Omnichannel Retail: Definition, Strategies & Tactics

Omnichannel retail is a customer-centric approach that unifies both physical and digital channels to create a seamless shopping experience. It goes beyond merely offering customers multiple ways to shop; instead, omnichannel retail connects those touchpoints—whether in-store, on a website, mobile app, or social media—so customers can switch between them effortlessly.

In practice, omnichannel retailing means your customers can begin their shopping journey in one place and finish it in another, without encountering any friction. For example, a shopper might research a product on your app, check reviews on social media, add it to their cart on your website, and then pick it up at a physical store—all while their data and preferences are synchronized across every channel.

The ultimate goal of omnichannel retail is to create a consistent, personalized experience that spans every customer touchpoint, no matter how they choose to interact with your brand.

Omnichannel retailing example

Omnichannel retail is all about creating a connected, seamless experience, no matter where your customer chooses to engage. For example, a customer might browse a product on your app, complete their purchase on your website, and then pick up their item in-store.

The key to achieving this lies in data. By leveraging in-store and online customer, sales and product data, an omnichannel retail marketing platform can create personalized shopping experiences, such as tailored product recommendations, content and promotions.

Looking for inspiration? Check out these omnichannel marketing examples.

Multichannel vs omnichannel retailing

Multichannel and omnichannel retail might sound similar, but they’re distinct strategies that require differing approaches and deliver contrasting results.

In a multichannel retail strategy, you offer your customers a number of different channels through which to engage with your brand, such as your website, email, and mobile apps. However, these channels typically operate independent of each other.

For example: If your customer adds something to their cart on your mobile app, and later visits your website, they’ll have to start their shop again. This is because while you have multiple channels for your customers to choose from, they work in isolation – often resulting in disconnected, fragmented experiences.

An omnichannel retail strategy interconnects your marketing channels to create a seamless, unified customer experience. In omnichannel retail, your customers can switch between in-store to mobile app effortlessly, and those channels retain the context of your customer’s shopping journey.

For example: Your customer adds something to their cart on your mobile app. They then receive an email prompting them to complete their purchase, and navigate to your website, where they find the items they previously selected, stored in their cart.

In omnichannel retail, your customer, sales and product data is synchronized and made available across all of your marketing channels, meaning you can deliver tailored experiences to each and every customer in real-time. This is why top brands are using omnichannel marketing. 

Building a successful omnichannel strategy requires more than just offering multiple touchpoints—it’s about creating a cohesive experience that drives engagement, loyalty, and sales. Below are the key elements that make an omnichannel strategy effective.

Choose the right channels

The first step in building an omnichannel strategy is evaluating the channels your audience engages with most frequently. Whether it’s social media, email, mobile apps, or physical stores, prioritize channels where your customers are most active. 

This ensures your efforts are aligned with customer behavior and preferences, making the experience more convenient for them. By adopting this approach and focusing your omnichannel marketing efforts on the right channels, you can tailor your messaging and interactions to match each customer’s unique journey.

Integrate data and technology

Technology is the backbone of any omnichannel strategy. By integrating customer data across all channels, you create a unified system that enables seamless communication between touchpoints. 

An omnichannel customer engagement platform is an essential part of this process, allowing businesses to track interactions, purchases, and behavior in real-time. This data provides the insights needed to personalize customer experiences and target them with relevant offers, ensuring a consistent journey across every channel.

For a deeper dive into the technical side of omnichannel strategies, read about the common omnichannel marketing challenges.

Personalization and customer insights

An omnichannel strategy thrives on personalization, and the best way to achieve that is by leveraging customer data from various touchpoints. By analyzing interactions, purchase history, and preferences, your marketing platform can create personalized recommendations and tailored content that speaks to individual customers.

For instance, if a customer browses a product on their mobile app but doesn’t complete the purchase, a personalized email with a relevant offer can nudge them to convert. The more customer insights you have, the more you can tailor your marketing to meet specific needs, creating a more engaging and relevant customer experience.

For more insights into how to get started with personalized omnichannel marketing, check out our guide on personalized omnichannel marketing.

Creating a successful omnichannel retail strategy involves more than just offering multiple touchpoints—it requires a deep understanding of your customers, seamless purchase options across all platforms, and an integrated connection between online and offline experiences. Here’s how to get started:

Research customer preferences

The foundation of an effective omnichannel strategy is understanding your customers’ preferences. This means analyzing where your customers spend their time, how they shop, and what platforms they use most frequently. Use data insights from your CRM, purchase history, and online behavior to map out key customer touchpoints. Tools such as surveys and customer journey mapping can help identify where customers are most engaged and how to tailor experiences across channels.

