Shopify Plus provides rapidly growing enterprise-level retailers with a unique set of features and support, setting the precedent for Shopify Plus Certified Partner Apps and ensuring Shopfiy Plus retailers see rapid results like month-on-month ROI and improved customer lifetime value, no matter what Shopify Plus tools they chose to use. 

But how do you know which apps will set you up for success? And which of the Shopify Plus partner apps are best designed to grow your omnichannel retail business both in-store and online?

Never fear! We’ve selected our top 5 picks with room to grow. Discover our Top 5 Shopify Plus Partner Apps for Omnichannel Retailers below:

Marsello’s Top 5 Omnichannel Shopify Plus Certified Partner Apps

1.  

Powered by Shopify Plus and your point-of-sale, Marsello is the only customer marketing software that integrates seamlessly in-store and online – the ultimate omnichannel marketing tool! By combining data-driven automation, email, SMS, and loyalty programs, Marsello can empower you to deliver targeted marketing for your business that gets results you can trust with closed-loop attribution that tracks your marketing against sales.

Did you know that Marsello is the only marketing software that integrates in-store and online for Shopify Plus retailers, no matter what POS system you use? With an average return on investment of 98x, it’s no wonder why multi-channel retailers choose Marsello to run their marketing and deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience that gets results.

• • Made for Shopify Plus retailers – Marsello integrates seamlessly across your in-store and online sales platforms to provide a true omnichannel customer experience.

• • Data-driven marketing – Using your customer data, Marsello allows you to deliver targeted and timely marketing that saves you time and gets results.
  • All-in-one marketing platform – Send email and SMS campaigns, use templated designs to simplify your marketing, automate timely communications, collect customer feedback and acquire new customers with referrals, customize and brand a loyalty program to suit your business; Marsello offers all the tools you need to master retail marketing.  
    
    

“Omnichannel retail is customer-centric – driven by the way that modern consumers want to shop. Customers research products to inform their purchase decisions. When they feel fully informed, they are able to make emotion-based decisions confidently and, finally, complete a purchase that they know they’ll love – even for transactional purchases. Making the most of your marketing channels means you’re able to inform and excite your customers and shoppers just like them, no matter where or how they like to shop.”

– Brent Spicer, CEO at Marsello

2.   

Endear is the first and only clienteling app certified for Shopify Plus merchants. Its CRM and messaging platform is made especially for retail sales teams and tracks how messages convert into sales, both in-store and online. Endear empowers retail teams to engage customers over remote channels like email and text while the app takes care of measuring how outreach is performing, including data points like average order value, location of last purchase, and time to convert.

• • Unified messaging – Now every message your team sends on your brand’s behalf is all in one place. Whether sent 1-to-1 or 1-to-many, your customers will never know the difference.
  • CRM – Segment customers based on their behavior in-store and online using filters like product purchased, total spend, zip code, and AOV.
  • Lookbooks – Create and send curated product recommendations right from the app to shorten a customer’s path to purchase. Plus, Endear integrates with your POS so you’re never recommending items that are out of stock.
  • Analytics – Keep your team motivated and see exactly who and what is driving sales each month.
  • Endear everywhere – Cloud-based and available on iOS mobile devices, you can take Endear’s capabilities anywhere and reply to customers anytime.
  • 1-click integration – Shopify Plus merchants can enjoy easy, one-step installation through endearhq.com or the Shopify app store to enjoy a real-time feed of customer data and order history.

“As the digital space gets more competitive and privacy laws more stringent, now is the time for brands to focus on extending lifetime value of the customers they acquire; the best way to do that is through a high-touch, seamless omnichannel experience.”

– Leigh Sevin, Co-founder

3.   

Dor's first-of-its-kind, battery-powered thermal people counter counts the heat signatures of store visitors and is supported by its proprietary machine learning algorithms to maintain and increase the accuracy rates. Dor’s sensor is a peel-and-stick solution that uses a cellular connection which makes it easy and secure to install for both independent and enterprise retailers. Dor customers can see their store’s peak hours and optimize their staff scheduling, integrate Dor into their POS systems and see the conversion rates of their customers and measure their marketing effectiveness by attributing the foot traffic data to their marketing campaigns. 

• • Peel and stick thermal sensors over any door and start counting your foot traffic right away. 

• • One-click integration with your POS allows you to view revenue, foot traffic, and conversion rate all in one place. 

  • Dor uses a cellular network – no WiFi is required in your space. 

  • View and compare foot traffic trends in every store you manage, at any time, from any device. 

  • Avoid downtime with the proactive support from your dedicated customer success manager 

• • Export data via CSV or connect additional tools via API for infinite applications.

