Omnichannel Marketing Automation: 4 Ways to Reduce Manual Work

Modern consumers move faster than ever, and they need brands they buy from to keep pace. But it’s difficult for brands to operate quickly and efficiently as they grow and scale their business when simultaneously dealing with thousands, if not millions, of customers.

By automating their omnichannel marketing efforts, brands are able to meet customers’ demands and save time and resources in the process. This empowers them to maximize their omnichannel campaigns for optimal engagement.

In this article, we look at exactly what we mean by omnichannel marketing automation, common inefficiencies brands are experiencing, elements of the omnichannel experience you can automate, and the top criteria to look for when choosing an omnichannel marketing automation solution. To start, let’s look at what omnichannel marketing automation is.

What is Omnichannel Marketing Automation?

Omnichannel marketing automation is the process and practice of automating omnichannel marketing strategies, systems, and operations. It involves executing familiar, streamlined omnichannel marketing campaigns across various channels and touchpoints.

In an omnichannel strategy, brands use all channels at their disposal to create one seamless experience for their customers. In this framework, email, mobile push notifications, in-app messaging, website push notifications, social media, and SMS messages are all part of a single, interconnected marketing strategy, working in harmony to create a seamless customer experience.

Successful brands executing an omnichannel marketing strategy leverage automation wherever they can to improve operations, helping them effectively manage lead capture and nurture efforts, increase customer engagement and retention, and scale their omnichannel marketing operations as they grow.

6 Inefficient Omnichannel Marketing Examples

Executing an omnichannel marketing strategy means ensuring all of your channels are integrated and operating in tandem. Because the stakes are so high, it’s incredibly important to overcome any omnichannel marketing challenges you may face and optimize your omnichannel marketing campaigns.

Below, we explore some of the common pitfalls that omnichannel marketers fall into (to help you avoid the same problems) when automating your campaigns.

1. Sending generic recommendations and communication: Your customers aren’t the same; they have different interests and preferences, which themselves change over time. Your marketing campaigns should be as diverse as your customer base to make sure they resonate with each customer.
2. Siloing your data: Disjointed, siloed data leads to incomplete and disconnected insights. By automating omnichannel data collection and management, brands will ensure they get a holistic view of the customer.
3. Relying on instinct instead of data: Your instincts can only take you so far. To perfect your marketing campaigns, you need to lean on the omnichannel analytics you have, and then make data-driven decisions you can be confident in.
4. Creating a single, static customer experience: Customers don’t interact with your product or service the same way every time. Brands need to provide dynamic experiences that are dictated by real-time customer insights.
5. Segmenting customers too broadly: Don’t rely on broad segmentation that fails to narrow down your customer personas. To effectively reach your customers, you need to use deep segmentation that lets you hone in on what matters to them.
6. Using manual processes that don’t allow you to scale: Operating an omnichannel marketing strategy is extremely difficult and time-consuming to do manually. For brands to scale as they grow, they need to be able to automate omnichannel marketing efforts and campaigns.

Now that you know the main pitfalls to avoid, we’ll dive into unique ways you can automate your omnichannel marketing strategy.

4 Omnichannel Marketing Automations You Can Use to Reduce Manual Work

So, now that you’re running an omnichannel marketing strategy, what elements can you automate? Below, we look at some of the main components of an omnichannel marketing strategy that can be automated, and explore how automating these parts can be beneficial.

1. Respond to customer activity in real-time with event-triggered campaigns

When you’re dealing with thousands (if not millions) of customers, it’s impossible to manually deliver campaigns for each unique scenario. Fortunately, omnichannel marketing campaigns can be set up to automatically send marketing communication based on your customer’s real-time actions.

Event-triggered campaigns allow you to set up campaigns for unique scenarios, and establish entry conditions that trigger those campaigns in real-time. This means that when a customer takes a particular action, they’re automatically served a contextually-relevant campaign.

This allows brands to:

• Build onboarding campaigns that are initiated when a customer enters the lead generation funnel by completing an app download for the first time.
• Deploy engagement campaigns that activate customers along the customer journey for increased traction, conversions, and retention.
• Set up recovery campaigns that reactivate customers after they abandon a cart or leave an onboarding flow incomplete.

2. Segment customers based on past activity and behavior patterns

To ensure your messaging resonates with your customers, you must send omnichannel marketing campaigns that speak to your diverse customer needs and preferences.

Brands can set up automated customer segmentation that leverages customer demographics, activity, and behavioral data to group customers according to demographics, personal interests, and even buying intent. 

