Gone are the days when customers used to interact with brands on just one platform. Now, they may check a product online and go to the nearest brand store to pick it up if they need it urgently.

Alternatively, they may see a product in-store but order it online to take advantage of offers. They may also spot a product randomly on Instagram and then Google your store name. Finally, they may purchase the products after seeing the retargeting ads. 

So, it all boils down to this: a customer flow is not linear anymore. Therefore, creating a unified experience across all touchpoints has become non-negotiable. Omnichannel Shopify marketing can help you with this. 

In this post, we will cover how you can create a Shopify omnichannel marketing strategy and why you need one. You'll also discover some standout examples for inspiration.

What is omnichannel marketing? 

Omnichannel marketing is a customer-focused strategy that integrates all channels (physical store, website, social media, email, sms, etc) a business uses to interact with customers. 

This strategy creates a consistent experience for the customer regardless of the channel and helps to create a strong brand identity. 

The numbers speak for themselves: brands witness a remarkable 30% higher lifetime value from customers who engage across multiple channels. 

Furthermore, omnichannel Shopify marketing isn't limited to engagement; it directly impacts the bottom line and brings in nearly 6X more sales than single-channel approaches. 

And the benefits don't stop there; companies prioritizing omnichannel customer engagement see a staggering 89% customer retention rate, with the potential to increase sales by an impressive 287%.

Brands have been using multiple channels for a while, so how does omnichannel marketing differ from the usual multichannel marketing? Let’s take a look at it. 

Omnichannel v/s Multichannel marketing 

Multichannel marketing means using a variety of channels to reach customers. It's the brand's outlook on how to operate these channels. They can manage it independently by using different tools and may use different branding on various channels. 

On the other hand, omnichannel marketing takes a more organic and unified approach. This strategy integrates all channels and aims to provide consumers with a more seamless and consistent brand experience.

Why Shopify brands need an omnichannel marketing strategy 

For any growing Shopify brand, there are numerous marketing strategies, and in all of this, why should you prioritize the omnichannel Shopify marketing strategy? 

Here are the top five reasons:

1. Creates a strong brand presence

An omnichannel marketing strategy helps you reach customers across multiple channels. And on top of it also ensures you have a consistent brand message, visuals, and voice across all channels, from social media to online/physical stores. This strategy solidifies your brand identity in front of customers and creates a strong presence. 

2. Provides better customer insights

With an omnichannel marketing approach, you get a 360-degree view by integrating data from all channels. It helps to pull out key details like:

• Customer journey analysis
• Cost per impression
• Click-through rate
• Multi-channel engagement rate
• Cross-channel conversion rate
• Customer acquisition cost
• Average order value
• Customer lifetime value
• Customer satisfaction score
• Retention rate
• Return on investment.

3. Boosts personalized marketing

Another benefit of having consolidated data across channels is you can better personalize your campaigns. You can send targeted recommendations to customers based on their interests and purchase history. 

You can also analyze behavior, segment data, and run targeted campaigns.

4. Improves customer service

An omnichannel approach also improves customer service in two ways:

• Ability to reach customers where they are: Some customers choose to reach out via social media, some use live chat on the website, and some prefer to email. An omnichannel strategy helps you to reach users where they are active.
• Advanced personalization: With a unified view of customer interactions across channels, the customer support team can easily look into all the past interactions of the customers. It ensures customers don't have to answer the same questions again and again (creating a poor brand experience). The customer support team can pick a conversation where it was left last and leave a positive impression. 

How to create an omnichannel Shopify marketing strategy 

Creating a Shopify omnichannel marketing strategy involves understanding your customer's behavior across channels and creating a seamless experience across all touchpoints. 

Here is a roadmap to accomplish this:

1. Understand your target consumers

The first step is understanding your customer. You can use your existing data or conduct customer interviews/surveys to gather more data. From this data, you can develop user personas. 

A user persona is a representation of your target audience highlighting key details required for marketing, such as demographics, interests, values, online behavior, challenges, and more. 

Sharing an example below for reference:

Sample user persona: 

Name: Catherine

Description: Catherine is a young working professional struggling to manage time. She values quick shopping options and would prefer faster shipping over flash discounts.

Demographics:

• Age: 25
• Gender: Woman
• Location: New York City, NY
• Income: $60,000-$150,000

Interests: Fast fashion, Pop culture

Values: Avoids brands with a history of animal cruelty

Challenges: I want clothes that stand out and fit well, but don't have time to spend hours in the mall. 

