The Role of Email Marketing in an Omnichannel Strategy

Now is always the time to strengthen your marketing strategy. As numerous new channels and platforms are mushrooming in the digital marketplace, marketers must take an omnichannel approach to drive meaningful interactions with prospects and drive better conversions.

Here’s a chart that supports the importance of a cohesive omnichannel approach.

This implies that marketers must create a personalized and consistent customer experience irrespective of the platform through which the customer engages with the brand.

Email marketing holds the most weight in an omnichannel marketing approach as it can unravel your customer’s digital life and can drive the highest ROI among other digital communication channels.

Here are five ways that email marketing can help in an omnichannel marketing approach.  

1. One-on-one communication

Cut through the noise and talk directly to your customers and prospects. Once a user signs up for your email list, you have permission to engage with them. Based on the information provided by your subscribers and their past interaction with your brand, you can create segmented lists to send valuable and more relevant emails. With the help of artificial intelligence, you can micro-segment lists and hyper-personalize your emails. When emails are carefully tailored to match your subscriber’s preferences, you are more likely to have higher engagement, and therefore, more conversions.

Check out this email by Social Media Examiner. They sent a personalized plain-text email from their founder & CEO which gives the reader a feeling that the email has been drafted exclusively for them.

2. Controlled communication

Email is a permission-based marketing channel. While you have no control over the people who have followed or liked your social media page, you are the OWNER of your (organically built) email list. With both email and social channels, you have to be sure to adhere to the rules and regulations of each region and channel. However, unlike social media, there are no frequent algorithmic changes in email marketing.

3. Behavior-based targeting

We’re all familiar with the temptation that comes along with online shopping. Say you buy an article of clothing and are served up with multiple other items that you could purchase to make a complete outfit. You can send behavior-based emails that are triggered after the subscriber performs a particular action—be it purchasing a product or downloading a resource.  Engaging with a customer based on their actions on your website allows you to communicate that you know and understand your consumers. Instilling trust is a vital part of omnichannel communication.

4. Improved experience

Email marketing best practices are always changing, and technology is always adapting to the user’s preferences to stay relevant. Consider how you can make the user experience within your email more engaging and fun using technology within your emails. Visual elements give emails the feel of mailable microsites and ensure a pleasant subscriber experience. Remember to create cohesion between all of your channels to show your customers and prospects that regardless of channel, you’re giving the same experience.

5. Customer rewards

Consider building a customer loyalty program for existing highly engaged customers. Referral programs can also help to bring new customers on board and entice them to purchase from you. Thank your customers for being evangelists and delight them with an exclusive offer.

See how Planted leverages referral email marketing to encourage more job seekers to use their services.

Wrapping up

An omnichannel strategy is one of the most important goals for marketers and email is the passport to get there. Keep optimizing your email marketing strategy to create a seamless customer experience that will yield higher growth.

How do you offer a total customer experience through your email marketing? Tell us about your experience in the comments.