“The omnichannel consumer has never been more powerful,” finds Gartner. Those who use multiple channels to research products, compare prices, and make shopping decisions buy 70% more often and spend 34% more. In fact, 65% of consumers often or always “read ratings and reviews, with customer-submitted images, videos, and FAQ sections.”
On the other end of the spectrum, marketers are expanding their reach. Businesses today use an average of 10 channels to engage customers. With hundreds/thousands of customers communicating across a dozen channels, organizations have their hands full.
Managing this complex web of customer relationships needs a robust and strategic approach. In this blog post, we walk you through how to create a multichannel communication strategy.
Let’s begin at the beginning.
How to Create a Multichannel Communication Strategy
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Multichannel Communication?
As the name suggests, multichannel communication is when organizations use more than one form of outreach to engage customers. Simply put, it involves using a combination of digital channels, such as email, website, mobiles, social media, etc., and traditional ones, like direct mail, print advertising, and television.
When do organizations use multichannel communication?
While multichannel communication can be used for any kind of outreach, the most common use cases are as follows.
- Promotions: Sending offers/discount codes via SMS
- Education: Hosting videos or ebooks about the product on the website
- Updates: Sending material about new features, upgrades, etc. via email
- Engagement: Providing real-time answers to customer questions through live chat
- Support: Providing after-sales service or enabling customer success through phone, email, live chat, or video conferencing
More on each of these channels coming up later in this article.
Why is multichannel communication important?
“Be where your customers are” is one of the first principles of marketing. Today’s customers would rather spend time on their mobile phones browsing social media than reading newspapers. More people watch their media online than on cable TV.
To meet the customer at the right place, at the right time, and with the right offer, every business needs multichannel communication.
What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel communication?
The primary difference between multichannel and omnichannel communication is its place in the customer experience.
- In multichannel communication, each channel is independent, with businesses sending messages on each of them separately
- In omnichannel communication, channels are integrated to create a coherent journey for the customer
| Multichannel communication | Omnichannel communication | |
|---|---|---|
| Integrations | Little or no integration between channels | One integrated journey across channels |
| Focus | On customer outreach and conversions | On customer experience and engagement |
| Advantages | Easy to implement, Wider reach | Efficient communication, Targeted reach |
| Disadvantages | Can become repetitive to the customer, Can be disjointed and ineffective | Difficult and expensive to implement, Needs a strong technological base |
| Best for | Marketing and promotions | End-to-end customer journey management |
Before devising a multichannel marketing communication strategy, let’s look at what options you have.
Summarize this article for me pleaseKey Channels for Multichannel Communication
From newspaper/magazine advertising and cold calls to hyper-personalized mobile app notifications, you have a number of options. Here’s what each of them works best for.
Email for direct, personalized communication
If you’ve been thinking no one opens their email anymore, you’re in for a surprise. A recent study by Edelman DXI for Mailchimp found that 4 out of 5 customers prefer email over any other form of communication. And 95% of marketers believe email has excellent ROI.
Email is best for personalized messaging targeted to the needs, preferences, and history of each individual customer. Some great use cases are:
- Newsletters: Subscription-based emails with information on the customer’s areas of interest
- Offers: Personalized discounts or coupons
- Reminders: Check-ins for events like cart abandonment, last minute deals, etc.
Social media for entertainment and engagement
63.8% of the global population uses social media. Gen Z follows brands, celebrities, and influencers, often getting their product recommendations from them. So, if you need to reach a wide audience, social media is the right channel. It is best for:
- Events: Product launches, sales, big promotions, etc. make for great community shopping experiences on social media
- Endorsements: Relatable influencers with significant followings enable a wider, yet targeted reach
- Retargeting: Social media advertisements and organic posts help brands stay at the top of customer’s minds
SMS for instant messaging
If you’re looking to reach a customer immediately, yet in a non-intrusive way, SMS is the best way to do this. A good SMS strategy can help with:
- Instant call to action (CTA): When a customer is at a shop, you can send a personalized message inviting immediate action
- For later action: Without obstructing a customer’s day, you can send coupon codes they can use when they’re ready to shop
- Reminders: When a payment or renewal is due, send a reminder
Phone calls for high-value interactions
Not everything can be solved with texts and notifications, which is why you need tried-and-tested phone calls. Businesses typically use phone calls for:
- Consultative selling: When a product is complicated or needs detailed conversations to be sold
- Problem-solving: When customers have queries or complaints about their products that are best resolved with a discussion
- Onboarding: If you’re selling a product that needs to be set up a specific way, like a SaaS tool
Live chat for real-time conversations
Live chat gives customers the ability to interact with your organization through a chatbot without actually needing an individual at the other end.
