Want loyal buyers? Don’t wait for them to come to you. Instead, meet them where they are with consistently delightful experiences.
You need omnichannel marketing to create seamless customer journeys across all relevant platforms.
However, managing a consistent marketing presence across all your channels with manual processes is astronomically difficult. Why go through such hassles when AI is there to streamline your operations? All you need to know is how to use it right.
While AI has multiple use cases, building a cohesive online experience is one of its perks.
Feels intimidating? We bring you 5 tips to make using AI in omnichannel marketing easy for you.
5 Powerful Tips to Use AI in Omnichannel Marketing
Here is how you can use AI to improve your omnichannel marketing:
1) Use AI for data-driven customer insights
Customer data helps you understand what buyers need and expect from you. What are their challenges? What does the audience prefer in different channels?
Sure, you could collect third-party data. However, with stricter data regulation laws, they are not ideal anymore. Your best bet to mastering consumer insights is collecting zero-party and first-party data — and AI can help you collect them in real time.
You can use website analytics tools to track on-site customer interactions and understand their likes and dislikes. Which pages do they visit the most? How much time do they spend there? This paves the way for data-driven UX improvements.
Social media monitoring tools can monitor brand mentions and trending conversations, run sentiment analysis, and monitor competitor campaigns. You can use these data to leverage trends on time and improve brand visibility and reputation on social media.
For example, Agility PR offers a media monitoring tool that generates instant insights, like:
- Contextual media presence analysis
- Sentiment analysis
- Brand mention characterization
- Audience likelihood
You can set up your tracking criteria, and the platform will notify you of every relevant media coverage.
Invest in an email marketing tool that gets you real-time analytics data. You can track email open rate, conversion rate, CTR, unsubscribe rate, etc. These data points let you identify inconsistencies in experiences and optimize email flows.
You should also use an AI-powered CRM that can record customer interactions, produce transcripts, integrate with AI meeting tools to streamline meeting summaries and action points, and offer insights on customer satisfaction. It helps identify issues in CX and resolve them promptly.
2) Personalize customer journeys with machine learning
A personalized omnichannel market is the holy grail for consistent audience engagement.
You tailor touchpoints to individual preferences while ensuring each interaction is connected to the entire experience. This eliminates inconsistencies between channels and prevents distraction, keeping the focus on your value. Result? Seamless customer engagement on every channel.
For example, Amazon offers personalized recommendations, whether you are shopping from your desktop or your mobile. They will also show you relevant ads on your social media and send tailored product suggestion emails and app notifications on your phone.
Use your AI-powered CRM to segment customers based on demographics, behavior, and psychographics. Then, implement NLP algorithm-based email software. They analyze customer data to craft highly personalized email content.
You can also use an AI-driven platform to create and run highly personalized ads on social media and other websites.
Finally, tools like Optimizely, Adobe Target, and Braze can adjust your website content, emails, and chatbot responses based on real-time user behavior. You can leverage micro-moments to boost conversions.
3) Automate omnichannel campaigns for consistent engagement
Managing omnichannel campaigns can cause inconsistencies, disrupting the entire CX. You will get overwhelmed while taking care of multiple touchpoints and miss out on sending timely communication.
Automating these interactions with AI tools streamlines engagement in omnichannel marketing.
You have already segmented your audience. Now, set up trigger-based campaigns according to specific behaviors and actions. A new customer signed up? The system will send a welcome email. Didn’t complete checkout after adding products to the cart? The system will send cart abandonment notifications and emails.
For instance, The QR code Generator can help create intelligent QR codes that track customer interactions across different channels. These dynamic codes can link print ads to digital landing pages, helping businesses measure offline-to-online engagement and collect real-time data. By generating unique QR codes for different campaigns, companies can precisely track which marketing materials drive the most customer interest and conversions.
You can even identify what’s causing a buyer to drop off through AI-based heat mapping and customer journey mapping. For example, someone may hesitate to purchase because of shipping costs. You can run social media ads and send emails with free shipping offers.
You can also use automated marketing tools to monitor your loyalty program data and send relevant communication to individual customers, like McDonald’s.
For B2B companies, an active presence on LinkedIn is crucial for engagement. Try using a LinkedIn personal branding tool to automate content creation, scheduling, repurposing, and engagement analytics.
4) Optimize marketing strategies using predictive analytics
We know how to use AI to maintain consistency across marketing channels and for content creation. However, ensuring your effort stays relevant to changing customer preferences is also important.
You can guess the trajectory of audience needs and expectations, but that’s not always going to be accurate. Solution? Predictive analytics.
First, use an AI-powered data-cleaning tool to remove duplicates and data inconsistencies. It’s a crucial step since you are consolidating data from multiple sources.
The most reliable CRM comes with built-in predictive analytics features. They can show you:
- Optimal times to post social media content and send emails and push notifications.
- Your most effective advertising platforms (Google Ads, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn)
- Expected conversion rates per channel
- Upcoming demand
That way, your team can schedule content based on the best posting timing for each social media channel. You can eliminate ineffective and underperforming channels to save costs, take necessary actions to boost conversion for each channel, and prepare your website to handle an increased traffic load.
5) Integrate AI chatbots for seamless customer support
Chatbots are no longer “nice-to-have” elements. Customers expect it from brands to use on multiple channels without hiccups. Your customer support team may take some time to respond, and delays can lose you sales.
So, add AI chatbots across your website, app, and social media channels to deliver 24×7 customer support. Add default options for general queries so customers can get answers easily with a tap. Keep the responses relevant to the customer’s interactions on your platforms.
For example, Domino’s Pizza’s Facebook page has a chatbot.
Their app also offers virtual customer assistance where you can track your order, submit feedback, ask questions, and contact their store.
Asana also offers a personalized chatbot on their website.
Here is a pro tip: Instead of relying solely on AI-powered chatbots, train your employees to offer prompt and relevant customer support. You should also train them to decipher customer sentiment from chats with AI-powered sentiment analysis tools.
Don’t have the budget to conduct extensive on-site training? You can use an online training software instead. This is especially useful if you have remote employees.
Conclusion
Fearing AI will get you nowhere. But embracing its inevitability and using it correctly will make various operations easy for you — especially omnichannel marketing.
You will have tangible and real-time customer insights to tailor experiences. 24×7 chatbots can deliver prompt customer support and collect data for further personalization. Automated marketing tools will ensure timely communication delivery and run relevant ads to your audience segments.
Finally, predictive analytics will prepare you to handle rapid changes in audience preferences, keeping your campaigns consistent and relevant across all marketing channels.