“According to shopping behavior research by the Harvard Business Review, 73% of the participants used multiple touchpoints, including the online channels and physical stores, during their shopping journey. This shows us that omnichannel retail is already an essential part of the buying journey. Retailers have to support purchasing trends with other data points such as foot traffic, peak hours, and conversion rates to understand their customers’ needs inside and out, then improve their channels accordingly.”

– Michael Brand, CEO at Dor

4.   

Plobal Apps’ Shopify Plus offering gives retailers the tools to create their own stand-out, fully customizable mobile apps. Improve customer experience with on-brand, UX-driven mobile channels that help you to deliver a unique brand experience, easy-to-use checkout, and personalized engagement with Plobal.

• • In-app campaigns establish seamless customer experience – Run advanced, personalized in-app marketing campaigns and push notifications to drive installs and increase sales.
  • Social media connectivity – connect your app to social media to target new marketplaces and grow your community.
  • Build customer loyalty – offer exclusive and exciting in-app discounts specific to that app channel and selected products.
  • Omnichannel integration – integrate your app with multiple other platforms and Shopify Plus partner apps to create the ultimate toolkit.

5. 

Shipping fulfillment has cemented itself as an essential part of customer experience. With the ability to compare rates and ETAs across 58+ global carriers, Shippo gives Shopify Plus retailers the ability to send their products worldwide without the stress of customs mishaps or misplaced packages. With end-to-end tracking, both the retailer and customer can rest easy knowing that orders are exactly where they need to be. Shippo’s features include:

• • Carrier rate comparisons – save money by comparing which carrier offers the best value delivery within the customer’s shipping region.

• • Sync across sales channels – no matter where you sell, sync your customers’ orders with tracking information so the customer can stay informed at every step of the way.
  • Automatic and CSV upload label creation – automate the shipping label creation process or generate labels from CSV imports.
  • Create a seamless returns framework – improve customer experience with hassle-free returns they trust.
  • Ship globally – international shipping is made easier with pre-filled customs forms.

Final words

An essential part of mastering omnichannel commerce is finding the tools that work best to make your business run smoothly – from marketing and customer engagement, to order fulfillment, your store should run like a well-oiled machine no matter which channel your customers chose to shop from. The above apps will help you to do just that by providing valuable data, insights, and processes that will improve your customer touchpoints and brand experience.

What apps are you using to bridge the gaps between your sales channels? What tools have become essential to your business success and continued growth? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!

Firestone Digital is unique in the world of Shopify Agencies. Where most have built businesses around the bustling world of eCommerce, Samantha Firestone, Director of Firestone Digital, and her team have taken the view that the world's best retailers are those who have embraced an omnichannel strategy to grow their revenue, strengthen customer relationships, and future-proof their businesses.

And Sam’s right. Research shows us that consumers are demanding a consistent customer experience no matter how they choose to shop. Meanwhile, retailers are increasingly looking for experts, like Sam, to identify the technology they need to deliver that experience.

The way Sam sees it, retail is about more than margins and stock on hand.

“I believe that people like to buy from people, and the reality is many of our retailers sell similar products as their competitors. For my clients, it's important that the in-store experience creates a unique connection with the consumer and that the customer feels comfortable in-store. We extend that to our client's Shopify store, where it's critical that the feeling a customer gets online reflects the experience they get in-store.”

Developing a data-driven omnichannel strategy

Behind the aesthetics of customer experience is the data, and this is where an Omnichannel strategy comes into its own. Having a marketable customer database is native to eCommerce, however, a true omnichannel strategy captures customer purchasing data wherever the customer chooses to shop – and this is what led Sam to Marsello. 

“Make no mistake about it; a customer database is the most valuable thing you can have as a retailer. Established customers are people who have already visited your store; they've already joined your community, they have already purchased from you – these are the people you want to sell to.”

But without a solution to seamlessly capture instore purchasing the data, retailers are only seeing half of the picture: 

“This is what I love about Marsello! It integrates with Point-of-Sale so that the marketing activity we are running is driven by all purchasing behavior, both in-store and online.”

Creating a go-to tech stack

We all have our favorite ‘go-tos’. Firestone Digital's 'essential’ technology recommendations are chosen to support a retail strategy that they know works. 

“I always have a recommended tech stack. The truth is my clients want advice; they want someone else to do the hard work to find out what's out there! We always recommend Shopify for eCommerce, Lightspeed for POS, and Marsello for marketing. We also have a suite of products we add to the mix as needed. It's important to us that we have a relationship with the apps we recommend. This means we know the developers, we work closely with them, and we trust them to support our clients as well as we do.”