Chatbots can answer questions based on existing knowledge. They can also play the role of a screening mechanism that escalates unresolved questions to the customer support team. Live chat is great for:
- Providing the information a customer needs without them having to navigate/search the website
- Making recommendations based on customer input
- Automating simple processes like resetting a password or giving feedback
In-person meetings to seal the big deals
It is always good to put a face to the name. Especially for high-value businesses, in-person meetings boost a customer’s confidence in your product and your investment in supporting it. It helps build deep relationships. It is great for:
- Sales of high-value products that involve multiple decision-makers
- Upselling/cross-selling
- Building referral-based relationships
If that sounds like a lot of channels to engage a customer, it is. And there are significant benefits to using a number of them.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBenefits of Multichannel Communication
Admittedly, multichannel communication is an additional burden for the marketing team to set up, manage, harness, and leverage. It takes a significant amount of financial investment and effort. Here’s what makes it worth it.
Improved reach
Having various communication channels will multiply your customer reach. With multichannel communication, you can reach different segments of customers. For instance, email promotions and newsletters may attract millennials, whereas social media interactions can attract more GenZs.
Increased customer engagement
The wider the reach, the higher the engagement. For instance, those who don’t reply to your first email might click on a text message. When you consistently respond to queries on a social platform, you build credibility and attract more customers there.
Improved customer experience
Being accessible across multiple platforms dramatically improves customer experience. It helps meet all segments of customers whenever and wherever they want to interact with you. For instance, having an AI chatbot means that a customer can get help whenever they need it, even if it’s in the middle of the night.
Higher conversion rates
Multichannel communication is fantastic for reiteration. For instance, a customer might have seen a television ad about an upcoming sale, say, specific Black Friday deals. They might even intend to buy something.
However, when it’s time for the sale, they might not remember/recall your ad. An email, mobile notification, or SMS plays the role of a reminder, dramatically improving conversions.
Consistent messaging
Strategic multichannel communication ensures that you speak the same language and the same message irrespective of the medium.
Flexibility
Multichannel communication gives the flexibility to use different methods based on audience preferences. For instance, if a customer never opens their email, try SMS/social media. Does a user spend a lot of time on the app? Send in-app notifications.
To reap these benefits, you need an effective multichannel strategy. Let’s look at that next.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCreating an Effective Multichannel Communication Strategy
Multichannel communication isn’t just about sending messages through various mediums. It is a thoughtful way to meet the customer where they are with the right message to address their needs. This requires a strategic approach.
Here’s how you can create an effective multichannel strategy with a powerful communication management tool like ClickUp for marketing teams.
1. Identify your audience
As part of your marketing strategy, perform audience research and segmentation. From that data, curate pointers related to communication. Some audience characteristics to look for are:
- Preferred mode of communication (E.g., email, phone, text, social media)
- Preferred type of content (E.g., Ebooks, tutorial videos, short videos)
- Existing subscriptions (E.g., Newsletter subscriptions, social platforms they follow you on)
- History (E.g., Types of content the customer has taken action on)
2. Choose the right channels
Based on the audience segmentation, identify channels that are right for each group. While choosing your channel mix, think about the following.
Map channel mix to audience mix
Once you identify the audiences, prioritize communication channels based on their consumption rate. For instance, if a majority of your target audience is Gen Z who are on TikTok, you’ll choose that over ebooks. On the other hand, if you’re selling to B2B leadership, you’d focus your stakeholder communication on LinkedIn posts and emails.
