Transform CX & Marketing ROI with These 3 Omni-Channel Integration Steps

Even as marketing plays a greater strategic role, from driving revenue growth and digital transformation to optimizing journeys and brand reputation, it’s getting harder for marketers to deliver value, according to a survey of 527 industry professionals. The survey, conducted by Quad in collaboration with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, is titled “Eliminating Complexity for a Frictionless Marketing Experience.”

From my perspective, one of the biggest takeaways from the research is that marketers are challenged by the increasing complexity of the marketing ecosystem. MediaPost’s coverage of the survey states that 53% say “their team is overwhelmed by the sheer number of channels they need to manage, 20% strongly so. And 59% agree that the need to have specialists for each marketing channel is creating headaches for the team.”

It’s clear that many brands and agencies are going all in to coordinate and orchestrate direct mail, email, social, and programmatic campaigns, and as the study pointed out, they may have multiple specialists overseeing these channels. But the issue is that most brands don’t truly integrate their channels –  they often operate them in silos -- and that’s one reason why they fail to deliver a fully seamless, omni-channel experience to prospects and customers. This, in turn, hinders CX, conversions, and marketing ROI.

Three Steps to Success with Omni-Channel Integration

So what’s the solution? Integration needs to be baked into your customer acquisition and prospecting campaigns from day one, starting with your data. Here are three steps to success that we use with our clients:

1.   Share Channel Signals: OMI has its own campaign platform network, which shares signals across channels – from email and social to programmatic and even digital direct mail -- to inform strategies and trigger messaging. Succeeding at this integrated approach with a new business/customer acquisition campaign (our specialty at OMI) starts with high-quality business contact data and a strategic understanding of how to best structure it and use it.

2.    Use Data That’s Purpose-Built for Omni-Channel Integration: OMI’s business contact data is purpose-built to support omni-channel integration, with multiple channel points built around a robust and unified B2B2C or “Universal Person” record that spans prospects’ B2B and B2C attributes.

Our Universal Person Marketing (UPM) file, which we believe is the largest of its kind with 140 million business contact records, offers residential/consumer linkage for 80 million of those records. It links B2B attributes, such as email, firmographics and job title, to B2C attributes, such as the prospect's LinkedIn profile, demographics and residential address.

This data powers client campaigns and lets us integrate the way we target and engage prospects, giving marketers access to the “universal person” by reaching them on their preferred personal (B2C) and professional (B2B) channels.

3.    Add ROI Lift and Measurability: Taking it a step further, we apply multi-channel, intent-signaled data and specialized campaign services to add measurability, ROI lift and lower costs to integrated prospect campaigns across channels such as programmatic, social, and direct mail.

Our intent signaling is at the same technical level as Bombora but with a much deeper reach into the B2B market. That B2B edge – combined with digital, multi-channel intent signals that uncover warm leads who are in-market for the types of products and services you have to offer – provides a distinct advantage. It allows you to reach business prospects when their interest levels are high and the opportunity for conversion is peaking.

Don’t let ineffective omni-channel integration get in the way of CX and marketing ROI. Connect with us to find out how we can fully integrate your campaigns to enable a seamless omni-channel experience.