Fact: social media is a major part of the lives of today’s consumers. No matter what type of business you run or who your target market is, chances are you have customers using various social apps and platforms.

Social networks are so embedded in our daily lives that people are increasingly using apps like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to discover — and ultimately purchase — products. This is particularly true among younger consumers. Industry data shows that 55% of social media users ages 18 to 24 have purchased something through a social channel. 

Social media is clearly a solid vehicle for sales, and if you’re active on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, then you’re likely attracting customers and sales through these channels.

The question is, how many of your sales are actually coming from social media?

If you find yourself shrugging your shoulders to that question, keep reading. In this post, we’ll shed light on the key steps and best practices you must take to effectively track and measure sales you’ve generated via social media. 

By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of the different ways to track sales on social, and you’ll walk away with tips and tools to do it right. 

Let’s dive in.

Quick Links:

• • • Why should you implement sales tracking on social media?
    • 5 tips for tracking sales on social media
    • Start with a plan
    • Track social media sales using a special promo code
    • Use special links and UTMs
    • Ask your customers
    • Use sales tracking tools
    • Bringing it all together
    • Marsello: All your social media marketing in one place
      
      
      

Why should you implement sales tracking on social media?

As the saying goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Actively implementing sales tracking on social media enables you to improve in the following ways.

You can allocate resources more effectively

Running social media accounts can take a significant amount of resources. Even if you aren’t actively spending money on ads, you and your team likely devote quite a bit of time and energy planning your posts, creating content, and publishing said content on social platforms. 

Tracking your sales enables you to hone in on activities that are driving a positive ROI, so you can focus on doing more of what works. 

That way, you can ensure you’re spending more time (and money) on sales-generating activities.

It helps you refine your strategy

In addition to enabling you budget resources more effectively, tracking your sales on social media helps improve your overall marketing strategy. 

Let’s say you post a mix of Reels, Stories, and static photos on Instagram and notice that certain types of posts are better than others at generating sales. You can use that insight to create more content that resonates with your audience. 

Measuring your social media sales can also tell you which channels are effective at generating revenue. If you find that you’re getting better results on Instagram versus TikTok, for example, then you can start prioritizing Instagram in your sales campaigns.

You’ll grow your social media presence

All of the above benefits lead to a stronger social media presence overall. When you’re able to focus your efforts on the platforms and tactics that matter, you’ll naturally connect better with your audience and gain more fans and followers.

5 tips for tracking sales on social media

Now that we’ve covered the why behind social media sales tracking, let’s look at how you can go about it. Here are a handful of tips to ensure your sales tracking efforts are successful.

1. Start with a plan

It can be tempting to just start posting straight away and seeing if any sales come through, but a haphazard approach to social media tracking could lead to missed opportunities, inaccurate data, and wasted time. 

If you want to get the most out of your efforts, you need to lay the groundwork and plan accordingly. 

Here are some of the details you need to iron out before launching your social media campaigns. 

Time period. Map out the dates and times you’ll be running your campaign. This will make it easier to attribute sales that come through via social media. 

Products and assets involved in the sale. What items will you be promoting? Do you have photos and videos of those products? Make sure you have the necessary assets ready beforehand so you can launch you campaign without a hitch. 

Type of activities. Identify the specific activities or campaigns you’ll be running. Will you be working with influencers? Are you running an exclusive sale? Is it a “new arrival” type of campaign? The right method for tracking your sales will depend on the type of initiative that you’re running. 

Social networks involved. Get clear on the social network (or networks) that you’ll be using. If you’re leveraging multiple platforms, you’ll need to tailor your efforts accordingly. 

Resources spent. It also helps to track the time and money you’ve spent on your campaigns. Doing so will enable you to measure your social media ROI and determine whether or not the campaign is worth the effort and resources spent.

2.Track social media sales using a special promo code

A good way to measure social media sales is to use a dedicated promo code. This tactic is best used when you’re running a sale or partnering with an influencer to promote your products. 

To implement this tactic, come up with a promo code that’s unique to a particular campaign or influencer and make sure the code isn’t used on other channels. These codes should be fairly easy to generate and track if you have the right ecommerce platform or marketing solution. 

Once you launch your campaign, start looking out for transactions that contain the promo codes you created and use that data to track your sales. 

We can see this in action in Lakanto Monkfruit Sweetener, a company that makes sugar-free sweets. Lakanto teams up with influencers like Nicole Cogan (@nobread on Instagram) to promote its products. 

To attribute sales generated through this partnership, a specific promo code (i.e., “NOBREAD”) is used, and Nicole’s followers will get a discount when they enter the code at checkout. Meanwhile, Lakanto can track sales that resulted from the campaign by taking note of how many people entered the promo code on its website.

Promo codes are simple and easy to use (both for customers and the merchant). Just bear in mind that these codes also have some shortcomings. 

For starters, promo codes may not always paint an accurate picture of sales. 

If someone sees your product on social media but doesn’t use the code at checkout, then your system won’t be able to properly attribute that transaction. 

In addition, if one of your brand partners decides to share their promo code outside of social media (e.g., their blog or during an in-person interaction) then this may distort the data around social media attribution. 

Also, you can only use promo codes as a tracking tool if you’re running a sales or promotion. Customers typically expect discounts when entering a code at checkout, so if you aren’t running a sale, then you can’t really use promo codes as a tracking tool.

3.Use special links and UTMs

If you’re using Google Analytics to measure your web traffic, then UTMs (Urchin Traffic Monitor) can help you see which sources or campaigns are driving traffic to your site. 

UTMs make use of parameters like website source, medium, and campaign to pinpoint where your visitors are coming from. These UTMs come in the form of special tracking codes that you attach at the end of a URL.

They look something like this:

https://www.example.com?utm_source=social-media&utm_medium=instagram&utm_campaign=holiday-products

In the example above, the source of traffic is social media, the medium is Instagram, and the campaign is holiday products. 

When you log into Google Analytics, you’ll be able to drill down on how many visitors are attributed to these parameters. 

You can generate a UTM by heading to Google’s Campaign URL Builder. Just fill out the required fields and the tool will generate the link for you. You can then use that special URL in your corresponding campaigns and then start tracking.

If you aren’t using Google Analytics, you can opt for personalized social links instead. 

Marsello enables you to create a custom “link in bio” page that you can include in your social media profiles. You can then track the number of people who clicked on the link to determine how many followers visited your site.

Links and UTMs allow you to measure page visits without the use of a promo code, so they can be helpful tracking tools when you’re not running a promotion. 

However, one limitation of UTMs and links is they only track page visits, not sales or conversions. They can tell you how many people landed on a page and where they came from, but they won’t show you how many users completed a purchase — unless you’re using a tool like Marsello to track the entire buying journey.

