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/ Omnichannel
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02
/ Omnichannel
Table of contents
03
WTF is omnichannel?
08
The mobile movement connects
the dots
04
The evolution of omnichannel
11
Almost there: Four omnichannel
challenges
06
Multichannel emerges
15
Realizing our omnichannel dream
07
Omnichannel and the return of brick-and-mortar
03
/ Omnichannel
WTF is omnichannel?
$
profile
across all
channels
Wait, weren’t we just getting the hang of multichannel
marketing? Pitching consumers on their winding,
multidevice, multiplatform digital paths to purchase
was complicated enough. Now comes omnichannel–
marketing’s newest, most superlative buzzword.
At first glance, “omnichannel” appears to be a game
of marketer’s one-upsmanship. Indeed, the Latin prefix
“omni” is misleading. Taken literally, “omnichannel” can
mean “all channels.” But there is another, more relevant
definition of omni, and that’s the one we’re considering
here: “without boundaries.”
Here, digital media is only one piece of the equation.
Omnichannel marketing integrates digital with all the
enduring analog stuff that consumers still cling to: the
brick-and-mortar store, print catalogs and telephone
helplines, not to mention offline ad efforts.
In a perfect omnichannel world, the budgeting siloes,
the walled gardens, the culs-de-sac and the data
online / offline
personalized
sales
fragmentation fade away, eroded by the smooth flow
of superior integrative tech. It all starts with establishing
customer identity in a way that helps marketers deliver
not just relevant advertising, but personalized service
and a frictionless path to purchase—regardless of
where that purchase is made.
Simply put, omnichannel is a marketing strategy that
aims to:
Stitch together a complete profile of each consumer,
carry that consistent identity across all channels both
online and off and use it to create tailored marketing
experiences that move sales.
As always, there are hurdles—cost, complexity, data
and delivery—but we’re not starting from scratch. The
seeds of omnichannel can be found from the earliest
days of organized marketing.
Lend us your ear, and we’ll explain.
04
/ Omnichannel
The evolution
of omnichannel
$
profile
across all
channels
online / offline
personalized
sales
Back in the day the objective was simple. TV, radio, outdoor and print campaigns
shouted a single broad message to herd folks into stores and toward the register.
“The consumer is not an idiot, she is your wife,”—Thanks, David Ogilvy— is about
as close the industry got to targeting their sweeping brand messages.
Driving foot traffic was relegated to below-the-line efforts like coupons, newspaper
circulars and, later, local TV ads. Big time agencies may have delegated these to
juniors, but it was these less-than-glamorous executions that provided a modicum
of usable measurement. Still, once that register rang, all marketers could do was
bid the customer goodbye and wait to measure sales lift. Who bought what and
why? Who knows? Sales were up and bosses were happy.
Omnichannel status:
Marketers create messages that move sales.
05
/ Omnichannel
$
To hunt this elusive prey, marketers whittled
a few reliable arrows for their quivers
Targeting
For the first time, the consumer was an individual. Specific demographic attributes and psychographic characteristics allowed
marketers to see the man through the mob and to target offers
tailored to him.
Segmenting
Of course, there were still groups, but data allowed the massive
consumer herds to give way to countless market segments representing specific types—Tinier herds that were easier to steer and
customize for.
Sequencing
Continuous data collection meant that every message wasn’t
assumed to be a first contact. Each interaction was logged and
informed the next as the consumer moved toward purchase.
Retargeting
If the consumer’s journey ended just short of the register, a second
line of offers could nudge them back into buy mode. According to
eMarketer, over 72 percent of consumers can be swayed by these
ghosts of their unfulfilled buying impulses.
profile
across all
channels
online / offline
personalized
sales
Digital shoppers now helmed their own consumer journey, and marketers had
to keep up. The cooperative couch potatoes of yesteryear, who would willingly
absorb a 30- or (gasp!) 60-second TV spot gave way to ADD-addled shoppers
running wild on the Web.
