The pace of technological change is moving along an exponential curve. For marketers, this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s becoming easier with each passing year for us to deliver on the original promise of marketing: the right message to the right person at the right time.
On the other, we’re lost in an ocean of complexity — frankensteinian tech stacks, siloed data, muddled reporting, a growing list of channels, and competing views on what fundamental marketing terms mean.
Multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing are great examples of terms whose definitions are becoming lost in the noise. Understanding the difference between the two will help you think about marketing in an entirely different way and, in doing so, help you deliver on the original promise of marketing.
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What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a cross-channel content strategy used to improve the customer experience and drive better relationships across all possible channels and touchpoints. This includes traditional and digital channels, point-of-sale, and physical and online experiences.
Peel back the layers and at the core of omnichannel marketing you’ll find seamlessly integrated customer, product and sales data.
This seamless integration allows for the creation of holistic customer profiles. This gives marketers both better visibility as to how customers are engaging as they move from one channel to the next AND allows marketers to create unified (or integrated) shopping experiences.
Each channel works together to create a unified experience – customers can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store, and the experience will be seamless and consistent.
Examples of omnichannel marketing include:
- Sending personalized SMS notifications about an ongoing sale while a customer is shopping in-store, encouraging them to take advantage of exclusive offers at that location.
- Delivering retargeting ads to a customer for items they added to their cart via the mobile app but didn’t purchase, ensuring the message aligns across social media and other digital platforms.
- Triggering cart abandonment emails after a customer browses a website, adds a product to their online shopping cart, but leaves without completing the purchase. The same product is highlighted in a follow-up email, offering a personalized incentive to complete the transaction.
- Providing seamless in-store pick-up notifications after a customer places an online order, ensuring they receive updates via both email and app notifications for real-time updates and pick-up instructions.
- Offering loyalty rewards through an integrated program that works across all channels, where customers can check their points via the website, mobile app, or in-store and use them for future purchases anywhere they shop.
What is Multichannel marketing?
Multichannel marketing involves the creation and distribution of marketing content across a business’ channels with the aim of reaching their audience, driving engagement, and increasing sales. These channels typically aren’t integrated, however, which can lead to disconnected, inconsistent and clunky experiences for the customer.
Examples of multichannel marketing include:
- Sending batch-and-blast promotional emails to a customer list, offering discounts or new arrivals without personalizing content based on previous purchases or behavior.
- Running paid ads on Facebook or Instagram to drive traffic to the business’s website, but not aligning these ads with other touchpoints like email campaigns or in-store promotions.
- Using flyers or printed coupons delivered to customers’ physical mailboxes to encourage in-store purchases, but without linking these promotions to digital channels like the online store or email.
- Hosting product demo webinars on platforms like TikTok or Instagram Live to introduce new products to a wide audience, but lacking a coordinated follow-up strategy through other channels like email or SMS.
- Offering customer service via multiple channels such as phone, email, live chat, and social media, but without integrating customer inquiries or feedback across platforms for a seamless service experience.
Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel and multichannel marketing are worlds apart, even though both focus on the use of multiple channels to reach consumers and prospects.
The lines are so blurred here, and the debate so frequent, that we want to help draw a distinction between the two.
- Multichannel marketing refers to using more than one channel to execute campaigns. This is often done manually on a channel-by-channel basis. Content with little to no differentiation or personalization is published in every available channel with rudimental segmentation on a ‘quantity over quality’ basis.
- Omnichannel marketing is 100% customer-centric. It uses a data-led, AI-driven approach to understand complex data points such as customer behavior, preferred channels and lifecycle stage (to name a few) to determine, you guessed it, which messages to send to which customers through which channels at what times. The result is a seamless, deeply personalized customer experience that has a much higher probability of driving sales.