4. Ask your customers

You can glean social media sales intel simply by asking your customers. At the checkout page, add a form field asking shoppers where they heard about you, and then have them select from a range of options. 

From there, tally up the number of people who selected social media (or a specific social network — i.e., Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.) and use that information to track your sales.

This tactic is easy to implement, but it also has some downsides. For one thing, having an extra form field on the checkout page adds friction to the buying experience and may turn off some customers. 

Additionally, some shoppers may opt to skip the question, so won’t be able to capture all the data you need.

5. Use sales tracking tools

While you can certainly track sales manually — i.e., by counting promo codes or tallying survey results by hand — these processes are cumbersome and can lead to human error and inaccurate data. 

You’re far better off measuring social media sales with tools that can automate the process. Marsello, for example, streamlines social media sales tracking by connecting your POS and ecommerce sales data with your social media accounts. 

From there, Marsello attributes a percentage of your revenue to a social media post containing a tagged product, UTM, or promo code.

Here’s how it works:

• Connect your social media accounts to your POS or ecommerce platform.
• Create posts across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok then tag your products.
• Use Marsello track and measure sales for a given time period.

Bringing it all together

You and your team likely spend a great deal of time and energy on social media, so you must ensure your efforts are put to good use. The best way to do that is to actively track your social media sales, so you can refine your efforts accordingly. 

Need help doing just that? Marsello Social provides you with tools to easily publish social media content and track sales.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend is coming up fast (just where did 2022 go?) It’s high time for brands to begin planning for this massive, revenue-generating shopping event.

179.8 million unique shoppers shopped in-store and online during the BFCM holiday weekend in 2021, despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With 2022 seeing record rates of inflation and more cautious consumer spending, brands will need to pull out all the stops to wow customers this holiday season.

Although still associated with shoppers streaming into store locations, BFCM weekend is becoming increasingly digital and mobile-first. According to Nosto, mobile outperformed desktop at 69% versus 31% when it came to product discovery and browsing, where social media emerges as a key channel. In fact, 54% of Gen Z shoppers and 58% of Millennials say that social platforms are better than online search for finding products and brands.

In sum, a robust social media strategy is now essential for a profitable BFCM weekend.

We’ve put together a list of the top social media planning practices your brand should follow to attract and retain customers this holiday season — and how Marsello’s brand-new social media toolkit can help.

Quick Links:

• • • Use data to inform your BFCM initiatives and planning
    • Iron out the BFCM promotions you’ll be running
    • Create compelling images
    • Use a calendar to track and schedule your BFCM content
    • Keep your marketing collateral organized
    • Keep your BFCM initiatives consistent across all platforms
    • Leverage built-in social selling features
    • Final words
    • Marsello: All your BCFM marketing in one place
      
      
      

1. Use data to inform your BFCM initiatives and planning

Not sure where to begin with your social media planning? A good place to start is to look into what strategies worked for your brand last year — and what didn’t. 

Social media metrics such as engagement, impressions, click-through rate, website traffic, and conversion rate will help you to gauge the performance of previous initiatives and where you can build on this success. Likewise, learning from past mistakes, such as posting at the wrong time of day for your audience, is one of the best ways to set yourself up for a profitable BFCM period.

Using Marsello, look back on what kinds of posts generated the most sales over past campaigns.

In addition to using your own data, don’t ignore the power of industry trends. Knowing what’s hot with social media users is a great way to stay innovative and serve up the content consumers want to see. 

For example, short-form video is gaining traction across all social platforms in 2022, with 26% of social media marketers investing more in short-form video than any other content format. If your target customer belongs to the Gen Z demographic, this should definitely be in your BFCM toolkit.

2. Iron out the BFCM promotions you’ll be running

Running seasonal promotions is an essential part of BFCM, and your followers will expect you offer some compelling deals and discounts throughout the weekend. To maximize engagement with your social content, make sure you’ve planned out all the core details of your promotions, such as:

The type of content. Are you using a single image, carousel, or video to publicize your promotion?

The type of promotion. The size of the discount/offer, what products are included/excluded, etc.

Length/timing of the promotion. How long the promotion is valid and whether you might extend it to increase conversions

However, be careful not to make your social media feeds too promotion-heavy. Constantly pushing discounts over BFCM weekend can become boring and repetitive for your followers. Consider mixing up your feed with other types of content and putting aside some time to plan out your content streams. This includes promotional offers, gift inspo, and user-generated content.

Starbucks is a great example of a brand that posts a careful mix of content during and in the lead-up to BFCM. In addition to posting about their seasonal drinks range and limited-edition holiday cup promotions, its social media feeds also include user-generated content and question prompts designed to encourage engagement.

3. Create compelling images

Consumers’ newsfeeds and inboxes are being inundated by promotions and discounts during BFCM weekend, trying to persuade them to drop everything and shop right now. But don’t join the race to the bottom by choosing the steepest discount possible; focus on creating eye-catching visuals that entice consumers to stop scrolling and check out your offer.

To tap into those short attention spans, your images need to have a “wow factor” that’s pleasing to look at and primes people to explore what you have to offer.

Known for its stunning social media feeds, Anthropologie does a great job at putting its followers in the mindset of holiday shopping ahead of BFCM. This fun visual swipe post allows Anthropologie fans to “turn on” the Christmas lights at one of their flagship stores — a clear sign of more holiday-themed content to come.

4. Use a calendar to track and schedule your BFCM content

It can be tempting to post all your social media content on the fly. But while there’s room for spontaneity in your content (for example, jumping on a trend while it’s still viral) you don’t want to leave your BFCM content to chance. 

Peak season is a busy time for brands, and it’s time-consuming and stressful to plan and post content as you go. More importantly, a scattergun approach also runs the risk of missing key promotional opportunities during Thanksgiving weekend.

Using a calendar tool is a great way to maintain control over your BCFM social media planning. Marsello allows you to add individual social posts to your calendar and add relevant information such as launch dates, copy, or associated promotions, ensuring that your team always knows what’s in the pipeline.

5. Keep your marketing collateral organized

BFCM is one of the biggest revenue-producing periods of the year for retailers, so your business is likely to be using more social media collateral in the form of graphics, videos, and product photography during this period to increase engagement. 

With so much revenue on the line, it’s vital to make sure your marketing team has a system to store and organize these assets. After all, nobody wants to lose a vital photo or video right before posting!

The Marsello media library is an excellent way to keep all of your BFCM collateral in one place where it’s easily accessible to your team. The media library connects seamlessly with all major storage systems, including Google Drive and Dropbox, so you can retrieve your assets as you need them for emails, social media, and other campaigns being run by Marsello.

6. Keep your BFCM initiatives consistent across all platforms

If you’re planning on running a big promotion (or several) over BFCM weekend, it makes little sense to only publicize your offer on a single platform. To drive as much traffic as possible to your website and storefronts, all of your marketing channels — including social media, email, and even your store signage — need to be working together in harmony. 

