Let’s face it; the traditional linear model of the customer journey is no longer accurate. Today’s consumers shop how they want, where they want, and when they want—all while facing distraction at a moment’s notice. They are choosing how they interact with brands and on which channels they do so. They have all of the power. Who said being a marketer is easy?

Today’s model more closely resembles that of a spiderweb, with its zigs, zags, and non-uniform strands. As chaotic as it may look, everything is connected and working in concert with one another. 

This is the new digital customer journey—unique, non-uniform strands that are all connected to serve a common goal. 

Because of the multitude of siloed channels, the distraction, and increased global competition, marketers need to rethink how multiple channels, like email and SMS, can work in unison with one another to create a relevant experience that meets consumers’ ever-increasing expectations of retailers. 

How The Journey is Moving Beyond Single Channels

According to a report by Omnisend, marketing campaigns utilizing three or more channels have a 287% higher conversion rate than campaigns relying on a single channel. For retailers, ensuring that campaigns have multiple cohesive channels working together can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Multiple channels matter, but how they’re delivered matters more.

While retailers are using multiple channels to communicate with and retarget consumers, many of them are working in silos. For example, an email subscriber may click on an email and then abandon the website. In response, they begin seeing ads on their social media platforms. But if the consumer comes back and makes a purchase, often these retargeting ads follow them around the internet, sometimes for days or weeks, while still receiving generic promotional email messages.  

Consumers increasingly expect communications from brands to be both timely and relevant. The example above is not that. 

Retailers need to understand how consumers naturally interact. Take Gen Z, for instance. These digital natives make up more than a quarter of the US population, and being digital natives means SMS is a natural communication channel. Even so, 83% expect to increase or maintain their email usage over the next several years. Both channels hold importance to them.

Retailers who have adopted SMS as a marketing channel have reported over a 2,700% ROI, and omnichannel campaigns that involve SMS are 47.7% more likely to end in conversion.

It’s time for retailers to break down these silos and make available additional channels for customers to opt into. Adding channels that appeal to their customers is just the first step. Creating relevant messaging is another. 

The Rise of Multi-Channel, Behavior-Based Messaging 

Consider that customer who is on a website and browsing products only to leave without placing an item in the cart. The consumer has shown some level of interest. Recognizing this, a retailer would traditionally continue sending them standard promotional emails and retarget the customer through search and social media. But this experience has challenges. Paid retargeting can be expensive, the strategy is siloed, and standard promotional emails are not always relevant. 

But this relevance matters. The same Omnisend report showed that that segmented campaigns earned 62% higher order rates than non-segmented ones. The reason—segmented messages are more relevant.

This is where automated behavior-based, multi-channel messaging can deliver a more user-friendly experience and guide the customer along their purchase journey. 

Consider the impact of sending abandonment messages via the channel(s) of the customer’s choosing—after all, no one chooses to see ads on their social feeds. Retailers can easily send automated reminder messages (e.g., email, SMS, push) for the products they were viewing via any, or all, channel(s)—and if the consumer completes their order, the other channels recognize and cease their retargeting efforts. 

Automated behavior-based messaging, such as browse abandonment, delivers segmented, relevant, and timely messaging to customers. Consumers recognize the value in them. That’s why it is not uncommon to see retailers drive over 25% of their email revenue on these messages alone.

This is just one example of automated, behavior-based messaging. Others include cart abandonment, welcome series, post- and lapsed-purchase, and re-engagement messages. I expect to see a continued increase in behavior-based automation adoption and the use of data, such as cart total or purchase history, to make these messages even more relevant than they naturally are.

Paving the Way for the Future

Utilizing behavior-based marketing automation to create relevant messaging and delivering it via the channel(s) of the customers’ choosing is going to be essential for catering to the modern-day online customer journey.

Tomorrow’s successful retailers will be those who cohesively incorporate other channels into their traditional siloed pillars of email, paid search, and paid social to create one unified, spiderwebbed e-commerce journey. After all, if you’re trying to catch flies, it’s good to be the spider who makes the web.