By gathering these insights, you can prioritize the platforms that matter most to your audience, ensuring your marketing efforts are aligned with their behavior. As outlined in the Revised Omnichannel Guide, understanding customer preferences allows brands to build strategies that resonate and engage across their customers’ preferred touchpoints.

Make every touchpoint shoppable

To deliver a seamless omnichannel experience, every touchpoint must be shoppable. Whether customers are browsing on your mobile app, scrolling through social media, or visiting your physical store, they should be able to make purchases easily. This means optimizing your website and app for easy navigation, integrating secure payment gateways, and ensuring that checkout processes are smooth.

In addition, providing options like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) or reserve online, try in-store can enhance the convenience factor. As the Omnichannel Guide emphasizes, making every touchpoint transactional strengthens your omnichannel strategy by reducing friction and boosting conversion rates.

Bridge online and offline experiences

A key element of omnichannel retail is integrating the digital and physical shopping experiences. Customers no longer see a distinction between online and in-store shopping – they expect a consistent, interconnected experience. By unifying your data across channels, you can ensure that a customer’s journey remains seamless regardless of where it starts or ends.

For example: A customer might browse products online, receive personalized recommendations via email, and visit your store to complete the purchase. With synchronized data and centralized systems, their shopping cart, purchase history, and preferences are available across all channels, creating a connected and frictionless journey.

According to the Revised Omnichannel Guide, successful omnichannel retailers focus on connecting these experiences to build long-term customer loyalty. Integrating loyalty programs, providing personalized offers in-store based on online behavior, and offering digital tools in-store (such as QR codes or apps) further enhance this connection.

Invest in implementing an omnichannel strategy and your retail business will reap the rewards. Here are several key advantages that give retail businesses with an omnichannel focus a distinct advantage over their competitors:

1. Improved inventory management: By integrating and synchronizing your inventory across in-store and digital locations, you gain a clearer understanding of your stock levels across channels. This also benefits your customers – an online customer who wants to try a new dress on before they buy can check brick and mortar locations near them and find out where it’s in stock.
2. Streamlined returns: After integrating your online and in-store stock pools, the returns process becomes simpler too. Omnichannel inventory management allows customers who buy items in-store to return them online, and online purchases can be returned at physical locations.
3. Personalized shopping experiences: Omnichannel retail marketing helps you meet your customers’ expectations. With access to unified data and a single view of your customers, you can create dynamic segments and power automated, personalized marketing experiences that grab attention, drive action, and build loyalty.
4. Seamless customer experience: With your data and segments in hand, you’ll truly know your customers. You’ll also know how they’re engaging across all of your channels, in-store or online, allowing you to tailor experiences on each touchpoint in real-time to their specific wants, needs and interests.
5. Increased sales and retention: 54% of marketers who implement omnichannel marketing see increased brand engagement. With omnichanenl marketing, you’ll reach more customers, with content that gives them a reason to keep coming back. More engagement, higher Customer Lifetime Value, sustainable, profitable growth.

Implementing an effective omnichannel strategy can unlock significant growth for retail businesses, but it’s not without its challenges. Here are some common hurdles and how to address them:

Technology integration

Successfully integrating new technology into existing systems can be a complex endeavour. As a result, retailers often struggle to connect different platforms, from point-of-sale systems to online stores and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. By using a unified customer engagement platform like Emarsys, you can simplify this process, enabling seamless integration and synchronization of data across all channels.

Data management and privacy concerns

With omnichannel marketing, you’ll be collecting and integrating data from multiple touchpoints. This can lead to concerns about data privacy and security.

Managing and unifying this data while complying with regulations like GDPR is crucial to building customer trust, so make sure you’re using secure, consent-based data collection methods and investing in robust data management platforms to ensure compliance and data integrity.

Inventory synchronization

Managing inventory across both digital and physical channels can be a tall task, especially when aiming to provide real-time stock updates for customers. A centralized inventory management system can help synchronize stock levels across all sales channels, enabling features like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) without overselling or delays.

Staff training and adoption

Any marketing tool is only as strong as the team that uses it. For an omnichannel strategy to succeed, your employees need to understand what they do, how to use them, and why they need to be built into their processes.

As a result, training staff to utilize integrated systems and maintain consistent customer service standards across all channels is essential. This includes educating them on using customer data effectively to personalize in-store and online interactions.