Omnichannel Retail Marketing (Part 3): Mastering Campaigns

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Note: This blog is the third part of our three-part series on the Omnichannel Approach to Retail Marketing.

In our previous blogs, we discussed why retailers have to consider taking an omnichannel approach to retail marketing seriously. We explained in detail the secret sauce of success is to allow customers to move from one channel to another seamlessly. We also described all the channels that any retail marketer can utilize to offer an immersive experience.

In this part III, we are going to discuss use cases that can be utilized for retail marketing campaigns. We will also examine further how some of the retail brands have utilized omnichannel marketing campaigns for an enhanced experience.

• Making the customer’s mindset part of your retail marketing strategy.
• Typical retail use cases to convert into omnichannel campaigns.
• Five omnichannel campaign examples from retail brands across the globe.

As explained in the earlier articles, the omnichannel approach for retail marketing in the strictest sense means providing a seamless brand experience and interaction across channels (in-store, app, and social media). Now that we know what engagement channels to focus on and how to mix 2-3 channels together to offer a dynamic purchase experience. The next step is to create these campaigns.

So let’s examine in detail.

Making the Customer’s Mindset Part of Your Retail Marketing Strategy

Right now your shopper is everywhere—interacting with your brand via an Instagram story or clicking on your recent push or liking a Facebook post. So now across all these touchpoints,  how are you communicating with them? Is the messaging consistent or is the experience seamless? This is what you need to answer now through an intuitive engagement strategy.

Your shopper might dump your brand in favor of another one that offers a more unified browsing and buying experience.

Yes, your customers are hopping from one channel to another. So your focus should be to create workflows that can easily trigger communication-based on their behavior and preferences. Even if they hop from device to device and online to in-person and back again. And as they did this, you ensure all your channels are working in sync and communicate accordingly.

The new normal is to browse online first, with the slight intention of buying online. Alternatively, it’s also perfectly normal to shop at a physical location and then go online to buy. It’s even common practice to search online while browning at an in-store location: Research shows 72% of U.S. customers use their phones in-store to check prices, look up product information, and find a specific item.

So there isn’t a one-size-fits-all, but a more dynamic approach. You can create this dynamic experience by observing your shoppers’ browsing and buying patterns. This data will help you with various use cases that you can use to create engagement campaign workflows.

Typical Retail Marketing Use Cases to Convert into Campaigns

Your omnichannel retail marketing campaigns can vary based on your customer and their purchase journey. Using this logic you can create at least three top campaigns that can be altered based on customer preferences, in-app behavior, and product catalog.

Use Case #1 – Offline to Online Purchase: As a retail marketer, your first job is to ensure your customer is moving from in-store to your app store to continue purchase. For this use case, you need to sieve through the offline data and drive customers to download the app. The next thing is to create a campaign redirecting them to a product catalog based on their previous purchase and drive the first in-app store purchase.

Use Case #2 – Repeat Purchase: Now that your customer completed at least one in-store and in-app purchase so what’s next you ask? It is to drive customers to do repeat purchases. These campaigns can be set using the last purchase made and create a specific look-book catalog catering to the customer. Now send these campaigns on various channels driving customers to complete a look.

Bonus Material – Take a look at How to Get Repeat Purchases From E-commerce Customers 

Use Case #3 – Loyalty Program: Repeat purchases are also ongoing so what’s next? It is to increase customer LTV (lifetime value). This can be done easily using a loyalty program. Create loyalty program campaigns for users who made a repeat purchase announcing extra points on every purchase. In this campaign, the messaging focus should be on redeeming loyalty points by purchasing more.

3 Omnichannel Campaign Examples from Retail Brands

1) Landmark Group: Personalized Offers across Channels

White Wednesday is the biggest online sale period allowing the giant Landmark Group to increase new subscribers, customers, and revenue. Their November 2019 sale was a huge success that just one of the concepts in one region saw more than 80K purchases. This concept was to utilize a mix of channel touchpoints based on customer preferences. The brands’ strategy was to warm up customers with presale week promotion encouraging existing app users to opt-in for push notification, email, SMS, or any two and wishlist items.

During the sale and beyond, they improved app engagement by enticing customers with attractive offers on ‘wishlisted’ items using SMS coupons. Additionally, for sale week’s promotion, the brand utilized a great re-engagement tactic that reinvigorated dormant customers and accelerated retention. The brand sent an email and push notifications to incentivize customers with an exclusive discount or offer a reward for taking a short customer experience survey. This overall retail marketing strategy helped the brand in improving its cross-sell and upsell sales.

2) Lifestyle: Dynamic Engagement Strategy

Lifestyle core strategy is to target abandoned customers by activating and driving them to invest more time in the app. The brand creates personalized smart-triggered campaigns designed based on customer journeys of new and existing customers. Every message is personalized based on customer relevancy and preferences. In case the customers are unresponsive to the communication, the brand re-targets them on social channels like Facebook. The brand shares personalized content on social channels and helped drive customers back to the app. They also target uninstalled users on Facebook by sending follow-up products to purchase. Overall relevant communication allows the brand to increase MAUs and sessions on the app.

3) Sociolla: Master in Personalized Marketing

Sociolla meets the customer where they are and then drive them to online or offline channels for a seamless purchase. The brand has been running Instagram LIVE sessions on beauty product launches, how-to beauty sessions, product explainers videos, and more. Their subscription campaigns are one of their re-running campaigns where they consistently drive beauty subscriptions boxes for various beauty products like Korean masks, make-up, and more. They use Instagram as the focus channel and then push users to the app and store to opt for a subscription.

The brand sends personalized push notifications and emails to users who attend the Instagram LIVE prompting them to check out subscription boxes. The brand has been able to drive mass subscriptions on their recent face masks box which seems to be a huge hit with their users.

Many brands across industries are utilizing the omnichannel approach, but for retail marketing, this approach becomes imperative. Your shoppers are everywhere hopping around channels so having an omnichannel approach is the most logical route.