One of Sam’s clients, Frankie Say Relax, launched with Marsello at the beginning of June this year with Firestone’s tech stack (including Marsello). By using a combination of automation, targeted one-off email campaigns, SMS and by launching their loyalty program, Frankie Say Relax has grown their marketable database by 10% and has generated 45x ROI on their Marsello subscription.

Final words: building an agency partner network

Marsello is growing, and having recently been included in the Shopify Plus Certified App partner program, we are looking for leading Shopify agency partners like Firestone Digital. We look forward to working alongside more and more Shopify agency partners to bring powerful, measurable marketing technology to the world's omnichannel retailers. 

Omnichannel retail trends will continue to shape the retail landscape in 2021. Consumers are continuing to demand exceptional customer experience, both online and in-store. It also includes the transition between the two. If there’s friction, you risk losing customers. Omnichannel marketing provides a seamless transition for your customers.

So what do you need to be implementing in your business? After helping hundreds of businesses build successful omnichannel marketing plans, we can see the trends emerging. We know what is going to turn visitors into customers, increase customer loyalty and improve revenue. Here are the important trends to watch and how to implement them.

Quick links:

What is omnichannel retailing?

Omnichannel retailing is a retail strategy that integrates all of your offline and digital channels. By taking a customer-centric approach, high-touch shopping experiences take place across multiple channels.

For example, when retailers integrate these channels, customers can check inventory online before heading in-store to complete their purchases. This creates a positive customer experience which drives customer loyalty. And the more loyal your customers are, the more likely they are to become brand advocates.

Omnichannel marketing ensures that customers receive a cohesive shopping experience. By creating a seamless experience between sales and marketing channels, you can build trust and brand engagement.

8 Omnichannel retail trends to follow in 2021

The major retail omnichannel trends that we are seeing are an increase in the rate and amount of change. Customers want to purchase in new places and in new ways, especially contactless methods. Personalization and loyalty are creating better customer experiences. These can be driven by machine learning and AI technologies. Here are the key trends to follow and embrace:

1. Increased digital transformation

Retail digital transformation has accelerated in the last year. Those that didn’t have a digital presence suddenly found that they needed to set up a website, ordering platform, or digital communications strategy. This trend will continue as businesses see benefits and customers continue to expect digital offerings.

Your business needs to be set up for digital experiences. This way as shoppers transition across your different channels, their customer experience can be continually refined and improved. Processes that were once hastily set up can now be rethought and improved. By using data from existing customer experiences, you can tailor these processes to become exceptional.

2. Shopping-enabled social media experience

Social media has become a great way to show off your products, grow your audience, provide customer support and drive traffic to your website. While it’s still a powerful tool for enabling all of these things, it's also developed into so much more. Increasingly, businesses and ensure their social media channels are shopping enabled, meaning their customers don’t need to leave the platform they're browsing from to make a purchase.

Social media retail is more seamless than taking them onto your website to complete the transaction. The more friction you can remove, the higher your conversion rate will be. You can even go one step further and, if it's in your marketing strategy, make the most of influencers by making their posts shoppable. All of this provides you with more data on which posts are driving the most sales while also improving the customer experience.

Let's see this in action.

Sustainable Tomorrow is an innovator of environmentally-friendly bamboo electric toothbrushes based in Ireland. They maximize the impact of their eCommerce store by making use of Shopify's Facebook integration, giving shoppers the ability to make a purchase straight from the company's Facebook page. 

By removing steps from the shopping process, Sustainable Tomorrow is able to elevate its customers' experience with the brand and hit the ground running with positive customer relationships. From here, it's much easier for the brand to nurture customer loyalty and maximize their customer lifetime value. We can't wait to see Sustainable Tomorrow's growth with their bamboo electric toothbrushes and other sustainability-focused products.

3. Bridging the gap between the online and offline experience

Augmented reality is a great way to blend online and offline experiences. It allows customers to view products to see how they’ll look in real life. You can use this for virtually trying on make-up, clothing, or shoes. Or allow customers to see how home furnishings or televisions will look in their space.

Integrating mobile experiences into your retail store can help make the shopping process faster for customers. Large format or big-box retailers can help guide customers to the exact aisle where the product they’re looking for is located. Or utilize click-and-collect to speed up check-out processes.

Let’s look at an example from a big player.

AllBirds took the world by storm with their revolutionary wool sneakers – but for a long time, they were solely an eCommerce store. Even now, their brick-and-mortar stores aren’t available in every country that they ship to. So how can their customers get an idea of the product in action? How will it look on them and does it suit their style or needs? Recently, AllBirds released their own app which allows customers to try the sneakers on with AR technology.

Source: AllBirds

What did the multinational retailer have to say about the exceptional addition to their customers’ shopping experience?

