Omnichannel strategy: How Burberry is winning customers

Opinion

· 16 January 2023

Nowadays, everything seems closer together and there is a constant sense of continuity thanks to the internet and technology. You can watch your favorite show anywhere without waiting 24 hours for an episode or reaching home to catch the news. You can shop online or offline and find the same experience and collection.

An omnichannel experience, which has been gradually gaining traction, will become a key focus in the upcoming years. This approach allows for a seamless continuation of interactions across multiple touchpoints.

According to Harvard Business Review, 73% of consumers love shopping across multiple channels. Omnichannel consumers have a 30% higher lifetime value than individuals shopping through a single platform.

15 years ago, the average buyer utilized two touchpoints to complete a purchase, with only 7% using more than four. Today, customers use roughly six touchpoints to conclude the purchase. Also, marketers who used three or more channels in a single campaign had a 287% greater purchase rate.

The omnichannel strategy is no longer for the sharks in the market; most businesses are adopting this strategy to meet the increased consumer demands. According to the reports, most retailers worldwide have either started with their omnichannel strategy or implemented it.

What is an omnichannel strategy?

The marketing strategy known as a omnichannel strategy uses various channels to reach the audience. The goal is to engage and interact with the same audience on various platforms around the web and physically.

Marketers often confuse multi-channel marketing strategy and omnichannel. While both seek to promote a brand to a larger audience, omnichannel focuses on finding the same audience everywhere, whereas multi-channel engages various potential audiences across all platforms.

The omnichannel strategy aims for meeting customer needs at all touch points and providing the same features and interactions on whichever platform a customer chooses to engage with the brand. These touchpoints are:

– Offline stores

– Over telephone

– Websites

– Online marketplaces like Amazon

– Mobile applications

– SMS and push notifications

– Social media platforms

– Email marketing

Omnichannel strategies were initially adopted by retail outlets; however they are now common in the home goods, grocery, cosmetics, and automobile sectors.

The core elements of the omnichannel strategy are:

Data Continuity

Companies using omnichannel strategies gather current and past customer interactions and purchases from different sources, including website cookies, social media activities, emails, and IoT data.

Automation

These platforms use customer data to automatically generate relative marketing content, recommend products, offer customer service, handle inventory, and manage related tasks.

Communication

An omnichannel strategy allows two-way interactions between consumers and brands through websites, applications, email, telephone, and other in-store interactions.

How does an omnichannel work?

The omnichannel strategy involves several interconnected platforms working togheter through coordinated mechanism. Each platform has the ability to gather crucial information, keep track of a client’s prior interactions, and support them along the way.

For example, you are looking to replace a geyser and find an exclusive collection of geysers on YouTube ads. You search the manufacturer’s site, check for the functions, and find the model is available at a nearby store. You can chat with the customer service specialist and put the item on the cart at the retailer site.

You can download the retailer app to check the cart on your smartphone. Visit the store and check if the item is in stock, how many models are available, and where to find the demo model! You can scan a QR code or near-field technology to transfer the order in your cart to the POS system and complete the sale.

An omnichannel strategy helps customers enjoy a seamless experience without entering the same data, asking the same question, or performing similar tasks on multiple platforms.

Why you should implement an omnichannel strategy

A successful brand always prioritizes customer experience, and adopting an omnichannel strategy ensures the best results. Customers prefer to avoid repeating themselves at every interaction; it’s very impersonal and makes them feel unimportant.

Omnichannel strategy can bring a difference in your consumer experience and retention pattern. Here’s 5 reasons why you shold adopt an omnichannel strategy:

1. Better customer experience

The omnichannel strategy focuses on personalized experience across devices and platforms, driving company sales, improving retention rates, and decreasing customer attrition.

2. Consistent brand image

It’s important to keep your brand’s tone and image recognizable and consistent across all of your channels. The omnichannel strategy ensures a comprehensive brand strategy that focuses on the overall experience and works within brand guidelines. Customers gain trust in your brand if you remain consistent across every channel.

3. Increase revenue

An omnichannel strategy allows consumers to engage with brands across different touchpoints and channels. Increased and diverse engagements at every stage of a consumer’s journey help a business to increase its revenue.

Companies with robust omnichannel customer interaction saw growth in annual revenue of 9.5%. In comparison, companies with mediocre omnichannel engagement grew by 3.4%.

4. Better data collection

Brands can track consumer journeys across different channels and collect their data at every step to understand their preferences and way of engagement. This data allows you to create campaigns that are preferable to your target audience.

5. Improved market segmentation and targeting

Omnichannel data collection helps brands to gain more accurate and nuanced insights into their audience. It helps segment audiences according to preferences and opens up new targeting opportunities.

For example, a computer store is offering remarketing ads to a customer who previously browsed for a mouse on the website. Then the customer visits their physical store and purchases a mouse. This data gets updated in the system, ensuring that the company doesn’t show similar ads to the customer anymore. However, the business can suggest other computer-related products to upsell and increase customer value.

What are the steps for leveraging omnichannel marketing?

While creating an omnichannel experience, a brand needs to consider how its target audience interacts with them. Here are a few essential steps to consider for leveraging omnichannel marketing.