It’s easy to say that the more channels you use, the stronger your promotional strategy will be. But it’s not quite that simple; more channels also means more time spent making sure that your messaging stays consistent. 

Here is a great example from Sephora, which successfully reinforced last year’s Cyber Monday sale across email and social media by using the same graphic and messaging:

Marsello’s campaign calendar makes it easy to achieve coordinated campaigns like Sephora’s. Social media, SMS, and email can be planned within a single dashboard to streamline your social planning and ensure consistency across channels.

7. Optimize your BFCM social media accounts for sales by leveraging built-in social selling features

Social media is no longer simply a marketing channel designed to direct shoppers to where the action takes place. Thanks to the birth of social commerce, many platforms now boast a range of tools that enable users to purchase products directly within the app.

Social commerce has a range of benefits for both shoppers and brands during BFCM. If prospective customers see a great holiday gift option, they’re going to want to move fast. By shopping directly within an app, consumers only have to tap the product tag to be taken directly to the product page and checkout. Redirecting shoppers to your ecommerce website, where they’ll need to find the product themselves and place it in their cart, takes extra time and effort and may result in them abandoning the purchase.

In addition to speeding up the checkout process, social selling makes your product catalog easy and seamless to navigate. For example, Walmart has created a range of collections in its Instagram store to address different shopper needs:.

Collections have a ton of applications for BFCM weekend. Consider catalogs such as “‘Top holiday picks for under $30”’ or “‘red-hot Black Friday deals” to optimize your sales strategy and drive consumers toward high-value merchandise.

Final words

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are among one the most important holiday shopping weekends on the calendar, and brands need to begin their social media planning early to maximize the promotional opportunities available. By following the social media planning tips above and utilizing Marsello’s social media tools, you’ll be well-placed to make your BFCM 2022 the best yet.

There’s a popular saying that you’re only as good as your last performance, and this is certainly true for retail establishments.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have become more discerning about what businesses they support. With more information at their fingertips than ever before, shoppers spend more time researching different options.

Google Reviews have become a crucial tool for businesses to manage their reputations online. This blog will explore how businesses can manage Google Reviews and increase discovery opportunities in the search results – and how Marsello can help!

Quick Links:

• • • What are Google Reviews?
    • Why do Google Reviews matter?
    • How can retailers collect Google reviews?
    • The right way to request a Google Review
    • How should retailers respond to positive and negative reviews?
    • Final words

What are Google Reviews?

Google Reviews is a functionality embedded within Google Maps and Google My Business where consumers can publicly post reviews for establishments they’ve visited.

The purpose of Google Reviews is two-fold. They assist businesses with building a positive reputation amongst consumers while also helping individuals find suitable establishments in their local area. More than half of shoppers say they’ve used Google to discover new businesses.

Why do Google Reviews matter?

Here are some reasons you should consider leveling up your Google Reviews initiatives.

Improving your local search ranking

Google Reviews play a critical role in determining your business’s local search ranking. Local SEO helps Google match a person’s search with relevant nearby businesses (e.g., “Italian restaurants in New York City”). Ensuring a healthy supply of positive reviews increases the odds of your business coming up high in the search results.

Consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Research shows that 84% of consumers trust reviews as much as recommendations from family or friends – this tells us that customers really do consider social proof in their purchasing decisions.

Giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback

Customers want to feel that their experiences matter. Giving them the opportunity to share what they love about your business on a public forum shows that you genuinely care and want to receive feedback – even if it isn’t always positive.

How can retailers collect Google reviews?

Are businesses allowed to ask customers for Google Reviews?

Yes, though there are some ground rules.

Google doesn’t allow businesses to pay customers for leaving reviews or “review gate” by discouraging customers from leaving negative reviews. Furthermore, you cannot use reviews left on Google for marketing purposes on other platforms, such as social media or your website.

Here are some actionable ways that your business can collect Google Reviews:

Email and SMS automated flows

It isn’t practical for your business to manually send out review requests to individual customers. Instead, you need a tool that allows you to contact customers in bulk at a time of your choosing. 

Marsello’s email and SMS automation tool enables brands to build custom email and message flows to request reviews. Marsello customer Harry & Her send automatically triggered email campaigns coupled with the Google Reviews Manager tool to build a solid review base and, in turn, boost their credibility as a retailer. Here's what they had to say about the tool:

At the POS/checkout directly after a sale

While the “right” time to ask for a review will depend on your business, products, and customers (more on this below), striking while the iron is hot is usually the best way to get customers to leave reviews. In-store visitors have the chance to form a relationship with sales associates during the shopping experience, which can make customers more responsive to review requests. Consider speeding up the process by having a QR code at the checkout that directs customers straight to your review page.

When a sale is completed during a promotion

It’s always a good idea to ask for reviews while your brand is hosting a sales promotion. When customers have gotten a great deal from your business, they’re more likely to have a favorable impression and leave a positive Google review.

For example, if your brand runs a flash sale for 24 - 48 hours, you can set up an automation flow that sends a review request to a specific segment of customers (i.e., those who placed an order during your flash sale). By using Marsello’s customer segmentation, your business can solicit reviews from customers who are most likely to engage and give glowing feedback.

When customers join the loyalty program or progress tiers

Loyalty reward programs can act as their own form of customer segmentation. The shoppers who join your program are usually those already loyal to your brand, meaning they’re also more likely to leave reviews.

Brands have multiple opportunities to target loyalty program customers, such as when they sign up, redeem a loyalty reward, or progress to a new loyalty tier. These touchpoints are a great time to ask for a Google Review and show members that you care about their experience.

You can also take this a step further like Marsello-powered pet boutique Smack Bang by offering loyalty points in exchange for leaving a product review on the product listing itself. With custom automations, it’s easy to create an automated campaign that is triggered when customers leave a positive product review. Product reviews provide a great opportunity to encourage your customers to leave a Google Review about your business.

Promote/encourage reviews on social media

Cross-channel promotion is a critical part of collecting Google Reviews. In addition to asking customers for reviews in-person or via email and SMS, you should put out a call on your social channels asking customers to share their experiences.

It’s important to note that Google does not allow you to use reviews as advertising collateral on other platforms. But there are some less direct ways to achieve this.

Thai restaurant Chat Thai has a collection of reviews on their Instagram account created from photos and videos they have been tagged in. Consider resharing user-generated review content to steer customers towards leaving Google Reviews.

Make your Google My Business page easy to find and direct customers there

Customers won’t leave Google Reviews if your Google My Business page is difficult to find. Some of your customers may never have left a Google Review before. When making review requests via email and SMS, ensure you provide a link to your Google My Business page. Also, consider adding a review page to your website so that you can direct customers to your Google listing.

