In the age of coexisting social media advertising, influencer marketing, TV commercials, and billboard campaigns, there are endless opportunities for a brand to stand out and set itself apart from its competitors. But which strategy is the best? All! It is key to pop up into consumers’ lives whenever and wherever possible. Thanks to advances in technologies, today, this is easier than ever before.

Modern consumers are shopping on diverse channels. This is why a holistic approach wins through and marketers increasingly aim to create unified and unique user experiences. In this article, we gathered examples showing how to bring offline, online and mobile together to provide a seamless experience with various touch points to consumers.
 

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

But before marveling at their creativity, let us dig deeper into the topic. What exactly is an omnichannel experience? To put it in a nutshell: It is a multi-channel approach to marketing targeting direct engagement with customers – no matter where they are, what they are doing, or what device they are using.

But now that multi-channel comes into play: Is omnichannel actually the same as multi-channel? No, in fact, all omnichannel experiences use multiple channels, but not all multi-channel experiences are omnichannel. Multi-channel just means that a brand has several (social) media platforms without any touch points whereas omnichannel demands for aligning messages, goals, objectives, and designs across each channel and device and supports a cross-channel relationship.
 

Best Practices for Intriguing Omnichannel Experiences

These five brands which have already implemented outstanding omnichannel experiences in their strategy illustrate very well how this can look like in practice.
 

Neiman Marcus

It is no secret that today’s consumers expect brands to know their shopping preferences. This is why personalization grows in popularity. In response to this trend, luxury retail chain Neiman Marcus developed digital channels that are able to identify behavior patterns and learn with every interaction. If a customer repeatedly searches for a certain size, the website will remember and show fitting search results that are available at the nearest shop location. Neiman Marcus also uses geolocation to provide their clients with information on relevant local events or new arrivals of favorite brands. Email marketing and printed direct mail campaigns round up their approach. With tools such as the Memory Mirror, they combine offline and online on-site, too. This technology enables their customers to record 360-degree videos of themselves trying on clothes and save them in the mobile app. The virtual dressing room helps them to decide when they are not sure whether to buy a product or not.
 

Glade

In order to promote their new scent line, Glade came up with the idea of a Museum of Feelings. Therefore, they set up a pop-up installation in Manhattan consisting of several rooms inspired by their five new scents standing for the emotional states of optimism, joy, invigorated, exhilarated, calm. Through visuals, sound, touch, and smell they wanted to evoke the particular emotions in their visitors. Therefore, Glade positioned inter alia kaleidoscopic mirrors and LED jellyfish forest to pair experiences with those emotions. Additionally, they built a mobile app which lets users take a moody selfie using the accelerometer as a barometer of emotions. For changing the building’s colors according to the mood of the city, the fragrance company collected data such as trending social media topics or weather reports. At the end of the exhibit, customers entered a Glade themed room with a smelling table and a wall of candles to buy aiming to encourage impulse shoppers to directly go for the new products.
 

Topshop

During London Fashion Week 2015, Topshop launched an omnichannel campaign featuring Twitter-supported billboards. The screens displayed real-time word clouds using the hashtag #LFW to show fashion trends emerging on the runway at London Fashion Week complemented by a correlating selection of Topshop’s in-store stock. This was extremely smart as each billboard was within a ten minutes’ walk from a physical Topshop location. so that the inventory was instantly shoppable. Those with a high affinity to online shopping had the possibility to tweet one of the trending words to Topshop’s Twitter account and would then receive a link to a curated shopping list in line with the trend that they could purchase online. In the end, the outcome was impressive: The apparel brand recorded a high boost in sales of nearly 25 percent across the featured categories.
 

There is No Getting Around Omnichannel

As you can see, although one should not underestimate the effort to execute a strategy successfully, it pays off: An IDC study revealed that customers who shop across multiple channels bring in a 30 percent higher lifetime value. A Harvard Business Review study saying that more channels generate more revenue affirms this. We are sure: Sooner or later omnichannel will be omnipresent thanks to technological advances that not only makes the lives of consumers easier but also the planning of such campaigns.