5 Key Differences Between Multichannel and Omnichannel Marketing
Multi- and omnichannel are unique approaches to marketing, with a number of key differences. Before you settle on which is right for you, it’s important to understand what they are. Let’s take a look at the top five differences between omnichannel and multichannel marketing:
1. Channel vs. customer
- Multichannel marketing: Focuses on utilizing multiple channels to reach customers, prioritizing the distribution of messages across various platforms.
- Omnichannel marketing: Prioritizes understanding and serving the customer, ensuring a seamless experience across all channels by integrating them to provide a cohesive journey tailored to individual preferences and behaviors.
2. Reach vs. consistency
- Multichannel marketing: Strives for reach across different channels but may lack engagement and consistency in messaging as interactions are often siloed.
- Omnichannel marketing: Emphasizes reach, consistency and engagement by delivering personalized and relevant content across all channels, fostering deeper engagement with customers.
3. Effort vs. effortless
- Multichannel marketing: Requires effort to manage and coordinate separate, disconnected campaigns across multiple channels, potentially leading to disjointed customer experiences and higher operational complexity.
- Omnichannel marketing: Aims for an effortless customer experience by seamlessly integrating channels, allowing for automated processes and unified customer data to deliver personalized interactions without added friction or inconvenience.
4. Reactive vs. proactive
- Multichannel marketing: Often focuses on reactive, manual interactions with customers, such as sending batch-and-blast email campaigns, without considering the broader customer journey.
- Omnichannel marketing: Takes a proactive approach, leveraging data and automation to anticipate customer needs and target them with the right content, on the right channels, at the right time. This enables personalized, timely engagement throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
5. Transactional vs. relational:
- Multichannel Marketing: Tends to focus on transactional interactions aimed at driving immediate sales or conversions, with less emphasis on building long-term relationships.
- Omnichannel Marketing: Places a greater emphasis on building and nurturing long-term relationships with customers by delivering consistent, personalized experiences across all touchpoints, leading to increased loyalty and lifetime value.
Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing
The perception across the industry is generally that “omnichannel” is that north star. While having and enabling multiple channels certainly isn’t bad, seamless unification and integration and automated execution should be the goal.
A successful omnichannel marketing strategy can help your organization realize the following benefits:
1. Boost customer loyalty
54% of customer-obsessed companies experience better customer loyalty and improved retention from omnichannel efforts across the customer lifecycle. This is because customers purchase from the brands they value and trust.
Omnichannel marketing efforts provide a consistent experience across all platforms and offer a personalized experience for each audience member. This approach improves the overall customer experience and leads to increased customer loyalty and retention.
2. Improve brand recall
Omnichannel marketing’s emphasis on cross-channel consistency ensures your customers will see your brand in the same way across platforms and devices.
This consistency helps strengthen brand recall and keeps your products front of mind for customers. As a result, a strong sense of brand recall will increase the likelihood of conversion and repeat purchase.
3. Realize increases in revenue
With more customers, comes more business and, of course, more revenue. Omnichannel marketing helps fuel this process.
Omnichannel strategies improve customer loyalty, strengthen brand recall, and promote repeat purchases. These efforts help brands retain customers and attract new customers through content personalization and word-of-mouth marketing.
The statistics are there to back this up. In our 2024 Customer Loyalty Index report, we found that 62% of customer-obsessed companies see better profit margins, compared to companies that don’t leverage a customer-focused, omnichannel approach.
Want an omnichannel marketing strategy that drives growth and revenue? Learn the 6 Pillars Powering Cross-Channel Personalization.
Transitioning from Multichannel to Omnichannel Marketing
Looking to make the switch from traditional multichannel marketing to an omnichannel approach? Here are the steps you need to take:
1. Unify your data and channels to build a 360° view of the customer
Creating an omnichannel loyalty and retention strategy starts with unifying your customer data across all channels. By gaining a 360° view of your customers, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of their behaviors, preferences and real-time interactions, giving you a strong foundation for rich personalization.
To make this happen, you need to integrate your data from online, in-store, mobile, email, social media, and any other touchpoints. The easiest way to do this is with a customer engagement platform like Emarsys.