Don’t spread yourself too thin
Just because your audience is on multiple channels, you needn’t be. If you use too many channels, you might not be able to pay attention to them all. So, select a few and double down on them.
Prioritize
Not all channels offer the same returns. So, prioritize those that have maximum impact. For instance, if your marketing goal is awareness, you might focus on social media and search advertising. On the other hand, if your goal is to increase sales, you might prioritize personalized email or SMS.
3. Integrate the channels
Multichannel communication is typically independent, which means one channel isn’t connected to another for a cohesive journey. This doesn’t mean they all function as islands.
The best way to run a multichannel communication strategy is to integrate them all into a central hub, typically a customer relationship management (CRM) software.
With ClickUp CRM, manage the entire client relationship in one place, including communication across various channels.
- Consolidate all customer information
- Set up tasks for what, how, and when you should communicate with each customer/group
- Automate workflows that send messages across multiple channels based on events/triggers
- Monitor customer communications and optimize future messages
4. Personalize communication
Customization is consistently proven to improve conversions and performance. So, identify areas to customize in every message. Add a name to your hello. Localize offers to in-person events or in-store purchases.
If you’re sending a text reminder for a subscription renewal, add details like the expiration date, subscription fee, customer service number, etc.
5. Make branding consistent
When you’re contacting the customer across various platforms, it needs to be thoughtful, authentic, and trustworthy. To ensure this, make your branding consistent.
- Keep the tone and style of messages uniform across channels
- Use brand colors, logo, shapes, etc. consistently
- Create repeatability when you send messages. For instance, if you have a great newsletter going out every Sunday morning, customers will begin to expect it
6. Empower the customer
There is a thin line between multichannel communication and unwanted spam. To be on the safest side of this line, empower the customer.
- Enable opt-in: Invite the customer to opt-in for communication, especially when it’s personalized channels, such as email or SMS
- Seek feedback: Give customers the opportunity to tell you what they want to see more of
- Allow unsubscribe: Offer multiple ways for the customer to unsubscribe if they choose to
A lot of the above steps can be handled exceptionally with the right set of tools. Let’s explore that next.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTools for Multichannel Communication
Whether you’re a boutique agency with five clients or a large retail organization with millions of customers, multichannel communication is complex and vast. Managing this manually is nearly impossible.
The good news is that you don’t need to do it manually. There are several powerful tools you can use, some of which we explore below.
The good news is that you don’t need to do it manually. There are several powerful tools you can use, some of which we explore below.
Marketing project management tools
For effective customer communication management, you need a robust project management tool like ClickUp. Bring together various creative and marketing teams to plan multichannel campaigns. Brainstorm ideas with the collaborative ClickUp Whiteboards.
Convert ideas into tasks, add deadlines, assign users, link to creative briefs, track time, and more using ClickUp Tasks. Connect these tasks to your communication goals and monitor progress in real time—all in one place!
Have conversations in context using the comments section of each task. What’s more? Use ClickUp Assign Comments to attract the attention of the right people.
Real-time collaboration tools
Multichannel communication involves efforts from a wide number of people— copywriters, editors, designers, developers, operations folks, analysts, and more! A small gap in communication can lead to a giant warp in customer experience.
Avoid this with workplace communication tools like ClickUp Chat. Keep all conversations around work in context. Type @ and tag a user, type @@ and tag a task. Upload design files and get approvals. Link documents. Convert text messages into tasks right from the ClickUp Chat interface.
Briefing and feedback tools
Sometimes, texts and images are not enough to describe a problem or express a creative brief. For such cases, use ClickUp Clips to record your screen with audio. Explain a process, give feedback, or develop customer management strategies with audio and video. Make your messages crystal clear to your teams.
Automation tools
Let’s look at some workflows that are common in multichannel communication.
