By Aryan Riggs
Today’s customers are online, browsing and interacting with your brand 24/7 across channels, even when you’re closed. They’re on Facebook, Instagram, Website, SMS, and email.
They expect personalized and meaningful omnichannel communication regardless of when or where they interact with your brand. Your competitors recognize this and build their omnichannel messaging strategy around your gaps. They steal the prospects and customers you’ve worked so hard to nurture. So, exploring how personalization can help you deliver a most memorable, consistent experience across channels is vital.
Personalized Omnichannel Communication Now Available for Small Business
Omnichannel personalization is not reserved for large companies with extensive resources. Did you know small business competitors are personalizing omnichannel, too?
A Mitto study found that 58% of small business leaders surveyed recognize how important personalized omnichannel communication is. Moreover, 59% believe they can achieve it, and 55% are ramping it up.
Advances in the cost-effectiveness of omnichannel technologies are putting personalized omnichannel communication within reach of small businesses that, until recently, had to do everything manually.
Meet Customers Where They Are
While it might be the goal of an advanced omnichannel e-commerce strategy, being everywhere all at once and from the start may not be a practical or helpful strategy. It’s more important to be where your customers are to provide them with the highest-quality omnichannel support.
Third-party and first-party data can reveal the platforms your target audience uses most and how. Focus your efforts here and grow from there.
Be Mobile First
Regardless of who your target audience is, two-thirds of people around the world are mobile users. Over 20 billion texts are sent daily, so ensuring your omnichannel software allows you to create effective SMS customer support, updates and offers is a brilliant idea. Many tools can help you achieve mobile-first omnichannel messaging, Mitto among them.
Set Clear Goals for Omnichannel Communications
All content has goals, whether they’re generating leads, supporting customers, or avoiding returns. Measure and track your content’s performance and identify if different channels require slightly different messaging. This ensures you’re creating the right kind of customer experience across channels.
Make Sure It’s Relevant and Useful
When content is relevant, it’s clear that you’ve invested in personalization. There are several ways to increase the relevance of content, such as:
- Segmentation: Divide your audience based on demographics, location, time zone, interests, recent actions, etc., to send them the most relevant content.
- Event-triggered message: Set messages up to send when someone takes a specific action.
- Customer behavioral analytics: Never stop learning who your customers are and how they interact with communications.
Omnichannel e-commerce software can give you access to tools to increase relevance across communications platforms.
Make the Most of Auto Responses
Auto Responses are the ultimate personalization because they’re perfectly timed and precisely relevant to the customer. Compose them in advance for various scenarios and let omnichannel automation do the rest.
Auto Responses help customers feel heard. You seem responsive and ready to assist—even if it’s after hours and you don’t have 24-hour customer support. Just make sure a human follows up when you open if needed.
Some auto-response ideas include:
- Sending an SMS or email signup welcome message
- Confirming an appointment cancellation or rescheduling
- Acknowledging someone has asked for customer support
Embrace Friendly Reminders
Reminders further personalize the customer experience by ensuring they don’t forget items in their cart, a webinar they’ve signed up for, or an appointment for a product demo. Not only are you preventing a lost opportunity, but most customers appreciate these reminders.
Deliver Immediate Assistance With Chatbots
Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) advances, chatbots are becoming more useful. Any time of day, they can provide customers with AI-composed answers and direct customers to online self-service resources they may not be aware of. You may think of chatbots as a website feature, but you can also set chatbots up to respond conversationally via text message, making this a very mobile-first omnichannel strategy.
Avoid One-Size Solutions
If there’s one rule of personalization above all, it’s that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Continue to review data across platforms to learn from your customers how best to personalize their content and create consistent and memorable omnichannel experiences.
