starbucks omnichannel case study

We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to the use of cookies.

Create Life Long Clients

Apexx.ai will help you build long lasting client relationships on autopilot.

Social Media Management

Website Chat Widget

Forms & Surveys

Online Appointment Booking

Membership & Course Builder

Automated nurture sequence, email & sms marketing, phone system & autodialer, all in one inbox, automate tasks, crm & sales pipeline, invoicing & payments, review & reputation management, reporting & analytics, explore the latest insights and strategies for marketing success.

A Case Study of Starbucks' Omnichannel Marketing Approach

As a result of 2020's disruption, the consumer experience has been completely transformed. Along with offering an in-person shopping experience, retailers are also focusing on adopting an Omnichannel strategy for the growth and development of their business - so do Starbucks!

Starbuck's omnichannel marketing strategy is a great way to understand how to deepen the relationships with the customers and drive repeat business. One can learn effective tactics for every business by studying their successful omnichannel strategy.

In each section, we'll discuss the tactics used by Starbucks and how they implemented new ideas to ensure sustainable growth.

The Impact of Channel Expansion on Starbucks Omnichannel Success

Starbucks started facing a problem in 2018 when their most loyal customer enrolled for the Starbucks rewards; there were still 60 million monthly customers with no digital connection with the brand.

And this gave rise to the need to strengthen their digital relationship with the customers and structure an omnichannel strategic plan to ensure all of their customers are part of their journey.

1. Getting More People to Use Channels!

The first step Starbucks took was to introduce Free gate Wi-Fi for their customers in 2018. Users first had to register using their email ids to access their Wi-Fi network service.

In other words, customers were forced to make a digital relationship to gain their contact information in exchange for Free Wi-Fi. Later, they also started offering charging stations for their customers to boost customer retention.

With the help of this strategy, Starbucks gained access to contact more than 10 million digital customers in their database.

According to the Executive Vice President of Starbucks, they considered the digital customers at the top of the funnel and enablers to build relationships while leading them to the Starbucks Rewards Program.

2. Loyalty Rewards with Unique Offers and Experiences

Starbucks' vision plays out in triggered email newsletter campaigns. Many unique offers have made customers enroll in the Starbucks Rewards Program.

For instance, one of the ad campaigns of Starbucks states that "Starbucks Rewards members who would order a handcrafted beverage will get a coupon for a free drink."

There are 3 important steps that Starbucks wanted to take through this offer:

Sign up for the Starbucks Rewards Program

Use the Starbucks application to place an order.

Redeem the offer quickly to get further coupons.

With the help of creating unique offers, Starbucks strengthened its chain of customer relationships while providing them with an experience beyond expectations.

3. Learnings from the Adoption of Channels in E-commerce

For omnichannel retailing, channel adoption is one of the most important steps. It is absolutely worth it to make someone use their services regardless of whatever means it is possible.

Starbucks identified its strong customer touchpoints and rewarded channel adoption with clear benefits. It's like using smart helpers and automation to make customers feel good and want to visit Starbucks again and again.

Furthermore, Starbucks has 28,000 physical stores with approximately 75 million customers monthly. They identified their benefits and channelized that service into a new customer relationship through an email.

4. Engaging and Retaining Customers through New Channels

The email addresses gathered in the consumer reports and customer database of Starbucks were later used to drive retention rates and boost purchase frequency. They send a variety of offers, among which two stood out.

The first one was Flagship Offer, Happy Hours. According to this offer, Starbucks sent an email with a fantastic discount offer; however, the offer was only applicable to a certain timeframe of the day, and that too for limited days' validity.

The primary goal of this offer was to drive non-digitally active customers to the stores during non-peak hours.

Secondly, the ultimate goal of Starbucks was to drive their customer to get membership cards for the Starbucks Rewards Program. Therefore, they were given certain perks and incentives to progress through the funnel. For example, they offered a free drink if they created an SR account.

5. Personalization by Creating a 360-degree View of Customers

Starbuck's strategic use of personalization of 360-degree view for the customers contributed significantly to customer retention. Analyzing the coffee and drinks preferences of the customers and using their history of buying the products led to lifetime value for them.

