MarketingSherpa Blog

Omnichannel is a word that many marketers have become familiar with in the past year or so. It’s the evolution of multichannel marketing and, some argue, an overused buzzword.

Lisa Butler, Head of Enterprise Solutions Enablement, eBay, agrees with that statement. In the MarketingSherpa Media Center at IRCE, she sat down with Allison Banko, Reporter, MarketingSherpa, to discuss omnichannel and what it should really mean to marketers.

“So we went from multichannel, to omnichannel, to all channels — what it really means is just allowing customers to shop however they want,” Lisa said.

In its essence, the prefix omni- means “all.” For Lisa, this means “allowing customers to shop anywhere they want, receive their purchases whenever they want and giving them the best customer service.”

In her interview, Lisa explained the key to providing this engaging experience: developing creative new ways for customers to engage with a brand.

Lisa provided some examples of companies that are doing this well, such as Boxpark

Boxpark is a company in the UK that sets up pop-up stores for clothing brands in a unique way — the stores are a network of shipping containers. 

For retailers, this is a creative solution for giving the customer the best (and coolest) experience, according to Lisa.

Think outside the shipping container

You don’t have to sell exciting products, or even be a B2C company, to find creative ways to allow your customers to shop the way they want and get them excited about your brand.

Prisma, a B2B marketing services provider, took its clients on a road trip with a multichannel campaign that resulted in a 45% response rate. The marketers sent direct mail pieces and emails that reflected their campaign by showing their capabilities to print on almost any material, a service they call grand format printing.

Clients were sent on a virtual adventure to “grand” locations, which aligned with how the company wanted to showcase grand format printing.

Make online shopping easy for the customer

But being creative is only half the battle; you also need to be where the customer is.

JAM Paper & Envelope, a small office supply company, developed a segmented email campaign consisting of a retargeting, welcome and cart abandonment series. For the cart abandonment series, the team made sure that if a customer abandoned their cart at work, when they checked their tablet or phone at home, their items would be there and the customer would be able to restore their cart from any device.

This is just one of the many ways to leverage multichannel (or omnichannel, depending on who you’re talking to) marketing to let your customers shop no matter where they are.

Image attribution: Boxpark

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Categories: Ecommerce Eretail Tags: Branding, creative marketing, eBay, IRCE, multichannel, omnichannel