The right way to request a Google Review

We’ve gone over some of the best ways to collect Google Reviews. But when is the best time to request a review?

It can be a tricky balance to get the timing of requesting reviews right. If you leave it too long, your customer’s experience will be less fresh, which could affect the quality of their review. But asking too soon risks annoying your customer, especially if their order hasn’t arrived yet.

You should also factor in different customer segments. Some of your loyal customers may be more eager to submit reviews straightaway, while those who are new to your business may need some time before they’re ready to leave feedback.

Marsello’s SMS and email automations allow businesses to automate the process, segment customers, and ensure communications are sent at the optimum time to encourage positive reviews.

It’s also easy to combine automated campaigns with other review collection methods. For example, a restaurant can prime diners by asking them in person to leave a review and following up by sending an automated email reminder the following day.

How should retailers respond to positive and negative reviews?

Managing positive reviews is simple enough – simply thank your customer for their feedback and say you hope you’ll see them again soon. But what if their experience was less than positive?

No business wants to receive a bad review. But the most important thing to remember about Google Reviews is whatever you say (or don’t say) is there for potential customers to see. How you respond affects the customer who left the review and onlookers who make decisions based on the reviews left about your business and how you choose to respond. 

If you receive a negative review, always thank the person for their review. Take the time to investigate the issue to find out what went wrong so you can explain in your response. Most importantly, tell your customer the steps you will take to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Consider offering them a discount for their next visit to encourage them to return and see the changes you’ve made; this puts the ball back in their court and shows onlookers that you have made a serious effort to resolve the issue.

In some cases, it may help get more information from the customer. In this case, you can respond by encouraging them to tell you more about their experience. As always, it’s best to stay courteous by thanking the customer for their feedback and empathizing with them. 

Check out this example from Romano's Macaroni Grill.

Final words

Google Reviews can feel like a business’s best friend or worst enemy. Using a tool like Marsello to support your Google Review strategy enables you to streamline Review management and ensure that you’re sending the right response at the right time to foster customer loyalty.

By taking a responsive and automated approach to Google Reviews, your business can proactively enhance its reputation and build stronger relationships with customers – one review at a time.

If you’re searching for a product or service online, do you read a review or two before clicking “book” or “purchase”? If so, you aren’t alone: 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions, while 70% of people will only use a business if it has a star rating of four stars or more.

But it’s no longer enough to list a review or two on your website and call it a day; today’s customers want to see a large amount of social proof before they trust a business. In fact, 54.7% of consumers read at least four product reviews before making a purchasing decision.

So, what does this mean for businesses?

It means that you need an ongoing source of positive Google customer reviews to maintain a strong customer acquisition rate. In this post, we’re going to explain how you can get more Google reviews with ease – with a little help from Marsello.

Quick Links:

• • • Why Google business reviews are essential for any business
    • Why frequent positive reviews are essential for good SEO
    • How Google My Business reviews work
    • How to use Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager
    • How to use Google Reviews to increase brand awareness
    • Final words
      
      

Why Google business reviews are essential for any business

With a whopping 92.6% of all search queries going through Google as of June 2021, it’s no secret that Google business reviews are some of the most valuable. 

When Google is the one-stop shop for consumers searching for everything from hairdressers to restaurants, you need to ensure that you’re at the top of those search results. Otherwise, your business is practically invisible to potential customers. And if they can’t see you, they’re not going to click through to your website.

By managing Google reviews more effectively, you can make your business more visible – all thanks to something called local SEO.

Why frequent positive reviews are essential for good SEO

Local SEO focuses on optimizing a business’s online presence to assist nearby consumers in finding it more easily in search. If a consumer is showing search intent for a particular product or service, Google’s algorithm matches that search query with relevant businesses close to where the person is located.

For example, if you’re a restaurant in Manhattan, your target audience is likely to be people who are living or visiting in that area. So, if a person searches for “best restaurants in Manhattan” you want your establishment to be as high as possible in those results. 

According to Moz’s State of Local SEO Industry Report 2020, 90% of search experts believe that review activity is “moderately important” or “very important” in determining local SEO, while 78% agree that Google has become the new homepage for businesses. As such, Google reviews are a fantastic tool to boost local search presence – if you do it right.

How Google My Business reviews work

To start collecting Google reviews, you need to either claim or set up a Google My Business listing. This is a free tool offered by Google that allows businesses to manage their presence on the search engine. In addition to reviews, Google My Business listings can also include information such as:

• • • Opening hours
    • Address/Contact details
    • Menus
    • Booking widgets 
    • Photos of your establishment

It’s important to make an effort to fill out as many parts of your profile as possible, as a comprehensive listing will help to boost your local ranking. 

Check out the listing of the restaurant Chat Thai, which has a number of locations across Australia. All of Chat Thai’s Google listings are fully populated; you can view key business details and contact info, as well as photos and reviews. There’s even an “Order Online” button that lets customers order straight from Google.

Once Google My Business is set up and optimized, you’re ready to start driving review activity.

This is where Marsello’s Google Reviews feature comes in.

How to use Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager

By integrating your Google My Business account with your Marsello marketing, you can easily generate new reviews through automated email and SMS campaigns. 

Here’s how it works: connect your Google My Business account to Marsello, then enable automated email or SMS flows to encourage people to leave a review. You can customize your email flow with segmentation rules to ensure that you’re engaging the right customers. For instance, you can configure the workflow to only ask your “Best” customers for a review after they purchase. 

Note that Google Reviews workflows will only be triggered after someone places an order, so you can guarantee the authenticity of your business reviews.

Finally, it’s easy to track the success of your review automations. And when you receive a review, you can respond to your customers in-app, reward them with loyalty points to say thank you, or email the customer directly – manage reviews your way! 

Get in touch with our team to book a demo and learn more.

How to use Google Reviews to increase brand awareness

Before the web existed, businesses and hospitality establishments had to rely on being as visible as possible to attract foot traffic. Everything from flyers and store signage to branded shopping bags have been valuable tools to help businesses increase brand awareness.

This principle is no different online. Your business needs to take up as much “space” as possible to become known and recognized by as many customers as possible in such a competitive environment. 

In a time where digital marketing can feel increasingly like a pay-to-play model where only the biggest budgets see results, Google reviews offer a way for less-established businesses to level the playing field. By getting more reviews on Google, you’ll stand out over bigger but less-reviewed competitors.

How to encourage customers to leave positive reviews

It’s easy to assume that customers will shout from the rooftops when they have a stellar experience at your establishment. But this isn’t the case in reality; less than 50% of customers (47%) say they don’t post negative or positive reviews online at all.