“Shopify continues to be a very important partner, but as a vertical retailer, we understand the importance of providing unique, brand-aligned experiences for our customers,” an Allbirds rep told Retail Brew.

4. Contactless customer experience

The COVID-19 experience for many retailers has been tough. However, it has encouraged the adoption of some technological advances. Especially around contactless shopping and omnichannel retailing. This can range from paying via an app for in-store purchases to curbside pick-up.

Setting up digital customer loyalty programs is a great way to implement a contactless customer experience in your business. Reducing the need for loyalty or stamp cards means one less physical interaction. It also allows you to improve your loyalty system with better tracking, segmentation, and data collection. This can help you with targeted marketing campaigns in the future.

5. Increase in personalized shopping experience

Understanding your customers and providing them with tailored messaging is becoming increasingly important. It’s also easy to implement with the right omnichannel marketing platform. Utilizing the data you collect from customers online and in-store allows you to reach out with relevant, timely information.

Creating tailored messaging can mean reaching out with specific offers that you know are likely to trigger a purchase. Automation allows you to use triggers such as unredeemed discounts or loyalty points to make contact with valuable information. This personalized shopping experience makes customers more likely to engage with your SMS and email marketing.

Let’s look at another augmented reality example to understand how AR can be used to create a personalized shopping experience – particularly in these post-pandemic times where travel is largely inaccessible but personal interaction is craved so deeply.

Vivant Wines have gone above and beyond to create a customer experience that will leave any shopper buzzing. At-home, personalized wine tasting through a dedicated Vivant-created platform!

Michael Baum, owner and creator at Vivant, was motivated to “recreate the magic of wine experiences without the carbon footprint of physical travel.” On creating the immersive experience, he said, “We have brought together an international team of wine educators, product designers, software engineers, and media producers to create a new platform where people can meet responsible winemakers around the world and taste their wines alongside expert wine advisors, wherever they are.”

Source: Vivant Wines

Customers purchase an ‘experience kit’ through Vivant's website, selecting a variety of wine tasters such as 'Food and Wine Pairings'. Each listing includes a summary of each wine they'll receive and details on when the next online tasting session will occur. They’re then able to join the dedicated immersive tasting experience, offered through Vivant’s platform. In these sessions, customers are introduced to knowledgeable industry professionals and educated on the wines they’re tasting. 

While this kind of example isn’t necessarily accessible to every retailer, it’s thinking outside the box and engaging customers in a new and enthralling way we love! It doesn’t get much more personalized than this. And with a clear customer funnel and purchase intent, it’s easy for Vivant to re-engage these customers and nurture their loyalty.

6. Wide use of digital payments

Digital payments were on the rise long before 2020. But it is one of the online retail trends that has picked up the pace. Many customers are using Apple Wallet or AliPay to be able to shop without their cards. Also, peer-to-peer platforms like Venmo and cryptocurrencies are becoming more widely accepted.

Customer demand is driving up the use of cashless alternatives. In 2017, the industry was worth $3 trillion. By the end of 2021, it’s estimated to be up to $6.6 trillion. Allowing your customers to pay how and when they want will increase sales.

7. Driving store traffic via mobile promotions and loyalty programs 

Omnichannel marketing also needs to include triggers to encourage purchase. Customer loyalty programs are a simple way to drive customers back in-store or online to repurchase. Automated triggers, rewards, and reminders put your program on autopilot so that you know you are reaching your customers at the right time.

Using loyalty programs can help create buzz. bCODE, a brick-and-mortar destination for Skechers and Havaianas in Nigeria, did just this when they launched theirs. Utilizing a ‘double points’ campaign, they achieved a 20% open rate and a 94% increase in customer’s average loyalty points spent.

8. Increased use of AI and Machine learning

Machine learning and AI are allowing retailers to provide better personalization. By better understanding your customers, what they like, and what they need, you can provide them with tailored marketing. This enhances the overall customer experience, which leads to higher customer lifetime value.

Yuccs, a sustainable and ultra-comfortable shoe brand, uses this approach to create powerful email marketing campaigns designed to engage different customer segments and increase conversions. For example, in 2019 they segmented clients based on multiple factors - lead origin as well as their existing interactions and purchases. This level of customer understanding and personalization saw a 38% revenue boost.

Final words

Omnichannel retail trends will continue to have an impact across the sector in 2021. Adopting these in your business can drive more traffic to your store or website. They can initiate sales, improve loyalty and increase customer lifetime value.

Understanding which of these options will work best for your business can be challenging. The team at Marsello can help you design and implement an omnichannel marketing strategy that is right for you. Get in touch with the team today to request a free demo.

