No omnichannel strategy for half of all marketers

Nearly half of all marketers have yet to implement an omnichannel strategy, according to a survey of over 100 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs).

Rakuten Marketing’s ‘Demystifying omnichannel marketing’ report interviewed global marketing executives to discover that in the majority of cases, many brands are currently unable to develop a more seamless approach to their marketing campaigns across multiple channels, for the simple reason that they lack the required resource and investment.

55% of respondents have yet to implement omnichannel marketing, while 34% were in the early implementation phase, and just 11% noted a sophisticated implementation, with integration across channels and online to offline.

And a lack of analytical and technical resources to make sense of data, as well as the difficulty integrating data were also cited as primary reasons for being unable  to successfully develop an omnichannel strategy.  

Danny Bagge, executive head of retail at IBM UK and Ireland recently told MyCustomer.com that no brands were currently doing omnichannel, and that few marketers were giving enough control of the brand experience to their customers; a key ingredient in order to be able to move from being ‘multichannel’ to being truly ‘omnichannel’:

“Most organisations are very product-centred so they focus on how efficiently they can get product to where it needs to be. But omnichannel is not that – instead it’s about what’s right for the customer.

“No one is doing true omnichannel at the moment because of all their technology infrastructure and legacy processes – what we now mostly see is multichannel. As a result, the constant message today is ‘where is omnichannel in my [business]?’ The next step change is getting digital into physical operations.

However, commenting on the findings Gerry O’Brien, ecommerce director, at experience day brand, Red Letter Days said that data was improving in most organisations to a point where seamless experiences were more commonplace: “Although many brands still have a long way to go, some marketers in the retail industry are championing the building of omnichannel strategies, and those are the ones that will win.

“At Red Letter Days we have been able to create a seamless and uniform brand experience online and offline because of in depth data that reveals our customers’ behaviour across the whole path to purchase. Although the increasing number of different devices can make it harder to understand the customer journey, technology is also providing marketers with the tools to understand their customers better than ever before and adapt their strategies based on the insight.”