There are a variety of reasons for this. A lot of us are busy and forget to write a review. Many businesses don’t make it easy or intuitive to leave reviews. If we’ve written reviews in the past and haven’t gotten a response, we might decide it’s not worth the effort.

By this point, you’re probably asking: How can I get more Google reviews for my business? Continue the following top tips:

Prompt for reviews after purchases with automated emails and SMS

The first step to getting customers to leave reviews? Strike while the iron is hot.

Businesses want to create balance by asking for reviews while a customer’s experience is fresh – this can be tough to coordinate if your establishment asks for reviews manually. 

Moreover, sending out individually-written emails or SMS is a massive drain on your time. To make asking for reviews as painless as possible, consider investing in marketing automation software that can handle review requests on your behalf.

Marsello’s automated email and SMS campaign tool enables businesses to send and manage review requests via a straightforward interface. Set the ideal time for your messages to go out to customers and even automate the sending of follow-up messages to give you another shot at securing positive reviews.

Make an effort to respond to customer feedback

Getting more customers to leave reviews isn’t just about how you ask for them, but how you choose to respond when you receive them. 

In fact, 89% of consumers read a business’s responses to reviews during the consideration stage. Why? Because how an establishment engages with positive and negative reviews tells potential customers a great deal about how that business treats its patrons.

Suppose a customer leaves a negative Google review and that business makes no effort to respond; this could be interpreted as the company not caring about the quality of their customer’s experience, which is a massive red flag. 

Plus, if you aren’t in the habit of replying to reviews and showing that you’re listening to feedback, what incentive do customers have to put in the effort?

Restaurant and Bar, The Monday Room, has done a great job of replying to Google reviews, even thanking customers who write more detailed reviews and provide photos:

Use positive reinforcement, but don’t bribe customers

If you’re looking to shape consumer behavior in ways that are advantageous to your business, it might seem like a good idea to offer customers a discount on their next order in exchange for leaving a positive review. However, this isn’t a good long-term strategy for most businesses. 

Too many 5-star reviews on a business listing create suspicion, with studies finding that consumers were more likely to purchase a product or service when the rating is between 4.2 to 4.5 stars. You don’t want your efforts to come across as though your business is buying reviews or deleting negative Google reviews, which can cause potential customers to doubt their authenticity and can even result in your business being penalized by Google. 

It’s much better to reward customers after leaving a review to guarantee honest feedback. For example, lifestyle and clothing boutique Harry & Her rewards customers with loyalty points if they leave 4 or 5-star reviews, but they don’t actively promote this policy on any of their marketing channels. This practice increases customer satisfaction and ensures that all positive reviews are genuine. 

The team at Harry and Her was also one of the first to test Marsello's Google Reviews Manager and they've found that Google Reviews are an undeniable source of revenue growth for their business. So much so, they're not going back! Here's what they had to say about their review process and the response from customers:

"We use Marsello's Google Reviews feature to encourage customer reviews after they buy something from one of our stores. First, we send an automated SMS; then we follow that up with an email to those who have not seen the SMS campaign. It's also been exciting to see our customers respond with so many positive reviews – we now have a 5-star average across our stores!"

Final words

Managing online reviews can feel a bit overwhelming, especially if you have a brand-new Google My Business listing and gather reviews from scratch. But it’s well worth the effort to create a streamlined outreach strategy to build social proof for your business; when you have a long list of positive customer testimonials, you’re in a much stronger position to acquire new customers.

By taking advantage of SMS and email automation to coordinate review requests and communicating how feedback enhances the customer experience, you can build a lasting Google review strategy that acquires and retains loyal customers. Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager makes this easy! Book a demo to get started today.

Getting customers to pay attention to your brand is becoming more and more of an uphill battle.
Email inboxes are overflowing. Social media is saturated. Even with the right messaging and the right tools, there is sometimes too much noise to be able to stand out.

So, how can you make people actually see your marketing efforts?

Enter SMS Marketing; the marketing channel that receives some of the highest open rates and engagement.

In this post, we’ll be giving you an in-depth look at SMS marketing. You’ll learn what it is, why it works, and the best practices for developing an SMS marketing strategy that's cost-effective and boosts your bottom line.

Let's get started.

What is SMS marketing

Short Message Service (SMS) marketing is a strategy where businesses use SMS messaging to send timely and relevant short-form content directly to a customer's mobile device. 

The uses of SMS marketing span from informative (i.e. letting someone know that their order is ready for pick up) to promotional messages, like alerting customers to your latest special offer.

SMS marketing can be used for an even broader variety of purposes, such as:

• Abandoned cart notifications
• Giving out discount codes or coupons
• New products arriving in-store
• Order/shipping confirmations
• Loyalty or VIP programs
• and many more.

Because it allows for such direct and personalized brand communications, text message marketing is a fantastic tool for building customer loyalty and driving repeat purchases. It enables customers to be better informed about your brand’s activities, while also giving them the tools they need to take action quickly and effectively.

SMS Marketing: The Numbers 

Text messaging is hardly a new innovation. Mobile phones with full keyboards have been around since the late nineties. So, why is SMS marketing receiving so much hype from marketers?

Many brands worry that SMS marketing messages might come across as intrusive – but this view is not supported by consumer surveys. By the end of 2020, it’s estimated that 48.7 million consumers have willingly opted to receive SMS, while 58% say they would be happy to hear from their favorite brands multiple times per week.

Why? The answer is simple; internet-capable devices have given us unprecedented connectivity with businesses and brands. This gradual shift towards mobile eCommerce is a clear sign of our increasing desire to shop on the go; 56.7% of shoppers are now going “mobile-first”, while only 6.7% primarily use desktop for online shopping. 

56.7% of shoppers are now going "mobile-first", while only 6.7% primarily use desktop for online shopping. 

Parker Panache

Marsello customer Parker Panache intelligently used one-off SMS campaigns to build a buzz around their annual Black Friday sale, one of the biggest events in the retail calendar. In conjunction with other marketing tools, they used SMS message blasts to spread the word by taking advantage of the medium's high open rates. It certainly paid off, with their total ROI reaching 240x over the two months leading up to Black Friday.

American Eagle Outfitters

American Eagle was an early adopter of SMS marketing, and this strategy has clearly paid off.In the 2015 holiday season, their "legendary gifts" campaign gave consumers the chance to win $10,000. The 12-day campaign took place across SMS, email, and social media and required customers to 'opt-in' to receive personalized URLS that directed them to their daily gift. As well as winning the grand prize, customers were also in to win exclusive discounts and perks.

These creative efforts helped American Eagle to reach more than 8 million email and SMS subscribers within the 12-day period, with a 60% SMS click-through rate.