By having a single, comprehensive view of each customer, you can deliver personalized experiences that resonate across every channel. This also enables better decision-making and more accurate customer insights. The goal here is to remove data silos and create a connected ecosystem where all customer data is accessible and actionable.
Action step:
- Invest in customer engagement technology that supports real-time data integration and unification, allowing you to connect your key customer touchpoints.
2. Map the customer journey across all touchpoints
Once your data is unified, the next step is to map the customer journey across all touchpoints. This allows you to identify where customers engage with your brand and what their experience looks like at each stage of the buying process. Understanding the customer journey from the first touchpoint to post-purchase interactions is essential for delivering seamless, personalized experiences.
By mapping this journey, you can identify pain points, optimize channel-specific interactions, and ensure that your messaging is consistent across the entire journey. This map acts as a guide for creating smoother transitions between channels, reducing friction for the customer.
Action step: Create a visual map of the customer journey, marking key interactions and potential friction points. Use this to refine your omnichannel strategy and optimize each stage of the customer experience.
3. Create customer segments to power personalization
Customer segmentation is key to delivering relevant, personalized messages and offers. By leveraging the unified data you’ve collected, you can use your customer engagement platform to create highly detailed customer segments based on behavior, preferences, past purchases, and engagement history.
These segments allow you to tailor your loyalty and marketing efforts to each group, providing personalized offers that resonate with each customer’s unique needs.
For example: Frequent buyers might receive exclusive discounts, while lapsed customers might receive incentives to re-engage. Delivering personalization at this level makes customers feel like they’re engaging with your brand on a 1:1 basis, increasing customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty.
Action step: Use customer data to build dynamic customer segments that update in real-time based on their behaviors and actions. This will help power more targeted, personalized and powerful marketing and loyalty initiatives.
4. Automate customer journeys to scale always-on loyalty
If you want your omnichanenl marketing strategy to run smoothly at scale, automation is critical. By automating customer journeys, you’ll be able to deliver timely, relevant experiences based on each customer’s actions.
For example: You can automatically send a thank-you email after a purchase, or trigger personalized offers based on specific behaviors like cart abandonment or repeat purchases.
Automation ensures that your loyalty program can run 24/7, without requiring constant manual input. By setting up workflows that automatically adjust based on customer actions, you create a continuous cycle of engagement that nurtures long-term loyalty.
Action step: Use a marketing automation platform to create always-on customer journeys. Automate key touchpoints like post-purchase messages, reward reminders, and re-engagement campaigns to keep customers engaged at every stage.
When to Use Multichannel or Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel and multichannel marketing both have distinct use cases and advantages, and understanding when to deploy each of them is key to maximizing your marketing efforts and delivering on business outcomes. Let’s take a look at when you might choose one over the other:
Situations for multichannel marketing
- Limited resources: Team tight on budget, personnel or technology? Multichannel can be a more manageable solution, as it allows you to establish a presence on various platforms without the need for extensive integration and data synchronization.
- Initial market penetration: Just starting out in a new market, or launching a new product? A multichannel approach can help you quickly establish visibility across key marketing channels.
- Campaign-specific goals: Looking to run a short-term campaign, or a promotion with specific, time-limited goals? Multichannel can work well here. For example, a quick holiday sales campaign might not require the level of channel and data integration offered by omnichannel marketing.
- Content-driven engagement: Is your primary focus on distributing existing content like blog posts and infographics with the goal of growing reach and traffic, as opposed to creating net-new, personalized engagements? Multichannel could work well.
Situations for omnichannel marketing
- Customer-obsessed brands: Does your brand focus heavily on customer experience, engagement and satisfaction? Omnichannel marketing is essential. Omnichannel marketing ensures that every engagement is tailored to each customer’s unique preferences.
- Enhancing the customer journey: Is improving the end-to-end customer journey a priority for you? If so, look no further than omnichannel marketing. By integrating your data and channels, omnichannel marketing helps you deliver consistent, cohesive experiences that guide customers from discovery and purchase to retention and loyalty.
