Today’s marketers can influence consumer behavior through many channels. Direct, Social, Paid Search, Email, Display, and Organic Search are just a part of the framework that makes up available consumer touch points. This brings tech-savvy marketers closer to the customer than ever before.
But there is a problem.
Many of us have been led to believe that the channels we use to target our audience work separately from each other in silos. In reality, the customer journey is far more complex than that. It’s time for marketers to adopt a 360-degree view of their customers through omnichannel marketing: understanding the relationships across your marketing channels and delivering a seamless experience.
Know the Purpose of Your Channels
Successful marketers understand how various channels affect the customer’s buying cycle. For example, Paid Media, such as Display and pay-per-click campaigns, often lead to awareness of a particular brand but don’t necessarily drive a purchase. And that is okay! Sales or leads don’t always measure the success of a specific channel. Perhaps the purpose of these types of awareness campaigns is to capture an email, get the user to engage with the website, or build familiarity that leads to a future conversion.
Marketers often fail to consider the various channels that assist in conversion, which can profoundly impact how we evaluate campaign effectiveness. Web Analytics programs have provided marketers with tools to understand better how each specific channel contributes to the customer journey. However, with privacy changes and the deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers rely more on first-party data strategies, server-side tracking, and AI-powered attribution models to measure effectiveness.
Unify Your Data with a CRM
Every marketer faces the challenge of bridging the data gap between online and offline channels. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system helps centralize customer data, giving marketers, sales teams, and executives a clear view of interactions across multiple touchpoints. Popular platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics can integrate with analytics and marketing tools, allowing businesses to track engagement from email, social media, paid campaigns, and even offline interactions. This helps tailor messaging and improve customer relationships.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have emerged as complementary solutions for companies managing large-scale data across multiple channels. Platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Salesforce Data Cloud specialize in aggregating data from various sources (web, mobile, email, and advertising) to create a unified customer profile for deeper personalization and analytics. Businesses looking for better audience segmentation and AI-driven insights may benefit from integrating a CDP alongside their CRM.
Automate Your Omnichannel Campaigns
Marketing Automation equips marketing teams to create more personalized campaigns (based on specific user behavior) across various channels. Beyond efficiency, automation also frees up time for sales teams, making it especially valuable for industries with longer sales cycles that require ongoing lead nurturing.
Platforms such as Salesforce Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), HubSpot, and Marketo continue to play a key role. Still, advancements in AI-driven automation, such as Salesforce Einstein, Klaviyo, and predictive analytics tools, have expanded marketers’ ability to deliver highly tailored messaging at scale.
As third-party tracking capabilities decline, automation strategies increasingly rely on zero-party data (data explicitly shared by users, such as preferences and survey responses) and first-party data to fuel personalized engagement.
These three strategies will help you better understand your customer’s full journey. This will allow you to make insightful, data-driven decisions and create more compelling brand campaigns.
How Starkmedia Can Help
If you are ready to integrate your marketing channels and create seamless, automated campaigns, Starkmedia can guide you through the process. We specialize in marketing automation, CRM integrations, and customer data solutions, tailoring strategies to meet your unique needs.
Let’s connect and explore how we can streamline your marketing efforts for better results.