Final words

Ambitious marketing campaigns can be challenging to coordinate for some businesses, especially due to time and budget constraints. SMS marketing is a highly engaging strategy that takes advantage of our attachment to mobile devices to deliver exciting updates in real-time. As retail grows more mobile-based, this marketing tool is only going to grow more effective at driving sales and brand awareness. Our take? The sooner you get started, the better.

A Guide to Navigating Shopper Input

Did you know that poor customer experiences result in an estimated $83 billion loss by U.S. businesses every year? 

Gathering, managing, and analyzing customer feedback is a vital part of your customer success strategy, but is often neglected by businesses. In fact, a recent study by Hubspot found that 42% of businesses don't collect customer feedback at all. 

If you don't know what your customers think or want, it's impossible to put them at the center of your growth plan. That's why a robust customer feedback management strategy is the key to fostering lasting relationships with your customers.

In this post, we're going to:

• Discuss why customer feedback matters
• Identify key types of customer feedback
• Talk about how to collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback

Let’s dive in!

Why is it important to collect customer feedback? 

Let’s kick things off by discussing the benefits of having good customer feedback management practices in place. 

It helps to refine your product/service

Making the effort to collect customer feedback helps you to identify pain points, as well as gather suggestions that you can communicate to your customer success and product teams. In turn, this helps to enhance your product/service and promote a better user experience.

Essentially, any omnichannel retailer should be making the customer the focal point of their business, and collecting customer feedback will enable this process. 

It improves customer satisfaction and retention

No matter what business you run, your customers want to feel as though their experiences matter. When customer service representatives take a long time to respond to concerns – or worse, don't respond at all – this can seriously damage the customer relationship. 

On the flip side, when you make the effort to implement changes or updates on the back of feedback surveys, it showcases a customer-centric approach that aims to meet the expectations of loyal customers. And when customers are satisfied, your retention rates will soar.

It strengthens your WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing efforts

Here's a fact about marketing: We're far more likely to trust other people's perception of a business than what that business says about itself. In fact, 88% of consumers say that they trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations.

With the rise of social media and community forums, we're no longer passive consumers of advertising. By making customer feedback a core functionality of your business model, you have a powerful customer acquisition strategy.

Types of customer feedback 

Customer feedback can be divided into two main types: Direct/solicited customer feedback, and indirect/unsolicited customer feedback.

Direct/solicited customer feedback

This refers to feedback processes that rely on the business reaching out to their customers for feedback. The advantage of this approach is that businesses can either tailor their surveys to specific topics, such as the usability of certain features, or they can ask about the customer journey as a whole. However, invitations for direct feedback often struggle with low uptake.

Direct/solicited customer feedback methods include the following:

• Customer surveys
• Customer reviews
• Focus groups

Indirect/unsolicited customer feedback

Conversely, indirect/unsolicited feedback is when a customer reaches out to a business with queries or concerns. It's within a business's interest to encourage this behavior, as unsolicited feedback can often bring up issues or opportunities they wouldn't have identified on their own. 

The following can be considered types of indirect/unsolicited feedback:

• Social media
• Customer support centers
• Live chat

Note: It's a good idea to use a combination of methods to ensure that your business is getting impartial feedback data. In this next section, we're going to dive into some of these methods in more depth.

How to collect customer feedback

Now let’s look at the different ways that you can gather feedback from shoppers.

Customer surveys

Customer surveys are one of the most common methods for feedback collection. You can completely customize a survey depending on what your needs are, making it one of the best options for collecting feedback on a large scale.

However, putting together a good feedback survey is a lot of work. Once you've chosen the area that you want feedback on, you need to decide what survey format is most appropriate.

While a qualitative survey using free text fields is one of the easiest to put together, it can be a discouraging time investment for customers, and setting it up effectively could be time-consuming for you too.

Instead, you could consider using some qualitative forms of customer satisfaction survey, such as:

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is a metric for determining how satisfied your customers are with different touchpoints in the customer journey. It captures customer sentiment when they're interacting with that stage of your offering i.e. "How would you rate your recent order or experience?"

CSATs usually give customers the choice of choosing a number between 1 and 5, with 5 being “very satisfied” and 1 being “highly dissatisfied”. CSATs can be single questions or use several back-to-back questions depending on how broad you want your survey to be.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is another qualitative survey measure but it differs from CSAT. NPS measures long-term customer loyalty. It helps to benchmark a customer's willingness to recommend/promote your brand to others, which indicates their commitment to repeat purchases. So, if your NPS is low, this means your churn rate is likely to be high.

Most NPS surveys use a 10-point scale, as shown in this template by Le Tote:

2-choice questions

In some cases, you want to make it as simple as possible for customers to provide feedback. This is why 2-choice surveys can be extremely useful when you want to gather a quick pulse from your customers. 

The following example from Katie Waltman, which lets people indicate their feedback by simply tapping a happy or sad face is an example of quick and easy feedback collection.

And in case customers would like to share additional details, Katie Waltman asks a quick follow-up question based on the shoppers’ initial response. Katie Waltman has a 97% customer feedback rating. Their customers have particularly positive feedback for KW’s product quality, customer service, and the value of their products. Keeping in mind that customers are most inclined to leave feedback when they are passionate, this makes praise that Katie Waltman has received all the more impressive.

Social media monitoring

Did you know that 1 in 3 consumers would rather post service or product feedback on social media than contact a business directly? Quick and appropriate follow-ups to comments and mentions by your customers are vital on an open forum, and also presents opportunities to ask for feedback via polls and surveys:

Qualitative customer interviews

If you're wanting more in-depth customer insights, organizing a series of interviews with customers is a great tool for adding more context to NPS and CSAT surveys. Getting direct information straight from shoppers can help to highlight and create understanding around areas that are working well, versus areas of your business that could do with attention.

This technique is best suited for interviewing long-term customers who can answer more in-depth questions about your product/service. It's a good idea to use your CRM to pick out loyal customers who can offer you the most valuable insights.

How to manage customer feedback 

Once you’ve collected a good amount of feedback, it’s best to set up processes for managing all that information so you can act on it. 

Use the right CFM tools

Feedback management tools are vital to getting the most out of your feedback collection. CFM (customer feedback management) software allows you to sort and analyze customer data effectively, rather than having your customer success team spend days or even weeks sorting through it manually.

The right tools depend on how your business plans on gathering customer feedback. For example, if you plan on doing customer surveys on a regular basis, a survey tool like SurveyMonkey or Typeform is a good investment. Likewise, you're a brand with a large social media presence, consider a social listening tool such as Brand24 that uses AI to monitor brand reputation in real-time, a popular technique with SaaS companies. 

On the other hand, if you want to grab quick feedback on the product or shopping experience of your customers, then an eCommerce CRM like Marsello is a great option. Marsello’s feedback tool makes it easy to attach quick surveys to your transactional emails so customers can let you know how they feel.

From there, you can get detailed reporting on customer satisfaction and find ways to improve. 