Cookies and click-throughs shed some light on the opaque shopper’s journey.
It wasn’t yet possible to connect a brick-and-mortar customer to their online
counterpart, but marketers began building bridges to connect the two worlds,
measuring the effectiveness of digital campaigns in getting folks into the store
and up to the register.
Omnichannel status:
Marketers create messages create tailored marketing experiences that move sales.
06
/ Omnichannel
Multichannel emerges
$
profile
across all
channels
Digital marketing promised a transparent path to clear
ROI, but never quite delivered. Instead, marketers
came down with a wicked case of shiny-object
syndrome, hurling experimental messages down
emerging social channels.
Look no further than the stampede of brands and
publishers jumping onto emerging social app Peach
without any promise of ROI. Likewise, Sprite’s Snapchat
campaign last year earned good press and 2.3 million
impressions in Brazil. But did it move soda pop? If you
don’t know, you’re not omnichannel.
Digital and offline efforts were made in tandem, but
the conversation between them was usually stilted or
altogether silent. Legacy structures put pressure on
isolated departments to throw efforts at ever more
targets with limited data crossing the divide. A 2014
survey by eMarketer found that only 30 percent of
brands surveyed had an integrated marketing team
online / offline
personalized
sales
and only one in five felt they could measure how
effective their campaigns were in a holistic way.
The inability to carry identity seamlessly to a physical
location, or even across to other devices and platforms,
is more than a missed opportunity. Consumers expect
integrated service in an increasingly connected world.
Omnichannel status:
Marketers create messages across all channels both
online and off that move sales.
This is where omnichannel comes in, to finish the job
digital started by merging the customer’s experience
online and offline to create what Sam Huston, CSO
of iProspect, describes as an “omnistore approach,
so we turn every touchpoint into a single universal
experience.”
07
/ Omnichannel
Omnichannel
and the return of
brick-and-mortar
$
profile
across all
channels
Omnichannel isn’t about being everywhere at once,
nor is it simply multichannel on steroids. It’s recognizing
every individual customer whether they’re shopping
online, offline, or both. To do so, marketers must forge
individual consumer profiles.
More than ever, today’s shopper begins by researching
a product, whether they intend to purchase it online
or off. (According to Google, 42 percent of in-store
consumers research their purchases online.)
This fact finding pulls consumers back and forth across
the digital/in-store divide, including everything from an
online search for a local store to the ability to digitally
check in-store inventory. And now, online purchases
can be picked up and returned in-store. Once the
shopper is in the door, the shopping resumes (and
might go right back online).
Nordstrom Rack acknowledged this phenomenon with
its initiative to allow e-commerce returns in-store: “It’s a
Trojan horse to get people into stores,” David Randolph,
online / offline
personalized
sales
senior vp of retail and e-commerce at 360i told Digiday.
“It creates a good atmosphere. If you return something,
you’re more likely to walk around, shop and buy
something else.”
A 2014 report by ICSC confirms the sentiment: Retailers
that offer both in-store pick up and returns in-store earn
more. Shoppers who return items in-store generally
walk out the door having spent 7 percent more than
they did online.
Overall, omnichannel shoppers are more valuable.
Those willing to merge their online and offline buying
habits have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than
others, according to a 2015 IDC study.
Omnichannel status:
Marketers create messages that carry a consistent identity
across all channels both online and off and use it to
create tailored marketing experiences that move sales.
08
/ Omnichannel
The mobile movement
connects the dots
To consecrate the marriage of physical and digital,
marketers invoke new technologies that bend the
boundaries between in-store shopping and
online browsing
Geolocation
Customers who share their geolocation can be targeted with offers when they’re
in or near a store and more likely to casually drop in.
Beaconing
Customers that opt in to beaconed Wi-Fi networks become trackable, sharing
data that can be resolved to their customer profile via a device ID.
The ability to track individual consumers’ actions as they left their
PCs and headed to the store was the missing data link that would
finally unite the digital shopping experience with the physical one.
