Omni-channel marketing: Good or Bad?

Marketers working for Barnes & Noble have an interesting opportunity: they can connect with their customers in their brick and mortar stores, on their website, via online marketing, through their mobile app, through their tablets and eReaders, over email, social, direct mail, and push notifications. That’s a lot of ways to market to their customers! And with great opportunity comes high expectations. Customers expect their favorite brands to remember them, treat them well, and give them the level of service and the experience they are used to. Add to this perhaps the most relevant customer expectation of personalization and it’s quite a complex undertaking!

The most sophisticated solution would involve a system that constantly monitors available customer data across the millions of customer accounts, matches it up with relevant product and content offerings, and stands ready to deploy a timely and relevant marketing message across any (or all) channels. After all, the most successful marketing tactic would also be useful to the customer. Therefore data analytics serves as the intelligence engine or feedback loop to this sophisticated omni-channel CRM system without which disparate and alienating mass-marketing messages risk meeting a brand’s best customers at every turn. In some ways it reminds me of this great clip from The Office.

Will it be Google or a startup that comes up with the one-stop shop for omni-channel marketing? Or would omni-channel marketing even resonate with customers? Would this be when they say that companies have too much of their personal preferences and data? Time will tell.