What is omnichannel marketing? How to approach it—and exceed high consumer expectations—in 2025

A customer’s journey from discovery to purchase is rarely linear.

For example, someone might visit your website and sign up for your email list. Later, they could see an influencer mention your product on Instagram, browse your physical store, then decide they need to do more research online—all before making a single purchase.

While these actions may seem disconnected, they’re all part of a winding, often unpredictable, customer experience.

As a B2C business, your marketing strategy can benefit a lot from embracing this complexity—which is where omnichannel marketing comes in.

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that integrates data from multiple channels to create a cohesive customer experience. These channels can include:

• Physical stores
• Email
• SMS
• Social media
• Product pages
• Apps
• Customer service interactions

The most important thing to know about omnichannel marketing is that it’s a data-driven approach that personalizes experiences for the customer.

For instance, let’s say a potential customer clicks on a Pinterest ad and browses a product page on your website. They don’t buy anything, but they sign up for exclusive SMS offers.

A few days later, they receive a text with a limited-time offer on the product they were browsing. They decide this is the perfect opportunity to complete the purchase. Within the 24 hours of receiving their purchase, they get a follow-up link with care tips for the product they purchased.

This is an example of omnichannel marketing in action.

Keep in mind that omnichannel marketing is different from multi-channel marketing, which can still create cohesive brand experiences through copywriting and design. The difference is that a multi-channel strategy doesn’t integrate data across different channels and therefore can’t personalize experiences.

Why omnichannel marketing is so important

Klaviyo’s state of ecommerce report reveals an interesting trend: while 69% of brands identify their own ecommerce website as their top revenue channel, consumers are more likely to make purchases in branded retail stores compared to other options.

This might seem contradictory, but it actually highlights an important reality: to be successful, brands need to merge their online and offline experiences to create an integrated journey for their customers.

While an omnichannel marketing strategy may require more work up front to pull off, it can lead to significant benefits, including:

Higher revenue

When customers can purchase from your website, app, or physical store with equal ease—or even switch between these channels during their journey—they’re far less likely to abandon their purchase.

Omnichannel marketing also encourages repeat purchases and subscription renewals. When your brand is active across multiple channels, you’re not just making it easier for customers to buy once—you’re making it easier for them to return.

Real-life example: Chukar Cherries uses omnichannel marketing to boost profits

Chukar Cherries had successfully operated brick-and-mortar stores since 1988 and launched an ecommerce presence a decade later. But they needed to shift more fully to online shopping when the pandemic hit in 2020.

To adapt, they connected with customers via email, their website, and SMS. Specifically, the brand added abandoned check-out, cross-sell, and VIP flows, while strengthening their existing welcome flow with incentives to purchase.

As a result of these changes, Chukar Cherries grew their revenue from flows by 4x within two years. It’s a great example of where you can start with omnichannel marketing if you only have resources for 2–3 channels as a smaller brand.

Higher customer satisfaction

Amidst high customer expectations and digital noise, two things can make a brand experience stand out:

1. Convenience: With so many options available, customers crave—and expect—convenience. This means reaching them via the channels they’re already on, making it easy to find what they’re looking for, and optimizing the purchase experience for speed.
2. Personalization: Customers want to feel like they’re valued. Whether it’s through personalized product recommendations or a well-timed offer, showing customers you understand their preferences is non-negotiable now that Amazon has set the standard for the ideal B2C experience.

Omnichannel marketing checks both boxes. Brands that provide convenient, personalized experiences will stand out from the ones that don’t.

Real-life example: Jenni Kayne improves customer satisfaction with omnichannel marketing

Jenni Kayne, a luxury apparel and home brand, regularly emails online shoppers discount codes that are only redeemable in stores. It’s a convenient way to offer a benefit to people who prefer to shop in person.

Similarly, if a customer near one of their stores abandons an online cart valued at over $5,000, the local store manager receives a notification to personally reach out (only if they have explicit permission to do so first, of course).

This gives the brand the opportunity to create a bespoke experience for a customer based on why they may have abandoned their cart. It also works in terms of engaging and satisfying customers: strategies like these helped Jenni Kayne increase their email campaign click rate 35% YoY.

Higher customer trust via personalization

People expect your brand to look, feel, and sound the same no matter where they interact with you—whether that’s on your website, social media, email, or in a physical store. This reliability is part of what creates trust between your brand and your customers.

Omnichannel marketing—and the integrated nature of it—is a large part of what drives this kind of trust. When you use integrated data to better understand your customer, you can personalize your interactions based on what you know people expect of you.

Real-life example: Naturopathica creates a personalized brand experience with omnichannel marketing

Naturopathica, a plant-based skincare brand with multiple spa locations, used to send the same promotional email to anyone who had booked an appointment within the past 2 years.

With better customer data, they were able to personalize their messages instead. For example, they started sending post-appointment aftercare tips that were personalized to the treatment someone received. They also started sending discount codes to people on their birthday as a token of appreciation.

Thanks to these personalized interactions and more, Naturopathica grew email revenue from bookings by 43% QoQ.