Implement a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program

The Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a broad term referring to all of the data and metrics you've gathered from feedback management tools and unsolicited customer feedback. A VoC program collates all this data from across channels to identify emerging themes that indicate specific pain points, then develops a roadmap to address them.

For a VoC program to work effectively, it can't be siloed just to your customer success division. It requires active collaboration with the product development, marketing, and sales teams to identify trends within their own workflows. For example, if the sales team keeps coming across a particular feature request, this can be passed onto the product team far more seamlessly.

Close the feedback loop

Once you've identified issues or opportunities and taken action in response, it's important not to miss out on informing customers what you've accomplished. This is known as “closing the feedback loop.”

Unless customers receive a follow-up, they have no idea whether their concerns have been listened to. This leaves the feedback loop wide open and could affect your retention efforts.

So, once you've decided to introduce a change in response to feedback, you need to think about the best way to communicate this. The appropriate channel will depend on the demographics of the respondents. For example, if your survey was hosted on social media, it makes sense to inform customers using the same medium. If it was an on-site survey, you could consider producing a webinar that discusses your initiatives.

How to analyze your customer feedback 

The best way to get the most out of customer feedback is to analyze it. Here are some tips to help you organize what you’ve collected and ensured that you gain actionable insights from them.

Categorize your feedback types

Once your data is in one place, assigning it to a specific group will help you get a broad overview of what areas are receiving the most attention from your customers. For example, you could use categories like:

• Onboarding
• Pricing/billing
• Feature requests
• Product/user experience
• Technical support.

You can also break these down further into sub-categories i.e. whether the feedback is negative or positive.

This exercise will help you to highlight any overarching trends and “hidden” issues that your business might not have identified, such as confusing pricing structures or difficulty finding support documentation.

Start feedback analysis

While it's possible to analyze your feedback manually, this is a very time-consuming process and requires someone with strong expertise in coding and data analysis. Moreover, there's always the potential for personal bias to get in the way of finding actionable insights from your customers.

Instead, consider using a tool such as Marsello, which can organize feedback data into graphs and tables that make it easy to analyze the information.

As patterns start emerging, it's important to ask yourself some key questions:

• Are these new or established customers?
• Where are they located?
• Who has been assigned to manage their account?

This helps to add context to the results of your analysis – and may also establish some underlying causes for recurring issues.

Present your results

Once you have the results of your customer feedback campaign, you need to think about the best way to present them to your teams. This will depend on whether you're doing a relatively focused feedback survey or a landmark study on your product/service as a whole.

If it's a small feedback project, you can likely present the results on a one-page that summarizes the key takeaways via bullet points or tables. In the case of large, multi-question studies, you will need to break this down in a lot more detail.

Large-scale data visualization using line or bar graphs are a great way to communicate to your staff the changes to customer sentiment over time and provide answers to key questions. Check out this visualization by Thematic investigating the reasons behind a drop in NPS:

Thematic not only displays the drop-in NPS rating over time but also offers the user detailed information that highlights why their performance could be taking a downward turn. 

Final words

Customer feedback has traditionally been one of the most neglected elements in customer success. It's easy for businesses to tell themselves that gathering customer feedback is too time-consuming or difficult to analyze to be worth the effort. 

But at the end of the day, customer satisfaction is the key to long-term success as a business. If your customers are unhappy with your service or product offering, your churn rate is going to skyrocket. But by implementing a strong customer feedback program, you're in a much better position to foster retention and loyalty.

Need to collect and analyze customer feedback? Marsello has powerful tools to help retailers gather input from shoppers and turn them into actionable insights. 

A Guide to Marketing Across Multiple Channels

It's one of the biggest buzzwords in retail and marketing, and one that all businesses should be paying attention to. 

Omnichannel.

Industry data shows that marketers using three or more channels in any one campaign earned a 287% higher purchase rate than those using a single-channel campaign.

With numbers like this, retailers have few reasons not to embrace the power of omnichannel marketing. 

In this post, we're going to define omnichannel marketing, why it matters, and how to implement your own omnichannel marketing strategy for better customer engagement and sales.

What is omnichannel marketing? 

Simply put, it’s a retail strategy that involves the complete integration of all offline and digital channels. It denotes a customer-centric approach by prioritizing seamless, high-touch shopping journeys that take place across multiple channels.

With seamless channel integration, customers can easily complete actions like checking inventory levels online before turning up at their local store. And it's shopping experiences like these that positively influence customer loyalty and helps to create brand advocates. 

Omnichannel marketing ensures that customers receive a cohesive shopping experience. All sales and marketing channels operate in sync with one another to build trust and brand engagement.

The difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing

Don't confuse omnichannel marketing with multichannel marketing. 

While both involve coordinating marketing strategies that span several channels (such as eCommerce, social media, SMS messaging, and mobile apps), the execution is very different.

Multichannel puts the product, rather than the customer, at the center of marketing activities. So, while multichannel marketing allows consumers to engage a brand via several channels, they cannot transition seamlessly between them. This silos messaging and keeps it static, rather than adapting to the needs of each customer.

In contrast, the channel integration of omnichannel marketing means that every message is relevant and tailored to your individual customer as they shop across multiple channels and devices.

For example, if a customer puts an item in their cart with the intent of coming back for it later, they might receive a push notification or SMS alert to let them know when that product is low in stock. They might also get a tailored promotion to entice them to purchase. It's these personalized interactions with customers which make omnichannel marketing efforts much more successful than a generalized multichannel approach.

Why implement omnichannel marketing? 

Here’s a quick rundown of the advantages you can unlock from omnichannel marketing.

Providing a consistent experience across channels

If we think about our most negative retail experiences, they're likely to involve scenarios where retailers have obstructed rather than aided our efforts to shop efficiently. 

As consumers show a growing preference to use multiple channels to execute their shopping journeys, it's never been more important for retailers to meet these expectations. According to a study by Invespcro, the most in-demand services are: 

• • • Checking product availability before arriving in-store (82%)
    • BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-Up In-Store) (57%)
    • Having a customer profile stored across channels (50%)
    • Personalized shopping experiences (47%)

By implementing advanced omnichannel experiences like these, your customers have the freedom to shop how they want without barriers. This makes them feel empowered during their shopping journey and helps to foster trust in your brand.

Maximizing touchpoints with your customer

In the past, we would walk into a brick-and-mortar store, browse for a bit, and then make a purchase – often within the same visit. 

Today, consumer behavior is very different. People want as much information as possible before committing to a purchase, especially if they are new customers shopping with a brand for the first time. This involves utilizing multiple channels to research and compare options.

