real-time engagement across email, SMS, and social media — ensuring every touchpoint feels personalised.

You will want to look for software that offers a plethora of features, including calendar management, communications via email and SMS to ensure parity of communication for all customers, and data aggregation.

A good inventory management tool can not only ensure you keep supply in line with demand across your physical stores and digital channels, but it can also forecast future demand. In using it to set minimum requirements, you can ensure you never have to display an “out of stock” message.

In centralising all of your advertisements into one server, you can hand over the difficult job of discerning which type of advert is best suited to which platform. This will allow you to keep all of your advertisements in one place for ease of comparison and alteration.

By tracking your customer interactions at each stage, you can evaluate which parts of your omnichannel strategy are working optimally to funnel customers through to sales.

Using a sophisticated unified marketing management tool is a good way to aggregate your data, which can then be interpreted and managed by your team. These tools can provide real-time insights to allow for live adjustments to keep your messaging current.

By creating a seamless experience across multiple channels, both online and offline, you can strengthen your brand’s aesthetic and reinforce its reputation for excellence.

Expand your omnichannel marketing strategy today with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Learn more about Marketing Cloud by watching a demo.