Only about 4 percent of marketers are able to use mobile shopping
data to draw unified conclusions about their customers.
Of the $22 trillion in worldwide e-commerce sales that were made
in 2014, 30 percent of those came from mobile transactions. But
marketers still need to keep their eyes on the ball: 94 percent of
these consumers’ spending still takes place in-store.
09
/ Omnichannel
The mobile moment
connects the dots
$
profile
across all
channels
online / offline
personalized
sales
Thanks to mobile in-store technologies, retailers can now see just what happens
in-between. Brett Leary, at DigitasLBi told Digiday, “They [retailers] are leveraging
the ability of mobile devices to give off signals about who a shopper is or signals
of intent.”
If you walk into Target and connect to their Wi-Fi, we now have an identifier. We
may not know who you are if you haven’t authenticated yourself, but we can see
the sites you might be going to. Are you comparison shopping, connect to your
offline activities?”
Mobile opens the door to omnichannel, by putting individual-level data about
in-store consumers at marketers fingertips, but the circuit isn’t closed quite yet.
Omnichannel status:
Marketers attempt to stitch together a complete profile of each consumer, carry
that consistent identity across all channels both online and off and use it to create
tailored marketing experiences that move sales.
LET’S
RUMBLE.
IN THE
OMNICHANNEL
JUNGLE.
/ Omnichannel
ALISHA WAGNER // LOOKS ONLINE, BUYS GYM GEAR IN STORE
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message, across multiple devices—both online and offline. Let us give your marketing
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©2016 Neustar, Inc.
Any consumer information is compiled at the household level using Neustar’s products and services and is not based
on actual online behavioral data. All characters appearing in this advertisement are fictitious. Any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
14
11
/ Omnichannel
Almost there: Four
omnichannel challenges
Problem: Establishing identities
Technology has made it easy (many say too easy) for marketers to gather data.
The hard part is organizing that data into something useful. Marketers need to
index consumer attributes, preferences, behaviors and more from a wide variety
of sources: digital, social, mobile and in-store. This data is likely to be riddled with
inaccuracies and redundancies. Why? Consumers log in with different names and
email addresses, change their handles, use different addresses and then relocate
to multiple devices, many of them mobile. Matching a slew of device IDs to a given
user is rough.
This hurts marketers’ ability to target, but more importantly, it eats away at their
credibility. No one likes to receive an offer under the wrong name or to the wrong
address, and these fails damage the brand.
A siloed approach to marketing data doesn’t help, but breaking those silos
dramatically increases the threat of data leakage. Brands fear that shared data and
consumer insights could be used by agencies and other third-parties to assist other
clients or even competitors.
Solution: Merging data across channels and stitching it into unique profiles is a requirement for omnichannel execution. Brands need to be aggressive about refining
and refreshing those profiles to keep them current.
Controlling data leakage, on the other hand, requires relationship management
between brands and their partners. Sam Huston of iProspect says that, with a bit of
precaution, the fear is unfounded. “Data leakage is a challenge but it’s also the easiest thing to overcome. Most agencies recognize the need to handle data ethically
and have proprietary data responsibilities built into their contracts.”
12
/ Omnichannel
Almost there: Four
omnichannel challenges
Problem: Creating experiences that cross borders
Creating that ever-evolving customer profile is only half the battle. The ability to
match it to individual customers across multiple channels and touchpoints is the
holy grail of an omnichannel strategy and one of the hardest to execute. According
to Deloitte, only 40 percent of retailers report the ability to accurately identify
their customers across all channels. As customers hop from device to device and
dodge in and out of stores, the complications of cross device tracking becomes
acutely felt.
Solution: A persistent ID knits together all the data brands are able to collect
about their customer and distills it into a single profile. Ad tech providers offer
solutions that create and maintain these persistent IDs by algorithmically
eliminating outdated or erroneous information (name changes, old addresses,
outdated geolocation, disparate device IDs etc.). Mobile devices and social
logins like Facebook then stretch that profile across all (or a majority of) a
consumer’s interactions with a brand, both online and in-store.
