As we advance towards the end of 2020, omnichannel marketing is becoming a solid reality for most brick and mortar stores that earlier didn’t consider moving online. Extending a seamless purchasing experience through digital channels is becoming a part of every organization’s strategy. Failing to include best email validation tool in your marketing strategy would be leaving a lot of money on the table. All of your customers may not prefer every social media platform, but emails are a connecting link between all of them. In this article, I am going to discuss the role of email in Omnichannel marketing and how you can make the most out of it.
Table of Contents
What Is Omnichannel Marketing?
Until the 2000s, most of the marketing strategies were based on mass pushes, i.e., delivering neatly penned messages to the public. These messages were showcased on billboards, newspapers, tv, and pamphlets. These messages were one-way, but after the evolution of technology, marketing tactics were completely changed.
With the aid of digital marketing tools, brands can send personalized messages to their potential customers in dozens of other ways. It inspires multi-channel marketing. It means approaching your customer on all platforms. Omni-channel marketing unites all the platforms, and email marketing plays the role of a pivot pin. It delivers seamless experience because inter-platform communication is possible.
How Does Email Fit Into An Omnichannel Strategy?
To execute an omnichannel strategy, email is inevitable. It supports launching and maintaining an omnichannel approach; besides, it is the oldest (yet thriving) digital communication platform. Do you know by the end of 2021, the number of emails sent and received per day will exceed 320 billion?
It lets you track customer behavior by tracing what engages them as well as what type of content they prefer. Hashed emails make it possible to accumulate data regarding browsing patterns. Using this data, you can optimize your omnichannel marketing tactics to achieve the targets.
Following are the reasons to include to email in omnichannel strategy:
1. Direct communication
Once the user signs up to the email list, you have permission to send them marketing emails. It allows you to segment the email addresses based on their location, age, gender, and other factors to send relevant emails.
2. Behavior-based targeting
Behavior based targeting is a great way of leveraging emails. The data acquired from other channels like the engagement rate and subsequent actions taken by the audience can give you insights into what to send your subscribers in emails. You can also tweak your email template designs as per their preferences and leverage hyper-personalization.
3. Improved experience
Improved experience refers to engaging the recipients effortlessly. You can send customer-centric content, attractive images, valuable content, and statistics in your email communications. Make sure all the channels are coherent to provide the best user experience. You should use responsive HTML email templates for optimizing your messages to serve mobile-first experience.
Why Email Is Key For Successful Omnichannel Marketing
Marketers find it very difficult to stay relevant to the audience as customer preferences are shifting faster than ever before. Physical stores collect email ID for sending out offers and providing facilities like gift cards. On the other hand, every social media platform requires the user to link their email ID for login and security purposes. Thus, emails form the kingpin around which all physical and digital platforms revolve. However, it is necessary to use email templates that go well with each customer base, and your segmentation strategy should also take care of the subscriber preferences accordingly. I am listing below the scope of email marketing in an omnichannel sales strategy:
Email Targets Masses
Did you know there are 3.9 billion email users worldwide? Almost all the digital devices connected to the internet have access to email. Email marketing provides an opportunity to address the mass. You can send emails to any corner of the world, and they can access it any time and with any device (connected to the internet).
Emails Impart Personalized Customer Experience
Social media posts are generic, common for all; contrastingly, you can send personalized email considering the demographics, past purchases, and other activity on the internet. You can send an email for an abandoned cart; these emails have a higher chance of converting into sales. In 2019 abandoned cart email open rate was almost 44%.
Interactive Email Gives Impetus to Purchase
Utilization of animations, sliders, GIFs, gamification, collapsible menu bar, creative graphics, and videos allows to personalize the consumer experience, and relevant emails drive the sales. According to Martech Advisor, interactive email content increases the click-to-open rate by 73%, and emails with video can increase click rates up to 300%.
Email Integrates Seamlessly With Other Channels
Emails can seamlessly integrate with other channels, and it can direct customers to ecommerce websites or social media pages. Through emails, you can ask customers to download and use Android/iOS applications. It can support loyalty programs. Thus, it can perform a noteworthy role in omnichannel marketing.
Summing Up
Email marketing can play a significant role in creating a consistent customer experience that streamlines engagement across all channels. While email marketing forms a significant portion of the sales funnel in Omnichannel marketing, it will help brands in diluting the experience between all online platforms and enable them to use data mutually acquired from various channels. This makes email marketing a pivoting platform for Omnichannel marketing. I hope that you find this article insightful for your business.