Most marketers already strongly believe in data-driven decisions. They try to gather more and more data to get even more insights into customers shopping behaviors. But are data-driven decisions defined by the amount of data? What helps us make informed decisions is the whole measurement system. The system that covers 360° of the business activity and allows the decision-makers to look at the business from various angles.

Omnichannel perspective and its unique challenges

In today’s competitive retail landscape, omnichannel strategies are essential for success. Consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across all channels, whether they are browsing online, visiting a store, or interacting via social media and there are several technologies that support businesses in providing a complete omnichannel experience for their consumers. This creates a completely new level of measurement complexity versus a single channel ecommerce store.

Sales channels synergies versus cannibalization

If a new sales channel is introduced most probably it will take over part of sales from other channels, but the rest of the sales is a net new revenue generated. On the other hand, if there are synergies between the channels, like similar price promotion mechanisms that encourage customers to switch from one sales channel to another, the business benefits from increased availability.

Consumer tracking

E-commerce stores may rely purely on digital campaigns and be very successful. It gives a great benefit of being able to tag and measure each transaction and where it came from. On the other hand, omnichannel businesses will find it very difficult to even correctly track consumer paths, not to mention linking the online and offline purchases of the same customer. When measuring overall performance using consumer tracking based measurement, omnichannel advertisers need to be highly aware of their disparity between online and in-store tracking, and account for it through extrapolation.

Heavy performance campaigns versus brand building

Performance campaigns play an important role in driving online sales. However, offline sales channels often require intensified brand building communication to drive traffic. This is where direct digital measurement is no longer enough, and the long-term brand building perspective needs to be accounted for.

Why do you need an omnichannel measurement system?

The Omnichannel strategy of a business can be as strong as its omnichannel measurement system.

As outlined in the beginning, omnichannel faces several significant and pretty unique challenges. Not addressing those by measurement may result in significant decline to business performance.

On the other hand, solid holistic measurement enables the creation of true omnichannel strategy.

Few examples:

• Leveraging digital products that are built for omnichannel – eg. digital platforms omnichannel ads solutions
• Leveraging advanced data and analytics strategies to grow omnichannel LTV (life time value) of customers
• Improvement in users omnichannel experience by understanding interactions between marketing activities of any type with sales in any channel

360 omnichannel strategy does not only account for media. It also allows for validation of price and promotion mechanisms with special consideration of cross-channel effects – i.e. the impact of a promotion type in one sales channel on sales in the other sales channels. For example, a better assessment of the impact of Black Friday promotions and an insight into what role they should play in the offline retail chain vs. online sales channels.

Holistic measurement system which includes lifts studies, attribution and Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) is in a unique position to measure and support omnichannel strategies.

Due to holistic approach and the need to gather different perspectives on marketing (e.g. media, price, distribution) in one place it is often very much needed spark to change an organization from a multi-channel business with siloed approach to each sales channel to an omnichannel organization. You can work towards KPIs only if you can measure them – omnichannel measurement system often serves as a catalyst for an organizational shift towards truly omnichannel organization.

Read more by downloading the whitepaper and feel free to reach out and discuss. We are always happy to chat.