When creating an effective marketing strategy for your business, consider all of the different customer touchpoints. Focus on learning how shoppers like to move between different engagement channels (for example, browsing on social media to shopping online) and what information they are looking for while interacting with your store and similar stores. 

Building all of this into an omnichannel marketing strategy allows you to ensure that you’re providing your customers with a consistent customer experience. This is true for both retail and eCommerce businesses, as well as those omnichannel retailers.

Some businesses get overwhelmed when planning and creating a cohesive marketing strategy, especially as they begin considering every single touchpoint and every single customer. Instead, use these tips to design a realistic strategy that will engage most customers, while ensuring your marketing is doing the hard work for your long-term and you’re not likely to become overwhelmed.

Why should your business use omnichannel marketing?

Consider the whole customer journey from awareness to consideration to purchase; your customers are likely to have multiple different touchpoints and interactions with your business. Research shows that more than half of customers engage with three to five channels during each journey, highlighting the importance of consistency across all of these channels.

Omnichannel marketing enhances the customer experience you’re providing by creating consistency, which, in turn, increases sales and improves loyalty. Customers want fast, efficient transactions and solutions. Providing this can help reduce acquisition costs and grow your business faster. This means better value for your customers and you.

8 Omnichannel marketing strategy tips to boost ROI

Below, we’re going to dive into the eight tips that will help you begin creating, rolling out, and analyzing your omnichannel marketing strategy. The primary goal is to increase your return on investment, so bringing all the data into one place allows you to compare tactics to ensure you’re creating the best strategy possible. Not sure if omnichannel marketing is right for you? Learn how omnichannel strategy is quickly becoming the future of retail.

1) Identify the channels that your audience is interested in

Working out who your customer is, beyond just demographics like age and gender, can help you better define which channels you need to prioritize. Omnichannel experiences don’t have to combine all potential touchpoints. Instead, knowing which channels your ideal customers spend the most time on will help you narrow your focus.

Once you know which channels, understanding the device they use and what content they want is essential to a successful strategy. Some people watch videos on Facebook, others on YouTube. Are they watching television on a tablet or a TV? What device do they use to check their emails? Are your emails and website optimized for various screen sizes? And does all of this marketing clearly represent your brand and your product offering, and how you expect your customers to engage with them?

2) Keep the brand consistent across platforms

Building consistent branding across platforms ensures that your customers aren’t confused, and they can immediately know that it’s your brand they’ve scrolled across. When designing your omnichannel strategy, you need to find a balance between creating consistency and channel-specific content.

One of the best ways to do this is to leverage existing content into other platform-specific pieces. For example, taking an infographic from a webinar to create a social media post or turning a blog post into quotes for Twitter. This not only builds consistency but also provides better returns from each content piece you create as you can use it more.

3) Leverage new marketing channels and marketing automation

Rather than being stuck in the past, look at how you can embrace new marketing channels and automation to improve the customer experience you’re providing. New omnichannel marketing solutions can help streamline your processes, save you money and increase sales. Marketing automation can help reach your customers at the right time, and also improve revenue.

There can also be increased returns when using technology like augmented or virtual reality that allows customers to try before they buy. This can be for furniture, clothing, or make-up, where customers can see products in real situations or on themselves. In fact, we wrote about this over on Shopify’s blog when sharing our predictions for the future of retail post-COVID-19.

4) Use data to gain business advantage

An omnichannel marketing strategy provides you with data that allows you to understand your customers better. The data and insights you gather from digital channels need to be analyzed to see where your customers are coming from, how they’re engaging with your brand, and what it takes to turn them into paying customers. 

For example, you might see high numbers of followers on Instagram, but working with the data can help show what content drives customers through to conversion and what content results in likes but no action. Or you could learn how retargeting ads work for your customers that have abandoned their carts and whether you can convert them.

5) Listen and respond to your audience through your marketing channels

Creating an omnichannel approach to your marketing allows you to create consistent engagement with your customers in a variety of places. This includes in-store, online, and through multiple different channels (like social media). You can also craft refined, personalized messaging that’s relevant to each customer. While it goes without saying that social media is a wonderful tool for retailer-to-customer (and vice versa) engagement, one of the biggest complaints customers have about a brands' behavior on social media, is their lack of response when messaged. Consistency is essential and it’s times like these that automation becomes a powerful addition to any marketing strategy. 

Let’s create a scenario. 

A customer, let’s call them John, has contacted your brand through Facebook messenger to let you know that they really enjoy shopping in-store but their most recent product wasn’t what they expected and they are dissatisfied with the service they’ve received. It’s one thing to respond directly to John with an apology and an offer of (for example) a free replacement – but what else could you be doing? What if you were to create a ‘nurture’ flow for a specific segment of at-risk customers who’ve left negative or dissatisfied feedback? By collecting customer data at the POS, you’ll be able to find John’s purchase (and therefore contact details) and add him to your segment. From here, John first receives his personalized apology and offer. He’ll also get curated communications that nurture him towards making another purchase and once again become a loyal customer with your brand. Once he has made that purchase, John simply exits the segment and the automated flow.