This rich information empowered Starbucks to tailor their offers and communications. For instance, Starbucks segmented its customers based on factors such as past orders, number of visits, and other demographic details.

Subsequently, these omnichannel strategies enabled Starbucks to seamlessly implement customer preferences across different channels. So, whether customer engagement is through mobile apps, in-store, social media, or online platforms, the personalized experience remains the same.

6. Customer Data-driven Offers

Data without proper execution is useless. Therefore, Starbucks generated customer-oriented offers that genuinely resonated with their likes and dislikes. Additionally, Starbucks studied each customer's location and preferences to ensure they never missed one.

To that end, whenever Starbucks sends an offer, they ensure the customer likes that product. For example, if a customer frequently orders an iced coffee and nitro cold brew coffee, Starbucks sends them customized offers with these products.

The genius part of Starbucks' offers is that they always kept the personal touch, making every customer feel valued and important to them. Subsequently, it helped them to increase the number of loyal customers.

Closing Thoughts: Lessons for ECommerce in Driving Retention from Starbucks Strategy

Starbucks utilized the combination of one-time discount offers and ongoing loyalty rewards to boost its purchase frequency and drive sales. They also paid attention to customer adoption by creating more premium offers.

Starbucks' approach became an identity of its success, just like a logo. The dynamic interplay between limited-time discounts and loyalty rewards painted a vibrant picture, enticing customers to frequent their stores. This action resembled a well-designed billboard, capturing attention and conveying a message of value and belonging.

Furthermore, by tracking customers' preferences and behavior, Starbucks created personalized offers to enhance retention. With the intelligent implementation of these ECommerce lessons, Starbucks strengthened its customer relationships, boosted retention, and ultimately increased repeat purchase rates immensely, making Starbucks' Omnichannel approach successful.

If you are looking for a reliable and talented Omnichannel marketing agency, contact Apexx.ai . With a team of qualified marketers, they know how to channel your customers through different platforms and never let them go.

Sheldon Naidoo

Marketing Maverick and Business Visionary Helping Companies Thrive in Competitive Markets

We’re here to help

Ask about our plans, pricing, implementations, or anything else. our knowledgeable reps are ready to help..

Streamline Sales

Generate More Leads

Build Your Brand

Impress Existing Customers

AutomButtonate Tasks

Membership & Course Builder Automated Nurture Sequence Email & SMS Marketing Phone System & Autodialer

All In One Inbox Automate Tasks CRM & Sales Pipeline Invoicing & Payments Review & Reputation Management Reporting & Analytics

© Copyright Apexx.ai 2024

Privacy policy, terms & conditions`.

5 Omnichannel marketing examples and case studies (with results)

As brands use more and more channels to reach their customers, it becomes that much more important to ensure a consistent experience across all those touchpoints .

Katie Morley - Global Content Director

Updated on 16 Aug 2024

Table of Contents

Na-kd: increasing customer lifetime value by 25%, slazenger: achieving a 49x roi in just eight weeks, vogacloset: speeding up campaign launches and attaining a 30x roi, matahari: bridging the gap between digital and in-store customer experiences for a 356x roi, chow sang sang: getting a 23.5% uplift in conversion rates with onsite personalization and email recommendations, take your omnichannel marketing to the next level with insider, share this post, experience insider with our interactive platform tour, most popular.

Insider’s Srikant Kotapalli ...

8 Jul 2024 - 7 minutes

Instagram DM automation: Tips,...

4 Jul 2024 - 11 minutes

A simple guide to developing a...

Improving the ecommerce custom...

5 Jul 2024 - 7 minutes

However, the process of delivering that experience — often referred to as omnichannel marketing or omnichannel campaign management — can be very challenging. Without enough experience and the right technology solutions, many companies face problems like:

• Data silos, which prevent them from getting a clear understanding of their customers’ journeys.
• Fragmented marketing stacks, which make it incredibly difficult to build, manage, and analyze omnichannel campaigns.
• Low customer engagement, which results from the previous two problems, as they prevent marketers from delivering consistent, personalized journeys across physical and digital channels.

