• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 1, 2019

Despite advances in technology, marketers still can’t figure out how to conduct omnichanel marketing campaigns.

Of 221 digital marketers polled by Seligent Marketing Cloud, 41% are flummoxed by cross-channel disciplines.

What they have figured out is email -- 94% successfully use it as part of their omnichannel strategy. However, this suggests that marketers have not moved beyond single-channel skill sets.

The study also indicates that most brands have not yet fully integrated their marketing stacks.

Of those polled, 69% lack a single solution for executing omnichannel campaigns. In addition, 16% are striving for one but are unsatisfied. Only 14% use one tool across all channels. 

Part of their dissatisfaction lies with their inability to tie behavior data back to individual. Only 16% are doing it successfully, while 41% are unhappy with their results. And roughly 33% have no such capabilities—and no plans to develop them.

Meanwhile, only 8% can share loyalty marketing data with their contact center in real time. Another 44% share some data, but cannot do it in real time. And 20% do not share any customer data at all between marketing and service. 

“The disconnect across business units like service and marketing is no surprise -- but a challenge that companies today need to address head-on,” states Niki Hall,  CMO of Selligent Marketing Cloud. 

Why is this important? Because research shows that 65% of customers are frustrated with inconsistent experiences across channels, the study notes.

Email is the most popular channel. Next are websites (86%) and social (81%). Only 52% successfully use mobile, despite the fact that half of all traffic comes from mobile devices, the study states.  

Mobile is followed by SMS (22%), In-store (19%), chatbots/web chat (15%), and push notifications (14%). 

 “Making omnichannel work means orchestrating messages across all channels and ensuring that the content is personalized and delivered at the right time,” Hall concludes.

Hall adds, “This can only happen at scale with technology that provides visibility into the data and prompt execution on insights shared across all departments.”