Automated email flows allow you to create extra communication touchpoints with maximum impact and minimum effort. By setting up procedures, automations and ensuring you have the right people on board to engage with your audience (no matter where they chose to contact you). This will ensure customers like John feel appreciated and loyal to your brand. It’s simple engagement like this that enhances the customer experience and increases the likelihood of both purchase and repeat purchase.

6) Make use of offline opportunities

Your customers’ world exists both online and offline. Whether you have a physical presence with retail stores or not, there are still plenty of ways to utilize offline opportunities in your omnichannel campaigns. With a strong understanding of your customer, you can look to show up in other channels like radio, branded merchandise, magazine ads, event sponsorships, or direct mail. In fact, one of the strongest approaches is to simply ensure your branding and your customer journey are consistent at every touchpoint and this means that when they’re in-store with you, they feel it’s just as easy to explore, browse and engage as it is online.

Ensure that you continue to maintain a consistent brand voice by selecting the right channels. Also, make sure you leverage this content for other uses as well. Photographers, videographers, writers, and influencers can all create online content from your offline experiences.

7) Personalize the customer journey

One of the benefits of using omnichannel marketing software is the ability to create personalized interactions which result in an exceptional customer experience. Technology that allows you to send SMS, email, and push notifications that are relevant, timely, and useful can help to drive sales. 

Before you begin, ensure you spend time crafting the right messaging for each channel, especially if customers will be receiving more than one. You also want to ensure you’re only using the channels that are going to provide value to your customers so that you’re generating a return on investment.

8) Analyze and retarget your customers

Most customers need to see or hear about a product more than once. Or they need time to compare alternatives. Or they may simply have forgotten to complete a purchase. Omnichannel advertising tracks your customers to gently remind them about your products after an initial interaction. This is where retargeting can help increase your sales. 

Using data from across social, web traffic, and email can help you track people through their customer journey. Integrated platforms automatically collate data from across your various touchpoints to know who to interact with and what advertising to serve them to improve conversion.

Final words

Creating an omnichannel marketing strategy can help increase revenue, enhance customer experience and help you better understand your customers. Learning which channels your audience uses, how to best show up on them, and new ones as they launch gives you the data to understand, listen to and respond to your customers. 

Using Marsello allows you to do this on a single platform, creating efficient systems that pull all your data in one place. This means you can personalize the experience for your customers which drives customer loyalty and retention.

To better understand these two topics, we’ll break down their definitions, the metrics for tracking them and show you which is going to increase your revenue over time. Whether you’re running a small, online shop or a multi-site retailer, understanding these topics will take your business to the next level.

Quick links:

1. 1. 1. What is customer loyalty
      2. What is customer retention
      3. Customer Loyalty vs Customer Retention: What is the difference
      4. What are the customer retention metrics that matter
      5. Should retail and eCommerce businesses focus on customer loyalty or customer retention?
      6. How to turn shoppers into loyal customers
      7. Why is it important to track customer data to understand loyalty and retention
         

What is customer loyalty

Building strong relationships with your customers helps to establish a positive view of your business. This in turn helps to create loyal customers. Building these bridges with your customers requires a proactive approach to ensure that their needs are being met, their interactions are smooth, and that they feel valued.

The major benefit of customer loyalty is that they’re more likely to stay with you, buy more from you as well as recommending your business to their friends and family. This means more than just spending more. Becoming a loyal brand advocate means that these customers are out there vouching for your business.

What is customer retention

Customer retention is the set of practices and procedures you put in place to help keep your customers engaged with your business. This leads to increased recurring revenue as they continue to spend. It is often tracked through churn, the number of customers that stop purchasing or never become repeat purchasers. 

It also helps to keep customer acquisition costs down, as you build a group of customers providing reliable, regular revenue. Keeping customers is generally cheaper than acquiring new ones, so keeping your existing base happy and spending can reduce your overall business costs whilst increasing earnings.

Customer Loyalty vs Customer Retention: What is the difference

So how do you define customer retention vs customer loyalty? They are closely aligned, and there is often an overlap of actions that drive the two.

Loyalty measures a customer’s predisposition to select a business entity as a preference and indicates a certain resistance to competitors. Retention is a measure of whether an existing customer continues to do business with you and the acts to make this happen.

Loyal customers have a certain stickiness to your business which can make them easier to keep and more valuable rather than just focusing on keeping them through mechanisms that make brand switching hard. 