In this guide, you’ll learn about brands that successfully overcome these issues in their omnichannel efforts. We’ll look at popular omnichannel marketing examples from brands like Amazon , Disney , and Starbucks , as well as five case studies that demonstrate its impact on conversions, revenue, and return on investment (ROI).

Omnichannel marketing: Definition, benefits, and popular examples

Omnichannel marketing is the process of bringing all marketing channels — like your website, mobile app , emails, push notifications , and social media ads — together by connecting them to a central platform. This lets you share data in real time, create consistent customer journeys across multiple channels, and manage campaigns from within one platform.

A true omnichannel approach requires coordinating your efforts across all channels to deliver a consistent brand experience. This is usually done with the help of a customer journey builder (like Insider’s Architect ).

This is in stark contrast to traditional multichannel marketing where single channels (e.g., email, on-site, and social media) work in isolation, resulting in a disjointed experience. 

When done right, omnichannel marketing results in:

• Consistent customer experiences , as all marketing efforts and channels work in conjunction based on customer’s interests and preferences.
• Higher conversion rates and revenue, as customers are seeing relevant content, messaging, and product recommendations across all interactions with the brand.
• Better retention rates and customer loyalty , as customers are much more likely to stay long-term if they feel a brand knows them and won’t waste their time with irrelevant offers.

With benefits like that, it’s no wonder that the world’s largest companies invest so much in creating consistent buyer journeys across their websites, mobile apps, messaging channels, brick-and-mortar stores, and all other brand touchpoints.

Here are a few popular examples:

• Starbucks : From thousands of physical locations to a well-known website, mobile app, and social media profiles, Starbucks is one of the kings of omnichannel marketing at scale. The brand also has a loyalty program via free rewards cards that can be reloaded via their website or mobile app, which incentivizes repeat purchases and can be very convenient for customers.
• Sephora : Sephora is a multinational beauty powerhouse, which offers plenty of examples of great omnichannel marketing. Their great in-store experience is a given but their digital channels (especially their website and mobile app) take things to the next level by allowing customers to choose delivery and pickup options, track orders easily, find products they’re looking for, and more.
• Amazon : Amazon has long been known for its exceptional online experience. Over the years, they’ve successfully blended their online and offline touchpoints into a cohesive journey. The company puts customers firmly in control of how their journey after their online checkout. For example, they can pick up packages at nearby locations (via Amazon Hub), use secure self-service stations (via Amazon Hub Locker), and much more.
• Disney : The multinational entertainment company has mastered the art of omnichannel marketing to the smallest detail. When customers visit their famous resorts, all the data they’ve provided online — like the movies and shows they like, the rides they’d like to visit, where they’d like to eat, and so on — is used to deliver a seamless experience. It’s one of the most impressive examples of blending online and offline journeys, especially considering the scale Disney operates at.

5 Omnichannel marketing examples (with real-life case studies)

In the sections below, we’ll explore five real-life examples of omnichannel marketing. Before we dive in, note that all five brands used Insider — our omnichannel marketing platform — to deliver a seamless experience across two or more touchpoints, promote new products, reduce cart abandonments, bridge the gap between online and offline experiences, and more.

NA-KD is a fashion brand founded in 2015 that now boasts a presence in over 50 markets. Like many fast-growing brands, NA-KD’s tech stack wasn’t able to keep up with the increasing amounts of customer data and marketing channels.

Before working with Insider, the company’s digital marketing team was using a combination of point solutions and in-house technology. This left their customer data scattered across different systems and prevented them from getting a clear picture of their customers’ journeys.

That’s why they started by unifying their customer data with Insider’s enterprise customer data platform (CDP) . Our CDP gave NA-KD’s team a single convenient place to store and analyze customer data, which paved the way for a deep understanding of their customers. 

