How to Use Email in Omnichannel Campaigns to Increase User Engagement

The omnichannel approach allows marketers to create consistent, deeply nurturing experiences for customers across the many different channels. Email is one of the strongest components of your omnichannel marketing strategy. It’s an owned channel based on permissions, so you never worry about it disappearing one day (remember myspace?) You can personalize it. Plus, it carries a weighty ROI not found in social media. Here’s what you need to know to use email to boost omnichannel marketing user engagement.

Why email is the anchor of your omnichannel strategy

Without email, it is impossible for your omnichannel marketing to be successful. It’s one of the oldest and most established digital platforms and holds a wealth of data. 

It’s one-on-one

Users choose to receive emails from you. This simple opt-in gives you access to their behaviors, allowing you to segment and personalize email segments to deliver greater value. Once that happens, they’re more engaged with your brand.

It’s behavior-related

The seamless omnichannel experience your customers crave starts with behavioral segmentation. You take their activities from your site and use that data to craft value-filled emails. For example, you might remind them to complete a purchase or that a piece of clothing they looked at is now on deep sale. You establish that you know them, and this builds trust.

It has the highest ROI

Email provides you with an ROI of $40 per $1 invested. And since you own your email list — it is permission-based after all — that ROI is a secure foundation for your entire omnichannel marketing strategy without question. There’s no changing algorithms or major restructuring causing an upheaval. 

Using email to increase user engagement

Email marketing offers the personalization your omnichannel strategy needs, at scale and automated based on data. Here are four ways to ramp up user engagement. 

Use Data to Build Campaigns

The foundation of all your email campaigns should be data. As you gather customer behavior data from omnichannel marketing, you can use those insights to craft emails with real value for your customers and clients. 

Keep in mind that:

• Sending emails without understanding customers through data could lead to unopened emails, unsubscribing, or marking them as spam. These actions reduce your brand’s credibility and could lead to emails ending up in spam filters.
• Data allows you to personalize campaigns and create relevant conversations. Your customer drives what content is valuable to them. In fact, personalization drives differentiation, making it a necessary and expected part of doing business.
• Data hones your customer journey by unifying other connection points for a cohesive view of the customer. 

Make Segmentation an Art Form

The next phase of data-driven campaigns is intelligent segmentation. Personalization makes customers feel like individuals, not faceless sources of revenue. When done well, intelligent segmentation drives the personalization customers crave.

Segmentation is underutilized in that companies aren’t taking full advantage of their customer’s unique attributes. Companies should be keeping these things in mind:

• Hone your lists based on more than just obvious factors like geography or age. Dig deep into personalization possibilities to offer recommendations customers may not have thought of yet. 

• Clean your lists. Segmentation can also reveal which customers aren’t interacting and which ones won’t come back. Data patterns reveal so much about your customer base, including when it’s time to let go.
• Send behavior-based emails. Customers want you to talk to them when they’re in shopping mode, interaction mode, organization mode. Whatever service you offer, the best time to grab attention is when customers are in the zone with you.

Use intelligent segmentation to avoid annoying your customers and provide nudges for action at just the right time. Sending the email at the right time involves a close understanding of behavior patterns, user habits, and previous interactions.

Connect Your Teams

If you don’t have a comprehensive view of the customer, you don’t have an omnichannel experience. Customers could leave and go somewhere else if you make them reenter the same information over and over, forget their purpose, and otherwise act as if you don’t recognize them from one touchpoint to the next.

Keep communication (and data) flowing between relevant departments

All departments must have access to customer data to make handoff from touchpoint to touchpoint easier. This provides a foundation for creating emails that feel truly personalized — like marketing is speaking directly to each customer.

Make email part of a seamless customer service experience

This includes mass emails about new merchandise or services, notes about sales or changes in hours, and follow-up emails from customer service inquiries. Email can begin and continue the conversation without feeling intrusive. 

Use the right software

Having the data isn’t enough; you need software that makes creating cohesive customer experiences a no-brainer. The right software keeps your customer data front and center, surfacing valuable insights and keeping them flowing between departments. 

• Leverage data and analytics, segment audiences, and connect teams from one hub — basically, all your needs in one solution with no more stitching together multiple products that don’t integrate.
• Create a single source of data to break silos — Each team has access to quality data to build out campaigns. No one is in danger of erasing or altering data and all departments can work together to execute the omnichannel strategy.
• Ensure seamless operation — Your software should be intuitive to use no matter what department is using it and what their end goal is. 

Executing Thoughtful Email Campaigns for Engagement

Omnichannel marketing delivers personalization and a seamless experience for your customers. Email nudges people to take action, creates trust, and delivers value, but only if you’ve used the right tools and data to build a thoughtful email campaign.

CleverTap’s platform is built for engagement. It offers a manageable yet scalable option for planning, developing, measuring, and launching campaigns across a variety of media, including email. You can monitor the health of your domain and IP reputation right from the system itself, and send relevant, highly personalized emails based on behavioral segmentation