How to Use Omnichannel Analytics: Instructions for Newbies

In this post Julia Holovko, CMO at Ringostat will introduce omnichannel analytics to those, who have no experience in using it, and describe the tools for its effective application. 

Marketing your product on the internet is not easy nowadays. It is a continuous effort of maximizing the efficiency of marketing campaigns and optimizing the ROI (return on investment) — which requires thorough analysis. That is why marketers dedicate so much time to measuring marketing performance and determining the best way of targeting customers, to put it simply — so that your money will not be wasted on things that do not work.

Internet marketing is challenging. Actually, according to Hubspot state of Inbound report measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns proves to be the most challenging task most marketers face in their companies. It gets even harder if you consider all those numerous channels by which customer can arrive on your site and make conversion. Moreover, there are offline conversions that have to be counted — and it means even more data!

How to put together all this information and create a positive, seamless experience for your customers across channels and devices? Omnichannel analytics may be the key.

Placing analytics into your marketing strategy

Every business owner who knows the value of the money should know how the business is functioning and whether the marketing strategy is working. Most sagacious business men will want to trace each contact a client has with the brand. It is impossible to make sense of this information without analytics.

In the internet age there are numerous ways for a customer to reach your business — email marketing, social media, PPC and banner ads; your website and the offline store. All of these channels need to be analysed, to give you the full picture of your business and create positive experience for your customers. For that you need to understand the behavior of modern consumers and how to cater for their needs.

What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel analytics?

Modern buyer is not committed to just one channel. Customer would look up the product on website, read reviews on social media, get more info from the blogs and finally will make a purchase by calling on the phone. All those actions that happen both online and offline need to be analyzed, so you understand which channel works more efficiently, which requires more of your effort to perform better and which you’d better drop altogether.

Multichannel analytics comprises the data on multiple channels your customer uses. It means not only tracking the overall success of your marketing campaign, but also comparing the performance by each specific channel. However, gathering this data is not enough anymore. Nowadays, customers want something more than quality service provided through each of those channels — they want a holistic, seamless buying experience on every device across every channel. They want to be able to make a purchase in a convenient, easy and fast way. And that is something more than multichannel marketing — this is the task for omnichannel.

Omnichannel analytics is a step further ahead of multichannel, because it focuses on the customer’s behaviour. Whereas multichannel tracks each separate marketing channel and

gathers data on the number of conversions coming from each of them, omnichannel is user-based. Its goal is to follow the customer on every step of the sales funnel, aggregating comprehensive data about this person and recording it into a personal account.

Consider this example: a customer browses web page of a local shoe store. She compares categories, prices and colors, however she is unsure of the sizing. She goes to the store, tries on the shoes she liked and makes the purchase. For multichannel analytics these are two separate actions: a website visit and a purchase in an offline store. Omnichannel recognizes it as connected experiences of a customer, and lets you know that before coming to your store, a number of clients make their decision when browsing your webpage. While multichannel analytics will tell you that your website doesn’t bring you that many conversions comparing to other channels, omnichannel will show you how important it actually is for your business.

How to start exploring the omnichannel analytics world?

To start with omnichannel analytics, first you have to define which channels your business uses that you would need to track. If you have an offline store and a website, you would want to put together all of the data regarding both of them. In order to achieve that, you need to figure out how to identify each client both online and offline: you can ask your customers to get registered on your website or create a virtual loyalty card, so that your customers will name their ID when visiting your offline store. Make connection to mobile application, email newsletters, social media — and you have several channels that comprise your customer’s experience with your brand. You may start gathering information and using it to improve your services.

How exactly omnichannel analytics can be used in practice?

Let us see some examples:

• User has been browsing the website for some time and has put some products in the cart, however did not make the purchase. When the user opens the mobile app of the company several days afterwards, he or she will get a push message about the products left in the cart.
• Users fill in registration form on the website of the online shop. Later, they are added to remarketing email newsletter list. They receive reminders about the products they have viewed on the website.

Collecting omnichannel reports and putting them together is a challenging task, however if you choose the right tools, it should not be time-consuming. Choose the tools according to the size of your business:

1. For small businesses with limited market budgets good option is to use Google Spreadsheets or Microsoft Excel. Configure data export from Google Analytics, CRM system or your website administration panel.
2. For medium-sized enterprises use Google Analytics, CRM, OWOX BI for automatic import of expenses and optionally, Microsoft Power BI.
3. For large companies, you might use Google Analytics, CRM, cloud Google BigQuery (or MySQL or Mongo). Use data visualization tools, such as Excel or Google Spreadsheets, Microsoft Power BI, Google Data Studio, Tableau, Quickview.

Useful tip: do not forget offline conversions such as calls. Why? Here are five reasons to include calls into your omnichannel analytics reports.

1). Discern paid and organic traffic

Google Adwords lets you discern paid traffic from the organic one, however there are always some clients who prefer to call. Without call tracking systems it is very hard to connect the information about those clients with advertising campaigns. Phone call analytics complements the standard reports of PPC/CPC,giving the data on efficiency of particular keywords. Call tracking services let you know the number of calls every advertising campaign brings and the number of targeted calls. Graphic expression lets you see the picking periods for ad campaigns. 

2). Consider mobile conversions

Mobile traffic has surged in 2016. Latest trends in the USA market show that clients choose distinctly different correlation of communication channels nowadays — mobile search is generating more calls, competing with online sales. Tracking the user activity in this channel is crucial for omnichannel analytics.

3). Connect all conversions in one ‘deal card’

Call tracking systems let you correlate the calls with data on transactions via terminals in offline stores as well as with data on the online sales. You can do that with the help of CRM. Eventually, you’d be able to track the sequence of actions of a user — starting from the interest in purchasing your product and up until the deal is closed, all gathered in one ‘deal card’. With the help of this tool, you can analyse every contact with your client and determine its efficiency as the customer moves ahead the sales funnel. This will let you aggregate the detailed analysis of the whole communication system. 

4). Use phone number as a potential client identificator

Another reason why the calls are important for omnichannel analytics reports is because phone numbers are unique. Many food delivery services open client accounts using the phone number of the customer. This is a great way to unite all the deals around one client card in the CRM system. However, to do that you will need a call tracking system. 

5). Turn every call into a marketing experience

Using call tracking you can receive all the necessary data to make the best out of each phone call. You can assess the sales manager work, analyse the recorded conversation and eventually, gather aggregated data about conversion sources. The information obtained will serve for the future improvement of your services.

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Conclusions

Omnichannel analytics is crucial for establishing correlation among all the multiple channels of your marketing strategy, both online and offline. It is not about getting data on every one of your channels separately, it is about assessing the efficiency of all channels in their interdependence. You follow your customers on every stage of their experience with your brand. Omnichannel gives you a chance to make it as easy and personalized, as possible. Connecting online and offline data using omnichannel approach is not that hard, if you choose the right tools. And by not using it you risk to stay behind the latest marketing trends.