Customers don’t stick to a single channel when interacting with brands. In fact, McKinsey reports that most consumers use at least three different touchpoints during a single buying journey. They might begin by browsing your website, then engage with an email, respond to a text message, or connect with a team member through web chat.
While complex customer journeys can make it more challenging to deliver a consistent experience, they also give brands a real opportunity to stand out—as long as they have an effective strategy in place.
Instead of treating each channel as a separate workflow, an omnichannel marketing strategy unifies your efforts so customers receive a similar experience no matter where they interact.
This guide breaks down how omnichannel marketing works, how it connects to messaging strategies, and how your team can use it to create personalized, scalable customer journeys that drive results.
Learn how omnichannel messaging helps teams streamline communications.
Explore omnichannel featuresWhat is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that connects every customer touchpoint—your website, mobile app, email and SMS, web chat and social apps, and even in-store interactions—so they work together as part of a single, consistent journey. The goal is to make sure customers encounter the same brand voice, offers, and experience, no matter how or where they choose to engage.
Whether someone is browsing your site, visiting a store, or opening an email, connected channels let you build on the last interaction instead of starting from scratch. By sharing context across platforms, each touchpoint can be timely, relevant, and part of a larger, coordinated story.
With multichannel marketing, you might use several platforms to reach your audience—email for newsletters, SMS for promotions, web chat for support—but those tools don’t talk to each other. Messages stay siloed, and your team often has to switch systems or dig through threads to understand the full conversation.
Omnichannel marketing removes those barriers. When channels are connected, a customer might get a follow-up text based on an email click, or receive a personalized email after an in-store visit. Every touchpoint fits into one connected journey, making the experience smoother for both your team and your customers.
How omnichannel marketing fits with omnichannel messaging
While omnichannel marketing spans every customer touchpoint—from browsing your website to making an in-store purchase—messaging is what ties those moments together. It enables you to follow up an in-person conversation with a thank-you email, send a timely SMS after someone browses products online, or continue a chat that started on social media without losing context.
An omnichannel messaging platform makes this possible by unifying SMS, email, web chat, and social messaging into a single workspace. Instead of juggling disconnected tools, your team can view every conversation thread in one place, respond in context, and send targeted broadcasts that reflect real-time activity across channels.
With all messaging channels connected, you build bridges between online and offline experiences seamlessly, ensuring each customer interaction builds on the last and every campaign feels like part of one continuous story.
Benefits of omnichannel marketing
Once your messaging strategy is truly connected, the value shows up quickly in customer engagement, campaign results, and team efficiency. With each channel aligned and data shared across touchpoints, you can create experiences that are not only more consistent but more effective.
Here are some of the key outcomes you can expect from omnichannel marketing.
Higher engagement rates
When campaigns are built on real-time context and customer behavior, every message becomes more relevant. Whether you’re sending a follow-up email or a promotional text, coordinated outreach helps capture attention at just the right moment. That relevance drives stronger open rates, higher click-throughs, and more responses across channels.
Better customer experiences
Customers expect brands to remember their preferences, previous interactions, and recent activity. When your messaging reflects that context, without being repetitive or disconnected, it builds credibility and trust. Omnichannel marketing makes that possible, leading to smoother interactions that feel intentional rather than transactional.
Stronger conversions across the funnel
A connected messaging strategy allows you to guide leads more effectively from awareness to decision. Start with educational email campaigns, follow up with personalized SMS reminders, and support decision-making with real-time responses in chat. When each channel is used strategically and in sync with the others, you can move prospects forward with fewer delays and more meaningful touchpoints.
More efficient campaign workflows
Running campaigns across separate tools often means duplicating tasks and managing messages by hand. An omnichannel approach simplifies this by centralizing campaign planning, messaging, and automation. With the right omnichannel platform, you can build segments using custom fields—like engagement history or interests—and trigger personalized messages as those fields update to help you stay responsive without added work.
Improved performance visibility
Omnichannel marketing gives you a clearer picture of how your campaigns are performing. Instead of pulling siloed reports from different tools, you can view metrics like open rates, replies, and conversions across every channel in one place. This unified view makes it easier to identify what’s working, spot gaps in the journey, and optimize outreach for better results over time.
9 omnichannel marketing workflows you can use
Omnichannel marketing is all about connecting channels and touchpoints in a way that creates consistent, relevant experiences, not just supporting as many channels as possible. You need to know how to put everything together into tangible marketing messaging that boosts engagement and drives action.
Here are nine practical ways your team can start implementing this approach in everyday campaigns:
- Welcome new subscribers with a timed offer: Kick off customer relationships with an automated email that thanks them for signing up and includes a discount or quick-start message. If they don’t engage, follow up via SMS to keep the momentum going and drive early conversions.
- Recover abandoned carts through coordinated reminders: Detect when a customer leaves items in their cart and trigger a series of follow-ups. Start with an email showing the saved cart, then send a friendly SMS nudge to remind them, boosting the likelihood they’ll return and check out.
- Promote events with aligned cross-channel campaigns: Schedule email and SMS broadcasts to announce upcoming events, like webinars or product launches. Use email to provide full details and RSVP links, while SMS reminders help drive attendance closer to the event date.
- Turn in-store visits into digital follow-ups: When a customer makes a purchase in-store, capture their contact details at checkout. Follow up with an email suggesting complementary products they can find online, then send an SMS a week later inviting them to an exclusive in-store preview or sale.