- Data-driven personalization: Keen to leverage your data and take your customer engagement to the next level? Omnichannel marketing platforms can help you integrate your customer, sales and product data, giving you the single customer view you need to provide targeted, 1:1 personalized marketing.
- Connecting in-store and online experiences: Operate both bricks and mortar and online storefronts? Omnichannel marketing can connect these two channels into a seamless journey, allowing in-store customers to continue their experience online, and vice-versa.
Transitioning from Multichannel to Omnichannel Marketing
1. Unify your data and channels to build a 360° view of the customer
Creating an omnichannel loyalty and retention strategy starts with unifying your customer data across all channels. By gaining a 360° view of your customers, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of their behaviors, preferences and real-time interactions, giving you a strong foundation for rich personalization.
To make this happen, you need to integrate your data from online, in-store, mobile, email, social media, and any other touchpoints. The easiest way to do this is with a customer engagement platform like Emarsys.
By having a single, comprehensive view of each customer, you can deliver personalized experiences that resonate across every channel. This also enables better decision-making and more accurate customer insights. The goal here is to remove data silos and create a connected ecosystem where all customer data is accessible and actionable.
Action step: Invest in customer engagement technology that supports real-time data integration and unification, allowing you to connect your key customer touchpoints.
2. Map the customer journey across all touchpoints
Once your data is unified, the next step is to map the customer journey across all touchpoints. This allows you to identify where customers engage with your brand and what their experience looks like at each stage of the buying process. Understanding the customer journey from the first touchpoint to post-purchase interactions is essential for delivering seamless, personalized experiences.
By mapping this journey, you can identify pain points, optimize channel-specific interactions, and ensure that your messaging is consistent across the entire journey. This map acts as a guide for creating smoother transitions between channels, reducing friction for the customer.
Action step: Create a visual map of the customer journey, marking key interactions and potential friction points. Use this to refine your omnichannel strategy and optimize each stage of the customer experience.
3. Create customer segments to power personalization
Customer segmentation is key to delivering relevant, personalized messages and offers. By leveraging the unified data you’ve collected, you can use your customer engagement platform to create highly detailed customer segments based on behavior, preferences, past purchases, and engagement history.
These segments allow you to tailor your loyalty and marketing efforts to each group, providing personalized offers that resonate with each customer’s unique needs.
For example: Frequent buyers might receive exclusive discounts, while lapsed customers might receive incentives to re-engage. Delivering personalization at this level makes customers feel like they’re engaging with your brand on a 1:1 basis, increasing customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty.
Action step: Use customer data to build dynamic customer segments that update in real-time based on their behaviors and actions. This will help power more targeted, personalized and powerful marketing and loyalty initiatives.
4. Automate customer journeys to scale always-on loyalty
If you want your omnichanenl marketing strategy to run smoothly at scale, automation is critical. By automating customer journeys, you’ll be able to deliver timely, relevant experiences based on each customer’s actions.
For example: You can automatically send a thank-you email after a purchase, or trigger personalized offers based on specific behaviors like cart abandonment or repeat purchases.
Automation ensures that your loyalty program can run 24/7, without requiring constant manual input. By setting up workflows that automatically adjust based on customer actions, you create a continuous cycle of engagement that nurtures long-term loyalty.
Action step: Use a marketing automation platform to create always-on customer journeys. Automate key touchpoints like post-purchase messages, reward reminders, and re-engagement campaigns to keep customers engaged at every stage.
When to Use Multichannel or Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel and multichannel marketing both have distinct use cases and advantages, and understanding when to deploy each of them is key to maximizing your marketing efforts and delivering on business outcomes. Let’s take a look at when you might choose one over the other:
Situations for multichannel marketing
- Limited resources: Team tight on budget, personnel or technology? Multichannel can be a more manageable solution, as it allows you to establish a presence on various platforms without the need for extensive integration and data synchronization.