How to approach omnichannel attribution

A common question about omnichannel marketing is how to track the overall revenue impact of each channel.

This is where multi-channel attribution comes in. Klaviyo, for example, offers cooperative multi-channel attribution for email and SMS.

While there are many models to choose from—what works for one brand won’t necessarily work for another—here’s what we recommend as a place to start:

• Adopt a holistic approach. Omnichannel attribution shouldn’t only account for the final touchpoint before a sale. It should, in some way, account for every interaction along the conversion path, from initial awareness to loyalty. That’s known as a multi-touch attribution model.
• Understand the nuances of your typical customer journey. For example, some businesses with long buying cycles may benefit from a wider look-back window to capture the influence of early touchpoints. That’s why we recommend tailoring your model to reflect your business’s unique goals and customer behavior.
• Invest in a tool that offers flexibility. A marketing automation platform should help you build a custom attribution model that works for your business. You should be able to add or adjust attribution touchpoints, look-back windows, and filters so that your model remains adaptable.

When you understand how your channels are working together to influence purchasing decisions, you can refine your marketing campaigns, deliver more personalized experiences, and maximize ROI.

What you need to launch your omnichannel marketing strategy

Any brand can adopt an omnichannel marketing strategy, but you’ll need the right data and tools before you start. Here are 3 must-have components of an omnichannel strategy:

1. Centralized data

Centralized data is at the heart of every omnichannel marketing strategy because it’s how brands create a cohesive customer experience. Here are a few ways you can start de-siloing your company data:

• Collect data from diverse sources—such as your customer relationship management system (CRM), website, ad platforms, etc.—in an all-in-one CRM.
• Centralize this data to form a single view of the customer. This record is your single source of truth about who your customers are, their preferences, and how they interact with your brand online.
• Automate data management with customer profiles that update automatically based on how people behave online.

2. Segmentation capabilities

Once your data is centralized, you’ll be in a much better position to segment your audience and create a personalized experience for each customer.

For instance, if you’re an outdoor apparel brand, you could segment your audience by sport—such as hikers vs. runners—based on their shopping behaviors.

Your omnichannel strategy might then target hikers with emails and SMS alerts about boots, backpacks, and trekking poles, while runners receive information about upcoming sales for sneakers, shorts, and lightweight water bottles.

3. Performance monitoring

Omnichannel marketing is an integration of marketing channels and customer service channels. This integrated strategy will affect how you compare and contrast the performance of these channels across the entire customer lifecycle.

To gain a comprehensive view, we recommend tracking a combination of marketing performance metrics and customer satisfaction indicators. A few to consider:

• Engagement metrics: click rates, open rates, social media engagement, time spent on product pages, etc.
• Conversion metrics: conversion rates across multiple channels, cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), etc.
• Customer satisfaction metrics: Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), qualitative data from post-purchase surveys and customer reviews
• Retention metrics: churn rate, repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), etc.

Analyzing these metrics side by side can help you understand not only which channels drive sales, but also how they influence customer loyalty.

For instance, let’s say you find that social ads generate high conversions but low CSAT scores. When you dig in, you learn that customers who purchase from social media expect better customer service via social media channels.

You can start to address the problem by deploying a customer service bot on Instagram messenger, with customer service agents at the ready to answer more complex inquiries.

Now, deliver the kind of omnichannel personalization consumers expect

At the heart of a successful omnichannel marketing strategy is personalization, which is the process of tailoring your outreach to a customer’s preferences and behaviors.

A decade ago, personalization meant making sure every email started off with “Hi [First Name]!” Today, personalization goes so much deeper. It’s about reaching your customers via the right channels at an optimal time, with content that reflects who they are and what they want.

Think about your experience with Amazon. Any time you log in to your account, you see a list of recommended products that are “similar to your past purchases” or “inspired by your shopping trends.” You’re even prompted to repurchase items you might be running low on.

That’s what customers expect from brands. And now, thanks to AI and the only CRM built for B2C businesses, it’s possible to scale that level of personalization. Here’s how Klaviyo B2C CRM helps brands optimize their personalization efforts with built-in Klaviyo AI:

• Customized flows: Flows are automated messages sent after someone has taken an action online. When you use AI to create flows, you can just describe your desired flow—whether it’s a welcome series, post-purchase follow-up, or re-engagement campaign—and AI generates it in seconds.
• Personalized campaigns: Manual A/B testing used to be a foundation for personalizing campaigns. Now, AI can predict which version of your campaign will resonate most with each recipient. Once the optimal match is identified, it sends the ideal version automatically. This makes it easier to deliver highly relevant messages across channels without the manual trial-and-error process.
• Customer sentiment: Stay proactive by analyzing customer feedback and identifying trends before they become issues. By understanding emerging sentiments, you can adjust your messaging, product offers, or approach to keep your omnichannel strategy aligned with your customers’ evolving needs.

Stop chasing transactions. Klaviyo B2C CRM turns customers into diehard fans—obsessed with your products, devoted to your brand, fueling your growth.