Online behavior: Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube

2. Create a customer journey map

After you have a user persona, you can create a customer journey map. A customer journey map is a visual representation of how a customer interacts with your business. It gives you a quick summary of the usual user activity across all touchpoints and helps you plan your campaigns accordingly. 

Sample customer journey map:

Once you have a clear customer journey map, you can plan which campaigns to run on which channel. For instance, based on the above customer map, you can plan all your upsell, cross-sell, or flash deal campaigns on SMS.

3. Identify the right tools

After deciding on the channels, you need the right technical setup to execute the strategy. Basically, you need an omnichannel platform to create a unified experience for all channels. 

For instance, Plivo CX is an AI-powered omnichannel platform that manages sales, marketing, and customer service in one portal. 

4. Create a consistent brand experience 

To further create a strong presence, you need a consistent brand presence across all channels. For this, you need to set two guidelines:

1. Visual identity: Define brand colors, logos, and fonts to create visual recall value.
2. The tone of voice: Maintain a similar brand voice across channels to which your customers can relate to.

5. Implement personalization 

You must tailor your approach to each channel to create an effective omni-channel presence. 

For instance, SMS demands quick messages, quirky push notifications work well for some products, and emails with extensive graphics work well for many products. Personalizing the message based on the channel is important. 

Tip: Use an omnichannel platform with built-in templates for different campaigns to get a starting point for various campaigns based on the channel. Also, look for an in-built copywriting engine, preferably driven by the latest LLMs, that can generate fast, highly-tailored copy for your campaigns,  

6. Analyze data and keep optimizing

You can monitor channel performance and optimize your omnichannel strategy for best performance. Analyze key metrics such as click-through rate, engagement rate, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value to optimize different channels.

Tip: All-in-one customer engagement tools like Plivo CX come with real-time and granular analytics so that you can decide the performance of the campaign and shape future strategies on the go.

Omnichannel marketing strategy: 5 Standout examples 

Before you execute your omnichannel marketing strategy, check out the below examples of brands that did it well and got excellent results: 

1.Amazon

Amazon has created a holistic omnichannel strategy with all touchpoints: prime content, fresh stores, fresh online stores, and overall marketplace, all under a single login. Users' entire history is available at a click enabling them to provide exceptional customer service. 

No wonder, it ranked #1 on online shopping experience and #2 overall across online retail customer satisfaction in the newly released American Customer Satisfaction Index.

2.Swee Lee

Swee Lee, a premier retailer of musical instruments, adopted an Shopify omnichannel strategy where a customer entering the physical store can also access the online inventory through Shopify POS.

So, if they can't find what they want in the store, they can place the order online there itself, and it will be shipped directly to them. With this strategy, the company saw an increase of 50% in online sales.

3.Frank And Oak

Frank And Oak, a Canadian apparel brand, depended mainly on its brick-and-mortar stores for sales and adopted an omnichannel Shopify strategy to keep up with retail trends. With an omnichannel strategy, they were able to run consistent promotions with a single promo code for both store and online channels. 

Omnichannel marketing boosted sales, and they found that the lifetime value of an omnichannel customer is close to double that of a single-channel customer.

4.Cocomelody

Cocomelody, an affordable bridal brand, was seeing high customer drop-off rates. They analyzed the entire customer data, the website, and ads and noted customers dropped off at the last stage just before making a purchase.

 With these insights, they started a new ‘Try at Home’ feature where customers could try a gown for $25 before purchasing. This feature turned out to be a game-changer for the brand. 

This new feature caused a 69% increase in return on online ad spend and 30% more sales. All of this was possible with their omnichannel strategy and being able to derive insights from all customer touchpoints.

5.Rothy’s

Rothy’s, a lifestyle shoe company, integrated chat, social, and self-service support channels into their Shopify store. 

By integrating support channels, customer service executives could easily see customer history, boosting and expediting customer service. 

Execute your omnichannel strategy easily with Plivo CX

Plivo CX, as an AI-powered customer engagement platform, helps you execute Shopify omnichannel strategy easily:

Omnichannel marketing

With Plivo CX Engage, you can reach your target consumers via SMS, email (upcoming), and WhatsApp (upcoming) campaigns.

You can quickly launch campaigns with pre-built templates or create new campaigns quickly with our AI-powered copywriter. Our Audiences feature also helps segment customers based on their online behavior, engagement levels, and purchase history and create well-targeted campaigns. Plus, there’s comprehensive analytics for you to understand what can be done better and what is going right.

Omnichannel customer service

With Plivo CX, we also help you provide omnichannel customer service by combining live chat, voice, SMS, and WhatsApp into one single window pane.

‍Sign up for a free trial to boost sales of your Shopify store and provide exceptional customer service.