- Initial market penetration: Just starting out in a new market, or launching a new product? A multichannel approach can help you quickly establish visibility across key marketing channels.
- Campaign-specific goals: Looking to run a short-term campaign, or a promotion with specific, time-limited goals? Multichannel can work well here. For example, a quick holiday sales campaign might not require the level of channel and data integration offered by omnichannel marketing.
- Content-driven engagement: Is your primary focus on distributing existing content like blog posts and infographics with the goal of growing reach and traffic, as opposed to creating net-new, personalized engagements? Multichannel could work well.
Situations for omnichannel marketing
- Customer-obsessed brands: Does your brand focus heavily on customer experience, engagement and satisfaction? Omnichannel marketing is essential. Omnichannel marketing ensures that every engagement is tailored to each customer’s unique preferences.
- Enhancing the customer journey: Is improving the end-to-end customer journey a priority for you? If so, look no further than omnichannel marketing. By integrating your data and channels, omnichannel marketing helps you deliver consistent, cohesive experiences that guide customers from discovery and purchase to retention and loyalty.
- Data-driven personalization: Keen to leverage your data and take your customer engagement to the next level? Omnichannel marketing platforms can help you integrate your customer, sales and product data, giving you the single customer view you need to provide targeted, 1:1 personalized marketing.
- Connecting in-store and online experiences: Operate both bricks and mortar and online storefronts? Omnichannel marketing can connect these two channels into a seamless journey, allowing in-store customers to continue their experience online, and vice-versa.
Omnichannel and Multichannel Examples
Seeking inspiration for your brand’s omnichannel strategy? Discover how these four leading brands orchestrate consistent, personalized messaging across their key marketing channels.
1. Pizza Hut drives 34% engagement growth with personalized omnichannel journeys
- The goal: Pizza Hut wanted to improve customer retention and loyalty by creating personalized customer journeys across multiple channels, including SMS, email, and mobile push notifications.
- How Emarsys helped: Emarsys enabled Pizza Hut to leverage real-time behavioral data and automate personalized communications based on customer interactions. This helped deliver more targeted messaging at the right time, significantly improving customer engagement.
- Results: Pizza Hut achieved a 15% SMS conversion rate and a 34% increase in engagement from their loyalty campaigns.
2. Total Tools boosts loyalty sign-ups by 200% with unified customer data
- Their goal: Total Tools aimed to unify customer data across channels and personalize marketing efforts to improve engagement and increase loyalty sign-ups.
- How Emarsys helped: Emarsys helped Total Tools centralize their customer data and deploy targeted marketing campaigns across email, SMS, and social media, ensuring consistent and personalized communication – no matter the channel.
- Results: Total Tools saw a 200% increase in loyalty program sign-ups and a impressive 15x return on investment for their CRM ads.
3. Nike increases revenue by 110% with AI-powered omnichannel automation
- Their goal: Nike wanted to enhance customer engagement by providing personalized experiences through omnichannel touchpoints, including email, web, and in-store interactions.
- How Emarsys helped: Emarsys used AI-powered segmentation to create automated customer journeys based on lifecycle stages and preferences, driving more relevant, personalized interactions.
- Results: Nike achieved a 110% increase in revenue from automation and a 32.5% boost in website visits
4. City Beach Achieves 105% Email Revenue Growth with Seamless Omnichannel Experience
- Their goal: City Beach sought to unify their customer data to deliver consistent, personalized omnichannel experiences across email, SMS, in-store, and social channels.
- How Emarsys helped: Emarsys helped City Beach integrate customer data from multiple touchpoints, automate personalized campaigns, and implement AI to predict customer behavior, improving retention and engagement.
- Results: City Beach saw a 105% increase in email revenue and a 38% growth in active customers.
See first-hand how the Emarsys Omnichannel Customer Engagement Platform helps marketers deliver personalized, 1:1 engagement across channels.