- When a customer abandons their cart and closes the window, send a reminder email after 24 hours of inactivity
- When a client downloads an ebook, send a case study after three days
- When a customer unsubscribes, remove them from all relevant lists
Depending on your business, you’ll have a number of such scenarios that can be automated for better marketing effectiveness. Do all that and more with ClickUp Automations.
Frameworks and templates
Whether you’re new to multichannel communication or just optimizing what you already have, nothing saves time like a good template. ClickUp has a large number of communication plan templates you can use to set yourself up for success.
Of them all, the ClickUp Communication Plan Template is your one-stop solution to organize plans, improve internal and external communications, track goal achievement, and collaborate across different departments.
Despite the best of strategies and tools, multichannel communication is not without its challenges.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges in Multichannel Communication
By its very nature, multichannel communication involves a wide variety of mediums, types of messages, and customer preferences. For instance, to simply send a text message, you need compelling copy, personalization parameters, customizable links, etc. This complexity multiplies based on the type of content and channel you’re using.
Naturally, that brings several challenges. Let’s see what they are and how you can overcome them.
Consistency: Each channel has its own needs, idiosyncrasies, and limitations. Then, how does one maintain consistency across disparate communication methods, such as email, social media, videos, and text messages?
Create a comprehensive brand manual and share it across all teams using a collaborative tool like ClickUp Docs. You can also use repeatable checklists to ensure that every element of your email campaign management is on brand.
Repetition: In multichannel communication, there is repetition by design. For instance, you might send the same message—even if worded differently—through multiple channels to reiterate it for the customer. However, this can easily become repetitive and spammy.
Avoid this by:
- Sending messages only to the customer’s preferred channels at their preferred times
- Making messages valuable to the customer
- Spacing out messages so as not to overwhelm the customer
Data integration: With multiple channels in use, you’re likely to face issues of data inconsistency, loss, and siloes. In the real world, this can have terrible consequences. For example, asking a customer to repeat their complaint, despite them having done so on another channel, is a poor experience.
Avoid these issues with thoughtful integrations. With ClickUp, integrate 1000+ tools for better data management. Use ClickUp’s Connected Search to find what you need wherever it is on your tool stack.
Privacy: Customers trust you with their data. To keep that trust, you need to uphold their privacy even while sending multichannel communications.
When you’re using ClickUp for your marketing needs, security and privacy are inherently taken care of.
In addition to the above, here are some best practices in multichannel communication.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBest Practices in Multichannel Communication
Before we wrap up, here is a summary of best practices that will help you do multichannel communications right.
Focus on your audience: Understand your audience’s needs and preferences. Create content and messaging tailored to each audience group. Personalize whenever possible.
Monitor and measure: Don’t spray and pray. Be strategic with your communications. Identify metrics and track performance. Collect regular qualitative feedback. Conduct A/B tests to identify what works best. Optimize accordingly.
Consolidate knowledge: Find ways to curate and consolidate knowledge. Bring all marketing resources together. Create a marketing campaign checklist for all channel teams to use. Share regular feedback so that teams learn from one another.
Leverage data: Data isn’t just about the customer. For effective multichannel communication, it also helps to have project management data like the time taken for each task, the dependencies, overlaps, necessary resources, etc.
Use a comprehensive project management tool to monitor, understand, and optimize your marketing operations as well.
Summarize this article for me pleaseEffective Multichannel Communication with ClickUp
Each communication channel is a new and unique way to reach a customer. With SMS, you can only use emojis for visual interest. With app notifications, you might be able to add images as well. An email can contain multiple links and longer text.
Each additional channel multiplies the complexity of your multichannel communication. Let’s say you’re already using X. If you add Instagram to the mix, you might be repurposing your X content. However, you still need to think about image sizes, platform-appropriate hashtags, inability to post links, time to post, comments, DMs, and more!
A successful multichannel communication strategy is like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. To avoid missing pieces or gaping holes, you need a powerful tool like ClickUp. Packed with features, automations, and templates, ClickUp offers everything you need to launch effective multichannel communications. Take it for a spin. Try ClickUp for free today.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