1. Data collection

Brands must collect accurate and updated consumer data to implement an omnichannel strategy. This data helps you understand the target audience’s preference and their way of interaction, use of devices, choice of products, etc.

Every brand must implement specific data collecting and CRM tools to collect consumer data across multiple online and offline channels effectively.

2. Data analysis

You need to analyze the data collected in the first step to create a perfect marketing strategy. Brands must deploy analytics platforms that translate real-time consumer data into actionable insights.

3. Create customer journey maps

Brands must create customer journey maps for every audience to identify their steps from discovering the brand and purchasing from them, ending with the after-sale experience. It helps outline targeting campaigns by considering consumer interests, user experience, and factors that affect the purchase process.

4. Clear brand guidelines

Organizations must develop a brand identity with transparent guidelines to reach their target audience and facilitate brand awareness and recognition through personalized messages.

5. Testing the omnichannel approach

You must regularly test the omnichannel approach’s efficiency to determine whether it needs any optimization in the strategy. Brands can consider the budget, target audience, essential marketing KPIs, and other factors to create a media plan that can increase their ROI.

Here are a few more things you can do to take your marketing strategy to another level.
– Offer a Wi-Fi facility at your brick-and-mortar store to allow customers to browse their internet, learn about your brand, check for web or app-based discounts, and check reviews.
– Create educational content to engage your target audience, educate them, answer questions, and build trust across multiple channels.
– Integrate social media into your store to display valuable reviews and allow consumers to understand what they are buying.

Burberry: a successful case of omnichannel presence

According to Statista, in 2022 Burberry was valued at USD 5.9 billion. A secret behind the success of this luxury fashion brand has been exceptional and pioneering omnichannel strategies to deepen its consumer relationship.

Burberry’s most notable creation was their first social native product line, “B Series.” This luxury fashion brand joined Facebook in 2009, and its digital dominance increased massively, acquiring 16 million followers in four years.

What does the Burberry strategy consist of?

According to Burberry Annual Report 2018/2019, 2018 had a 100% sales growth in the luxury market driven by Generation Z and millennial customers compared to 85% sales in 2007. As per the financial highlights of Burberry, the brand made a revenue of $3360 million in 2022, generating an operating profit of $646 million.

Consistency

Burberry maintained its business approach across every digital platform and had a consistent brand story.

They display all the latest campaigns across every channel, both online and offline. After every launch, their products are displayed on eCommerce stores, website landing pages, and other online platforms, whereas on fashion lookbooks for offline advertisement.

Innovation and willingness to experiment

Their flagship store is one of the most technologically advanced ones in the world. Burberry’s innovative strategies include:

– Installing substantial digital screens in the store for showing brand videos and catwalk footage.

– Staff uses iPad to build online and offline customer profiles.

– The customer service team suggests to their consumers, depending on their previous understanding of taste, size, fit, and other choices.

– The brand can check stock in any store worldwide and supply it to the customer if they are on a trip.

– They have a stage for live performances, four photo studios, and one editing suite in the Regent St store.

– Burberry Retail Theatre streams live catwalk shows in different stores worldwide and on their online channels.

Burberry expects to make one-fifth of its personal luxury sales online by 2025.

Burberry has now partnered with Chinese tech Business Tencent to blend social media and retail and encourage shoppers to communicate, share and shop.

How Layerise can help you implement an omnichannel strategy

Do you wish to take your brand to the next level with a unique digital and omnichannel experience for better customer satisfaction?

Layerise technology and services can help implement your omnichannel strategy. It includes using chatbots, QR code scan onboarding, sending push notifications for product launches and warranty expiry updates, building customer profiles, localization, video highlights, and sending personalized text messages.

We help brands to build automated marketing campaigns to create new sales opportunites depending on the data collected from your target audience. With Layerise, you can personalize your marketing campaign and send personalized upselling and cross-selling techniques.

What do we do?

Layerise is a pioneering software-as-a-service provider that empowers leading consumer goods brands to deliver exceptional after-sales experiences. Specifically designed for consumer goods companies, our platform seamlessly integrates technology and digital marketing to connect brand’s sales, marketing, and service capabilities into a comprehensive solution.

By utilizing Layerise, brands can gain a deeper understanding of their customers, and customers can easily engage with the brands they purchase from throughout the entire product lifecycle. Our customer and mobile-first approach provides the most efficient way for brands to collect customer data and establish long-lasting relationships. With Layerise, consumer goods brands can elevate their after-sales strategy and drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Layerisecan help you improve your omnichannel strategy and develop a superior customer experience. We help brands meet the demand of the new-age customer and cater to their every need. As customer experience has become a crucial differentiator, you can rest assured that through Layerise, this is guaranteed. Our simple scan and onboarding option is a favorite among end-users.

Conclusion

It can be challenging to become a successful omnichannel retailer. You must build numerous touchpoints, improve customer experience, collaborate online platform presence with offline stores, and create an enhanced retail experience for individual customers. However, if you use the right tools and get assistance from experts like Layerise, designing and implementing an omnichannel approach becomes easy.