- Celebrate key moments with automated messages: Set up smart workflows that recognize birthdays, anniversaries, or loyalty milestones. Whether it’s a short celebratory SMS or an email with a personalized offer, these touchpoints build stronger connections without extra effort.
- Re-engage inactive contacts with targeted outreach: Identify contacts who haven’t engaged in a while and launch a win-back campaign. Send an email acknowledging their absence, then follow up with a time-sensitive offer via SMS to reignite interest.
- Launch new products with segmented broadcasts: Use contact segmentation to identify the right audience, then promote new offerings through coordinated email and SMS outreach to help drive traffic and engagement from your most interested contacts.
- Follow up after purchases to encourage repeat business: Send a thank-you message after an order, followed by a helpful email with product tips, FAQs, or relevant add-ons. Later, you can check in through SMS to offer continued support or a loyalty reward.
- Connect website activity to personalized outreach: If a contact browses your website and views certain products, follow up with a personalized email containing recommendations or reviews. If they don’t click through, send a short SMS highlighting the most compelling offer.
Each of these strategies uses multiple channels to support a seamless customer journey. Whether reactive or proactive, the key is to plan your outreach so that every message adds value, and every experience feels connected.
But before you can scale these workflows effectively, you need a clear omnichannel strategy that ties your tools, teams, and touchpoints together.
Building an omnichannel marketing strategy from the ground up
Every interaction a customer has with your brand—whether browsing your website, visiting a store, reading an email, or texting your team—shapes their perception of your business. When those interactions happen in isolation, it’s easy for the experience to feel inconsistent or disconnected.
A strong omnichannel strategy connects these touchpoints so your team can deliver a seamless journey across both digital and physical channels. This means having the systems, data, and processes in place to engage customers in a coordinated way, no matter where they start or finish their interaction.
Here’s how to build it.
Audit your current channels
Map out every way customers interact with your brand, from your website and social media to email, SMS, in-store, and beyond. Identify gaps, overlaps, or inconsistencies in the journey.
Centralize your customer data
Omnichannel success depends on how well you know your audience. Start by bringing together messaging history, preferences, lifecycle stage, and behavioral data into a unified contact view. This makes it easier to personalize outreach, avoid repeated messages, and ensure every team member has the full context when they engage. A centralized contact profile also sets the stage for accurate segmentation and timely automation.
Set up compliance and opt-in workflows
Each messaging channel has its own rules around consent. Implement clear opt-in forms, maintain subscription preferences, and ensure that contacts can update or opt out at any time. Automating this process with opt-in management tools helps keep your outreach compliant and trustworthy.
Build flexible, real-time segments
Use dynamic filters to group contacts by behavior, attributes, or engagement history. You might create segments like “opened email but didn’t click,” “VIP customers,” or “needs follow-up.” These groups let you tailor your messages, whether they’re part of an automation or a one-time campaign.
Combine automation with strategic broadcasts
Not every campaign should rely on triggers alone. While automations help you respond in real time—like sending a follow-up after a form submission—broadcasts let you plan proactive outreach, like product announcements or seasonal promotions. Use both strategically to reinforce messages across channels without overwhelming your audience, and align timing, content, and goals across formats to stay consistent and relevant at scale.
Bridge online and in-store experiences
Make sure activity in one channel informs the next, no matter where it takes place. For example, follow up in-store purchases with relevant online recommendations, or retarget website visitors with personalized offers when they shop in person.
Coordinate across teams and departments
Marketing, sales, and customer service should share context so that outreach feels connected, regardless of which team sends the message. Ensure your omnichannel platform connects all channels, including history, to prevent disjointed or conflicting communication.
Track results and adjust your strategy
Monitor performance across all channels in one place. Look at open rates, click-throughs, replies, and conversions to understand which parts of your journey are working, and which need refinement. Use those insights to test new timing, content, or sequences.
Five expert tips to level up your omnichannel strategy
Once your channels are connected, a few small adjustments can make a big impact. These quick wins can help your team work more efficiently and improve campaign results right away:
- Start with the channels your audience already uses: Focus first on SMS and email, your most direct, responsive platforms, before expanding into chat apps or social messaging.
- Use dynamic lists to keep targeting fresh: Instead of manually editing or exporting contacts, create segments that update in real time based on customer activity, preferences, or profile changes.
- Personalize with the data you already have: Even simple details, like past purchases or recent replies, can make a message feel more relevant. Use custom fields to tailor outreach at scale.
- Automate your follow-ups: Set up reminder messages or alternate paths if a customer doesn’t respond to your initial outreach. This keeps engagement flowing without manual effort.
- Focus on the metrics that reflect real impact: Opens are just the start. Prioritize replies, click-throughs, and conversions to measure how well your campaigns are actually driving results.
These tips help strengthen your foundation and maximize the value of each message, helping to kickstart your new omnichannel strategy—as long as you have the right omnichannel marketing platform and tools.
Bringing your omnichannel strategy to life
Omnichannel messaging, including marketing, is how modern-day businesses build better relationships and drive better outcomes for customers. When your channels, messages, and data work together, you create experiences that feel timely, personal, and consistent from start to finish.
If you’re ready to put these strategies into action, Heymarket gives you everything you need to get started. With built-in SMS, email, web chat, and social messaging—plus advanced tools like dynamic lists, custom fields, shared inboxes, and flexible automations—you can launch coordinated campaigns that scale with your team and contact lists.
Ready to unify all your channels and teams? Learn more about Heymarket’s omnichannel messaging solution, or book a demo today.