What are the customer retention metrics that matter

There are several customer retention metrics that you should be tracking to better understand your customer lifecycle. The first and most common is customer churn. You can calculate this on a scale that is relevant for your business, but the basic measurement is: 

• Annual Churn Rate = (Number of Customers at Start of Year - Number of Customers at End of Year) / Number of Customers at Start of Year

A certain amount of churn is natural, but if this reaches between 5-7% it can be an early warning sign that you are not retaining customers and something isn’t right.

Repeat Purchase Ratio (RPR) is a great indicator of customer loyalty. To calculate:

• Repeat Purchase Ratio = Number of Returning Customers / Number of Total Customers

This shows the number of customers that are staying loyal and sticking with your business.

Should retail and eCommerce businesses focus on customer loyalty or customer retention

For all businesses, you should be focused on both customer retention and loyalty.

If you’re a retail business, building customer loyalty often comes through individual interactions. But how do you know if you’re succeeding? Setting up loyalty program systems will allow you to track individual customers’ spending over time. This data will help you better understand their habits and if they are staying with you.

If you’re an eCommerce business, tracking customer retention is usually quite straightforward. You can see your customers' most recent purchase, purchase history, and overall spend. You can easily benchmark this against your other customers to better understand individual behavior and what areas you need to improve. Understanding the loyalty of your customers can take a bit more work, but should not be forgotten. You might need to send surveys like Net Promoter Score to better understand what your customers think about your business.

How to turn shoppers into loyal customers

So how do you build a base of loyal customers? By tracking data like purchase frequency and average order value, you can better understand which of your customers are loyal to your business. To encourage loyalty, you can employ a variety of customer retention strategies. 

Improving customer service will help to enhance the customer experience you’re providing and help turn retention into loyalty. Experience is one of the easiest ways to differentiate your business from your competition. Using customer accounts and loyalty programs is another way to increase your repeat customer rate, especially if you can provide discounts or special offers as rewards.

Why is it important to track customer data to understand loyalty and retention

The best way to understand your customer retention and loyalty is through tracking customer data, including the customer journey. Customer retention technology will help you understand how long your customers are sticking with your business, at what points they drop off, and areas where you have an opportunity to build stronger relationships.

Metrics that show you customer retention are a great starting point and it can be tempting to focus purely on this. But customer loyalty is going to bring you longer-term success and financial stability. So make sure you’re also looking at metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

Final words

It can be tempting to zero in on customer retention alone, but these customers aren’t necessarily going to stay with you for the long term. They’re likely to switch brands for a better offer. Instead, putting your energy into building loyal customers will set your business up for long-term success.

Using a product like Marsello’s all-in-one marketing platform can help you better understand your customers and the customer experience you’re providing. This will help build customer loyalty for your business, leading to better financial outcomes for you and improved interactions for your customers.

When you’re building your marketing strategy, you need to consider multi-platform marketing as a method of achieving strong customer loyalty and retention. Omnichannel marketing allows you to provide a consistent customer journey through various touchpoints with your business, both in-store and online.

Increasingly, shoppers are engaging with their favorite stores through multiple mediums, from email and SMS to websites, social media, and direct advertising. Creating a strategy that incorporates all of these platforms will ensure that you are not only staying front of mind by recapturing your customers’ attention, but you’re also improving their experience with your store at every step of the funnel. 

In this blog, we focus on the multi-platform aspects of omnichannel marketing, giving you actionable steps to create a multi-platform strategy that you can ensure stretches across all facets of your business. By the end of this blog, you’ll have the tools to start putting together your own cross-channel to omnichannel marketing strategy.

What are multi-platform and cross-platform marketing

You may be asking yourself, what is cross-platform marketing? Sometimes called multi-platform or cross-channel marketing, both simply refer to a strategy of marketing to your customers and potential customers across all possible touchpoints, thereby optimizing customers; engagement throughout every point of their journey. It allows you to engage with your audience wherever they are, such as email inboxes, websites using targeted advertising, and more.

By being in multiple places, your audience can interact and shop with you on their terms. Whether they like to shop from their Instagram feed or prefer in-store experiences after they’ve done their online research, you can support shoppers to engage with your store in the way that they prefer. Just look at how Federation + incorporates email, SMS, and loyalty marketing into their online and in-store marketing strategy.

So when does cross-platform marketing become omnichannel?

Short answer: omnichannel doesn’t just stop at multiple touchpoints, it also encourages the customer to shop across all sales channels. Omnichannel broadens the customers’ engagement with your brand at every level and at every touchpoint.

What are the benefits of using multi-platform marketing?