Today, 82% of customers use their mobile devices to browse before purchasing at a physical store. By offering customers a unified experience across digital and offline channels, you can add a huge amount of value through engaging touchpoints that build brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Valuable data-driven insights

Seamless experiences across different channels mean more opportunities to gather customer data. Omnichannel integration allows you to follow the customer journey from beginning to end, meaning that you gain access to in-depth insights about who your customers are and what they're looking for. 

It allows you to identify key buying patterns and personas within your target audience – including those you hadn't anticipated shopping with your brand. This makes it easier to deliver the appropriate messaging that coaxes prospective customers along the path to purchasing.

When you understand your customers, you have a much better sense of how to encourage repeat purchases. This is why retailers who use an omnichannel approach see 90% higher customer retention can those who don't.

How to start an omnichannel marketing strategy from scratch 

Ready to kick off your omnichannel marketing strategy? Here are the steps you should take to set yourself up for success.

1. Start thinking customer-centric

Going omnichannel in your marketing is about more than just integrating your channels. For many retailers, it requires a fundamental shift in how your brand relates to its customers.

Why? Because what's most convenient for your customers might not be what's easiest for business. To make this transition effectively, you need to have everybody on board inputting customer success at the center of the shopping experience.

Making omnichannel campaigns run effectively is a lot of work, and requires serious consideration of every touchpoint within the buyer's journey. 

For example, when your customer enters your website, does it have a responsive design that easily adjusts to mobile? Are your social media posts optimized to drive prospective customers to the appropriate product pages?

By having your operations, sales, and marketing teams evaluate your marketing approach step by step, you can ensure a positive omnichannel customer experience.

2. Know who your customer is

You might be surprised by how many businesses don't have an in-depth understanding of who their customers are. A study by HubSpot found that 42% of businesses don't run customer engagement surveys or collect feedback.

This is a problem because if you don't touch base with customers and get their feedback, you won't get insights into what they want and need. Collecting feedback also helps you determine the right demographics, so you can create more effective personas for your campaigns.

To  put your customer first, you need to invest in gathering data that gives you the full picture of their activities and preferences, such as: 

• • • What problems does your business help customers to solve? 
    • Through what channels do they like interacting with your brand most, and why? 
    • Which kinds of content do they find the most useful/valuable?

You can accomplish this by using data from your CRM, or by running surveys across channels and asking for feedback at multiple points during the shopping journey. 

3.  Invest in the proper toolkit

When it comes to omnichannel marketing, your strategy is only going to be as strong as the tools supporting it. 

As well as helping you to generate and nurture more leads, marketing automation allows you to build personalized experiences for your customers by sending them targeted content that supports their needs. Best of all, the data captured from these workflows in the form of CTRs and engagement rates will tell you whether your efforts are hitting the mark.

This is where a solution like Marsello comes in handy. Our software serves as an all-in-one omnichannel marketing platform that combines email, SMS, and loyalty programs. Since everything is accessible on a single platform, data flows smoothly from one channel to the next, and it's easier to provide a seamless shopping experience no matter where your customers are. 

Marsello also integrates with leading point-of-sale systems and eCommerce platforms, so you can easily sync your physical and digital stores as one.

4. Content, content, content

No matter how advanced your marketing software is, the content remains the backbone of omnichannel marketing. This involves everything from your social media content down to in-store signage

For example, let's say that your business is running a promotion that gives your customers 20% off storewide both offline and online. Your online store has a big banner on the home page publicizing the discount, and a promotional email has been sent out to your mailing list to spread the word. 

But when customers walk into one of your physical store locations, there's no signage greeting them at the door to make them aware of the discount. 

A lack of cohesion between your offline and digital marketing efforts can result in a lot of missed sales opportunities; if in-store customers don't know about the promotion until checkout, they're a lot less likely to maximize spending to get a better deal. This makes informative touchpoints essential for successful omnichannel retailing.

Want to see an omnichannel content strategy done right? Check out Federation, a streetwear brand that runs a powerful omnichannel loyalty program. Federation allows customers to earn and redeem points in-store and online, so shoppers are rewarded regardless of where and how they're shopping. 

Plus, the program’s content and messaging are consistent on all channels, so the customer experience always feels seamless and on-brand. 

Another excellent example comes from the jewelry brand and clothing stockist, Katie Waltman. The store runs a comprehensive marketing initiative that covers loyalty, feedback collection, and email marketing. In doing so, Katie Waltman is able to connect with customers across multiple platforms. 

Just like with Federation, the content and messages that Katie Waltman puts out there are consistent on all channels and devices. So whether people encounter the brand in-store, on their eCommerce site, or via email, customers are treated to the same look and feel. 

5. Segmenting your messaging

As we mentioned above, what separates multichannel marketing from omnichannel is that customers are not treated as a one-size-fits-all group. 

The valuable data insights that omnichannel retailing gathers from across the shopping journey give you the ability to segment customers according to demographic data, shopping behavior, and the “warmth” of leads. 

According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that offers personalized experiences. In short, you can deliver the right content at the right time to enhance customer lifetime value. 

For example, with the aid of marketing automation, you can set up specific triggers to target customers who've purchased certain items (e.g. "you might also like..." emails) or those who've been “inactive” for a certain period of time by sending an SMS with a link that allows them to set their communications preferences. 

We can see this in action in Brandini Toffee, which uses Marsello to send automated marketing emails based on user behavior. One notable example? The Brandini team sends a campaign automated email geared towards shoppers who have abandoned their cart. To entice this segment to complete their purchase, Brandini Toffee sends a reminder email with a built-in product recommendations section that is automatically populated with similar products and items which the customer is likely to enjoy (based on their previous shopping behaviors). 

Since they first created automated campaigns, Brandini Toffee has seen as much as a 583% increase in attributable sales and this campaign alone has generated 95% of the total orders generated by Brandini’s automated campaigns.

6. Track and analyze

The power of your omnichannel marketing efforts becomes more evident the longer they're in play. The more you invest in gathering and utilizing data from customer journeys, the more you can refine your approach to target exactly what it is your customers want.

This is why it's important to test and track different elements of your marketing strategy to find what appeals most to your customers. This includes A/B testing of different copy, subject lines, images, and CTAs to see which gets the best response. 

It's also important to compare your content across channels to see what works for each medium – what works on email, for example, isn't necessarily going to resonate with your audience on Instagram.

 By regularly analyzing the results of your omnichannel marketing campaigns, you can ensure that your business is using the very best formula to inform and excite your customers.

Final words

Implementing a thoughtful omnichannel marketing strategy is a big step up for retailers who are used to more siloed multichannel strategies. But if you want consumers to choose your business over the likes of Amazon, it's essential that you can facilitate seamless shopping experiences that allow customers to move between channels with ease.

At the center of successful omnichannel marketing is a core philosophy; it’s seeing your customer as the center of gravity that your brand revolves around. So long as you stick to this core idea, the rest will follow.