13
/ Omnichannel
Almost there: Four
omnichannel challenges
Problem: The in-store experience has gone cyborg
Digital shopping is ubiquitous, but syncing up these interactions with brick-andmortar stores is still a challenge. Marketers and retailers accustomed to a traditional
siloed approach to online and offline marketing need to find ways to break down
barriers. That means implementing more technology in stores and giving associates
the training and tools they need to access and act on online customer data.
Jon Reily, vp of commerce strategy at Razorfish points to coffee king Starbucks
as a perfect example of harmony between physical and digital. “Their mobile
app is not only well-designed but does a choice few things very well, leaving it
streamlined and elegant while still functional. The ability to load your Starbucks
card via any medium (phone, web, app or in store) makes it the epitome of what
omnichannel should be: seamless commerce.”
Solution: Retailers are gearing up with new tools to target mobile-savvy shoppers.
Brands like Neiman Marcus have put tablets in the hands of associates, allowing
them to access customer profiles and data on the fly. Training brick-and-mortar
sales teams to act on digital data the same way digital marketers do makes it easier
to deliver a smart offer face-to-face.
This process also feeds holistically back into the digital side. Deloitte estimates
that retailers will have deployed as many as 2 million in-store tablets by the end of
2016 serving as both customer service and payment terminals. Data collected in
the store can also be fed directly back into a customer’s profile.
14
/ Omnichannel
Almost there: Four
omnichannel challenges
Problem: If a beacon sends a coupon, does it make a sale?
The flip side of the identity problem is attribution, knowing which effort or
efforts really made a difference to which consumers. The problem has barely
been solved for digital, and now it has to account for in-store and other offline
touchpoints. In the old days digital marketers relied on the lowly last click for
attribution, assuming that the last thing a shopper saw was the thing that changed
their mind. Then came click-through attribution, which assigns value to the efforts
with the highest clickthrough rates. Neither metric tells us anything about what
works for the complex, multiply influenced consumer of omnichannel’s future.
Solution: The mistake of previous attribution methods was trying to assign all the
credit for a purchase to one channel. But a fractional attribution model better
captures the holistic spirit of omnichannel, assigning partial credit to each touchpoint
along the way to a sale. Omnichannel consumers are hybrid animals by nature,
exposed on by both online and offline factors. By giving specific weight to all the
appeals the customer touches on their way to the register, this method creates a
personalized recipe for converting that individual again the next time around.
An approach along the line of Nordstrom’s and Macy’s in-store return policy for
online purchases pulls more value from the individual consumer than a strategy
that draws sharp lines between channels.
15
/ Omnichannel
Realizing our
omnichannel dream
$
profile
across all
channels
online / offline
personalized
sales
Omnichannel might feel more like a platonic ideal than a practical reality, but
brands are making serious strides toward achieving a working model. While only
a small fraction (14 percent according to L2) claim the ability to track customers
across channels and act on the data they glean from those interactions, a growing
number have executed a partial omnichannel approach.
While Starbucks can’t claim to universally recognize its customers anywhere
and everywhere, they can trace consumers carrying Starbucks cards across their
digital devices and in-store visits, making card ownership not just an asset to the
consumer, but a way for marketers to tailor channel-spanning campaigns to
identified prospects.
As physical and digital shopping experiences continue to collide and merge, an
omnichannel strategy will shift marketers from an attempt to be everywhere to a
mindset toward being everywhere that matters. Further, combining a digital
approach with the brick-and-mortar shopping experience creates the optimal
hybrid environment in which today’s consumers can spend as they please.
Transcending to omnichannel means that marketers can finally stitch together
a complete profile of each consumer, carry that consistent identity across all
channels both online and off and use it to create tailored marketing experiences
that move sales.
And really, hasn’t that been the dream all along?