Multi-platform marketing creates an improved, seamless experience for your customers as they interact with your store through different marketing channels and sales channels. By ensuring your marketing strategy is geared towards capturing the customer at every stage of the funnel, you help to drive customer loyalty and can even increase the overall customer lifetime value as shoppers feel more connected to your business.

Using a cross-channel marketing platform will help you achieve all this, without any added stress. By gathering the necessary data and insights (such as previous purchases and abandoned carts), you ensure that your marketing is showing up in the right places, in the right way, at the right time. And timing is everything! It’s the difference between the store that bombards customers with inconsistent, impersonal messages, and the retailer that knows their customers and sends targeted, personalized marketing that captures the shopper’s attention because it resonates with their current movements. Brandini Toffee has achieved astounding results with personalized messaging by sending an automated abandoned cart email that lets customers know they’ve still got items left to purchase. The email is triggered to send a short time after a customer abandons an online shopping cart and the Brandini Toffee team has seen as much as a 583% increase in attributable sales with Marsello from this email alone!

6 ways to bring in new customers through a multi-platform marketing strategy

So what are the ways you can take action to build a multi-platform marketing strategy? Firstly, begin with your customers. Knowing who and where they are, how they are behaving and what they’re looking for will help you reach them with the right content at the right time. The final step is to analyze and ensure you’re getting the results you need. Here are the six steps to action today:

1. Focus your marketing strategy around your customers

Begin your marketing strategy by understanding where your customers are, what they need from you, and what resonates with them. Integrating your point-of-sale and eCommerce platforms allows you to gain insights into customer behavior. You can track your customers' transactions and interactions across email, in-store and online to build out customer profiles.

You can then begin building out a marketing strategy that is relevant. Instead of generic campaigns, create tailored messaging around promotions, abandoned carts, or loyalty campaigns to cut through the marketing messages bombarding your customers.

2. Create a consistent and integrated experience for your customers

Customers want to seamlessly move between platforms. From an email or text message, they should be able to switch to a website, loyalty platform, or instore to purchase. Having to re-enter information or hunt down discount codes puts up additional barriers that can prevent your customers from completing their transactions.

The level of customer service they receive across platforms should also be consistent. Receiving quick responses to questions via chat but a lack of communication on email creates confusion and frustration for customers. Instead, a consistent customer experience increases customer satisfaction.

3. Understand the demographics and how they interact on each platform

To take the next step in demographic marketing, once you’ve defined your overall audience, you need to further segment your customers. You can then begin to understand how different market segments engage with each platform. This will define the activities for each platform.

When building your marketing strategy, think about how each platform can be best utilized while still staying true to the campaign and strategy. Are text messages relevant and how can location triggers best be utilized? You can then leverage your content efficiently across platforms.

4. Create unique content on each social media platform

Getting specific about your social media channel strategy ensures that you are sharing relevant information. 41% of people will unfollow a brand that doesn’t. If your audience finds your content boring, repetitive or they’re embarrassed to be seen to be following you, they will unfollow.

Although your audience members will most likely follow you on multiple platforms, they won’t necessarily interact the same on each. Scrolling through Instagram they are looking for short videos or beautiful images, whereas YouTube gives you the chance to create longer, more informative videos. Use platform appropriate storytelling to build an emotional connection with your followers.

5. Analyze the results of your marketing efforts and make adjustments accordingly

It’s important to analyze the results of each marketing tactic and compare across platforms. This will highlight where you’re performing well and where you can improve. Key indicators you want to look for are engagement rates like open rates of emails and tracking through to purchase. You can then look to optimize your cross-platform marketing.

You may find that some platforms are performing better for you than others. Customers may respond well to email reminders but have a low engagement when it comes to text messaging. Investigating which tactics are driving the traffic that is actually converting to purchases allows you to better allocate time and resources.

6. Cross-promote your brand

To gain the best response to your marketing activities, you’ll need to set up cross-media marketing strategies. It gives you the greatest reach and maximizes your engagement. Your audience will often need to hear from you 2-4 times before they will decide to purchase. Engaging them on multiple platforms can help you achieve this level of reach.

Some simple strategies to help you cross-promote your brand include providing incentives for customers to provide you with additional information. This could be an email address to send a receipt to or a phone number to use to follow-up.

Multi-platform marketing needs to be included in all marketing strategies to ensure you are meeting your audience where they are, with relevant content at the right time. Begin by understanding where your customers are and how they are using different platforms, before strategizing how to create channel-specific content. Finally don’t forget to analyze the results to ensure you’re seeing a return for your investment.

Final words

To help you manage this whole process, a multi-channel marketing platform like Marsello can crunch the data, capture customer information, and motivate them to shop. All while building strong relationships that establish customer loyalty.

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.