Multi-channel arrangements or marketing is the practice of an e-commerce business interacting with its customers using indirect and direct communication channels. These include websites, newsletters, direct mail, email, and mobile. Multi-channel e-commerce means selling of products and services in more than one channel online.
Multi-channel marketing is important for the simple reason that you must be where your customers are. As an e-commerce business, it is smart to be where your customers are. And actually, your potential customers are everywhere. Multi-channel customers spend more than single-channel customers do and that enough is a good reason to practice multi-channel marketing.
Reaching customers in this generation isn’t so much of a problem anymore. Both in terms of number and variety of channels, in a click away, you can immediately earn reviews and suggestions. The channels continue to rise and the need to practice multi-channel marketing will be as fundamental as ever.
Consistent Customer Experience
Excellent customer experience is as important as consistency. It’s either you maintain your quality or you improve your services. Your customers experience your brand through physical and online interaction they could be over the phone, through email, or in a store. The value of your product or your services is questionable when a customer experiences positively online but is getting just an average experience in-store. Your customers can turn against you if you fail to deliver consistency.
Create A General Marketing View Of Your Customers
It is critical for an e-commerce business to create a single view of the customer. This means establishing a general marketing data that compiles all customer reviews in one place regardless of channels. This is important today because they interact with you in different ways that involve more than one channel. Knowing how your customers behave all across different channels is vital and that you also understand a customer’s value to your brand.
As your business develops, your customers should too. Their view must develop along with you. This means refreshing old data and building new models.
Develop Multichannel Marketing Platforms
When an e-commerce business develops a multi-channel marketing platform, you will be able to unite different channels from traditional to digital. A single strategy that can be done across various channels will put the most effective of marketing within your hands. As long as you innovate right offers together with the right person at the right time on the right channel, you can reduce costs while improving your marketing efforts.
To achieve an effective multi-channel marketing platform, an e-commerce business should include operations technology to support:
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Campaign Management
This includes the ability for segmentation, creation of workflow, and proper campaign execution.
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Advanced Analytics
This includes campaign optimization and predictive analytics
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Advanced Execution
From content management, real-time decision making to inbound and outbound marketing programs.
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Response Attribution
The ability to practice effective planning, marketing optimization, and marketing attribution analysis.
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Digital Marketing
Expansion from traditional channels to newer channels, including social media, mobile, video, etc.
Customers are expecting large varieties of experiences, and these experiences have to be across different platforms. This approach is expanding the widest network to achieve maximum customer engagement. This makes multi-channel an effective strategy to interact with your customers at a high frequency.
