Omnichannel
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In recent years, the omnichannel approach has become one of the priorities for any company considering data exploitation with the aim of increasing conversion rates. It is a serious statement of intent to efficiently learn about a user’s behaviour and to relate to them in a relevant way.
The starting point of an omnichannel strategy
An omnichannel approach does not come alone or without responsibilities. It has implications that make the whole enterprise operational, effective and cost-efficient.
The first step in an omnichannel strategy is to open all the channels of your ecosystem, both digital and physical, to the consumer. Display all your contact assets at the outset so that they can decide how to interact with you. It is their behaviour in these environments that enriches their profile, and we can use them to relate back to them.
For this purpose, it is a prerequisite to have a cross-cutting layer of Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), key to centrally integrate all declared user data, track user behaviour and thus infer and model user profiles.
This solution, sometimes not very tangible in marketing terms, is the cornerstone of any omnichannel strategy. We have been seeing strategic moves in the marketplace for some time now that indicate the importance of such tools. Already in 2017 we had a clear example of this trend when the German multinational SAP acquired Gigya for a staggering $ 350 million.
A lot of progress is being made in decentralised developments of this concept based on blockchain systems (a way of storing data in P2P mode in a secure way that is almost impossible to falsify), which are beginning to mark the future and to highlight the war that has been brewing for some time over the ownership and intermediation of personal data: if the data is yours, why should others get rich from it? With their AI developments, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple all have clear strategies to be the agent between brands and customers. Whoever has the data has the power.
If you are interested, here is a recommendation for a tool which ensures GDPR compliance: www.dru-id.com.
Identifying your users’ touchpoints is the first step in developing an omnichannel model
What do you need to consider about the omnichannel model?
So far the theory is perfect, the context is clear and the benefits of omnichannel are obvious. However, in this flow, there are many aspects that must be taken into account for the relationship to succeed: with great power comes great responsibility… or two responsibilities:
- The responsibility to tell the user what they want to hear through the right channel.
- The responsibility to tell them at the right time, that instant that separates conversion from failure.
In short, something as simple but, at the same time as complex, as getting the what and the when right.
Complex, because it requires content that fits each of the segments and variables, and because this content will be more relevant the closer and more local it is to the consumer. Not forgetting that you have to track where the consumer is in order to know when to tell them.
Content: the content that our users want to consume
Hell is full of lead scoring models (a scoring technique that allows you to evaluate how interesting leads are. It is known by its English name in texts otherwise written in Spanish in a world overrun by Anglicisms, much to the dismay of the authors of this Spanish post, who found that, once again, they were guilty of Anglicisms too 😉). Segmentations in databases built around behaviours that yield permutations of variables that end up in huge numbers of clusters. All right, theoretically they are brilliant, but they denote a clear lack of practical reality.
Let’s say you have to think backwards: tell me how many types of content you have and I will tell you how many segments you should have. With no content to display, the number of segments in your smart data platform (the platform where the normalised, structured, and related data of all your digital assets is stored, so that you can interrogate them and discover new relevant information that can add value to your business) should be easy to calculate: zero. At this point, local activation is very important. Having processes in place to enable content activation at the local level will make the difference. This process, which is transparent to the user, has technical implications at the permissions level to allow local actors to communicate their local content.
Moment: when to activate the content
At least as important as the channel, as it will be the trigger that ultimately generates the purchase (as long as the right content/offer is delivered, as we have seen). Technically based on indoor and outdoor geopositioning of the user at the most relevant moment of the customer journey: during the purchase.
Knowing certain events of their visit provides us with vital indicators for the activation (presence in the shop and/or sector in real time) and their qualification (frequency, recurrence, average visit time). Only through Wi-Fi triangulation detection is the four-metre margin of error threshold being reduced, with the improvements being achieved through beacons (positioning beacons emitting Bluetooth signals) and short-range Wi-Fi systems.
Therefore, if you have developed an omnichannel ecosystem to achieve a streamlined user experience both in the “inbound” contact and in the communications to trigger behaviours, but you have no content to communicate or it is not relevant or adapted to the context of the user… then you are only halfway there
Genetsis Group
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