For example, using RFM segmentation, brands can group customers based on their recency, frequency, and monetary value. By grouping customers into categories like ‘champions’, ‘loyal customers’, and ‘needs attention’, brands can serve personalized campaigns that speak directly to their customers. This targeted, focused messaging often results in greater engagement and higher conversions.

3. Personalize recommendations, offers, and messages based on customer preferences

Customers are looking for product recommendations, offers, and experiences that speak directly to them and their unique needs. However, personalizing the channel, timing, frequency, and content of your messages takes time and effort to perfect.

Leading brands dynamically select and populate personalized product recommendations based on their customer’s previous shopping behavior, what they’ve added to their shopping cart or bookmarked/favorited, and the products they are currently viewing. They also send personalized discounts and offers that are suited to the customer’s interests and preferences. Brands drastically increase engagement and conversion rates by personalizing their recommendations and messaging.

4. Optimize campaign performance using AI

AI optimization empowers brands to update and improve campaigns with minimal effort and maximum results. These solutions leverage past customer activity and behavior to pick the perfect message for the right customer. They then anticipate the best time and channel for delivery to get the most engagement out of each customer.

What to Look For in an Omnichannel Marketing Automation Platform

When every customer interaction is important, you can’t leave them up to chance. To meet customer expectations, you need to deliver incredible experiences that your customers love consistently. In order to make sure every interaction lands, you need a top-notch omnichannel marketing solution that reliably automates tasks and delivers high-end campaign performance.

Below, we look at some of the top criteria to look for in an omnichannel marketing automation solution.

1. Robust omnichannel analytics that power your automation efforts

Omnichannel analytics systems automatically collect, unify, and organize all your customer data, regardless of the device, channel, or campaign with which the customer interacted. This means you get all relevant omnichannel marketing data in a single place so that you can create a 360° view of your customers.

This data will then power your omnichannel marketing campaigns, allowing you to automate customer segmentation, customer journey orchestration, and marketing personalization. It’ll also help you perfect your communication by optimizing channel selection, delivery timing, campaign messaging, and more. Ultimately, this data will lead to actionable, data-driven insights that produce meaningful results.

MoEngage’s analytical capabilities power high-quality data visualizations that enable you to get a comprehensive understanding of customer engagement at both the macro and micro levels. You can then use these insights to improve and automate your omnichannel experiences for greater impact.

2. Customer journey orchestration that creates seamless user pathways

Crafting smooth, seamless customer journeys that guide customers toward conversion events is critical for maximizing engagement. Customer journey orchestration is critical for designing experiences that save customers time and mitigate friction. Omnichannel marketing automation empowers brands to automatically optimize customer journeys to reduce friction and improve convenience, keeping customers satisfied and engaged.

Using MoEngage Flows, companies can quickly and effortlessly build onboarding, retention, and reactivation journeys without any coding experience. This allows brands to connect with customers via their preferred touchpoint throughout the customer journey and allows them to maximize engagement.

3. Predictive analytics that anticipates customer activity

Predictive analytics leverage omnichannel customer data to automatically anticipate a customer’s next action based on their historical buying behavior and the habits of similar customers. The CEP is then able to automatically select the right campaign to serve the customer to maximize engagement and increase conversion rates.

MoEngage Predictions uses our Sherpa AI engine to forecast customer actions before they happen. It comes equipped with pre-built prediction models that anticipate dormancy, uninstalls, and conversions, automatically sending customers the appropriate omnichannel marketing campaign based on their situation. Combined with RFM segmentation, MoEngage can identify ‘brand champions’, ‘price-sensitive shoppers’, and ‘high churn risk candidates’, and automatically send targeted campaigns based on the group they belong to. This enables brands to mitigate churn while retaining and activating customers.

Enabling Omnichannel Automation with MoEngage

Executing an omnichannel marketing strategy, especially at scale, is no easy feat. It requires unifying and marshaling omnichannel analytics data, segmenting customers based on their demographics and preferences, and personalizing campaigns so they speak uniquely to your customers. To maximize productivity and output, leading brands are automating as much of this process as possible.

MoEngage’s Cross-Channel Marketing Platform is specifically designed for omnichannel marketing, integrating all channels so they work in harmony to deliver a seamless customer experience. We help brands automate customer journey orchestration, campaign creation and deployment, and even optimization that ensures your campaigns continue to drive engagement.

Schedule a demo today to learn how we can help you automate your omnichannel marketing efforts, saving you time and resources while increasing your effectiveness.