And since our CDP is also tailored to eCommerce brands , it was able to create 360-degree profiles of all NA-KD customers filled with key insights into:

• Purchase histories.
• Attribute and discount affinity.
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV).
• Last browsed and abandoned products.
• Likelihood to purchase or engage on a specific channel.

Armed with these insights, NA-KD’s team was able to completely transform their omnichannel marketing approach . 

They ditched their old coupon-based campaigns in favor of building completely personalized online shopping experiences (using our customer journey builder ). Insider’s broad channel support enabled them to build and automate personalized omnichannel marketing campaigns across their website, mobile app, email, push notifications, and SMS.

Thanks to this new omnichannel personalization approach, NA-KD was able to achieve a 25% increase in CLTV and a 72x ROI in 12 months.

Slazenger is an established sports brand with over 150 years of experience in offering both amateur designs and professional-grade products. The company was looking to improve its marketing ROI by personalizing customer experiences across channels by targeting the right segments of users with contextual, relevant messaging. 

They knew Insider would be a great partner in this endeavor due to its advanced personalization capabilities, versatile marketing automation features, and on-hand technical support. 

Specifically, Slazenger wanted to use Architect (our journey orchestration platform ) to engage shoppers with contextual messaging about products in which they’d already expressed interest. 

For example, they used Architect to bring back cart abandoners to their online store with relevant messages on the channels they prefer, including email, web push, and on-site. This helped them achieve a 3x ROI within 8 weeks and recover 40% of revenue in a single campaign.

They also use Insider for plenty of other omnichannel personalization use cases, like enticing potential shoppers with targeted price drop emails and web push notifications. Overall, Slazenger’s partnership with Insider enabled them to achieve:

• A 49x ROI within eight weeks.
• A 700% increase in customer acquisition.
• A 12% increase in click-through rates (CTR) compared to their regular campaigns.

Founded in 2013, Vog acloset has quickly become one of Europe’s leading fashion eCommerce sites, offering an extensive range of clothing, accessories, and beauty products.

Their team faced the complex challenge of consolidating data from various touchpoints and channels into one unified source. Understanding customer behavior and predicting intent was essential for Vogacloset to build seamless customer experiences, but this was impossible with data held across multiple platforms.

Similar to NA-KD, the first step towards successful omnichannel marketing for Vogacloset was data unification with Insider’s CDP . 

The customer success team at Insider collaborated closely with Vogacloset to eliminate blockers and ensure the migration was as seamless as possible. As a result, the data migration project was completed successfully in just eight weeks. 

Here’s what Vogacloset’s Customer Relationship Manager said about the process:

“The process of choosing the right marketing platform for us took over two months, so when we chose Insider, we wanted to get to work quickly. Luckily, Insider’s integration process was completed in less than eight weeks, and we went live incredibly quickly. The Insider team now feels like an extension of our team. The process is so collaborative, and Insider supports us every step of the way.”

Next, it was time to tackle Vogacloset’s main omnichannel goals — to improve key metrics like user experience, loyalty, opt-ins, opens, and overall conversions.

At that point, their team had a holistic view of the customer journeys and interactions thanks to Insider’s CDP. They were able to leverage that data by creating highly personalized campaigns that spanned multiple channels and touchpoints using Architect.

For example, Vogacloset was able to launch campaigns on WhatsApp , leveraging the modern channel to increase product discovery with personalized recommendations and price-drop alerts. 

Thanks to Architect’s powerful omnichannel personalization and automation, Vogacloset achieved a 30x ROI , with WhatsApp contributing as the channel with the highest ROI.

Matahari is one of Indonesia’s largest and most recognizable retail brands. While they primarily rely on physical stores to generate revenue, they needed to bridge the gap between their online and offline channels for a consistent experience.

Specifically, their marketing team wanted to deliver more relevant experiences to customers. Although Matahari’s team was sending plenty of emails, they weren’t powered by the brand’s customer data, so they ended up being very generic and produced poor open rates.

That’s why our Insider team suggested an overhaul to the email marketing strategy. The foundation for this task was to unify Matahari’s online and offline customer data into Insider’s CDP , so it could be easily used to power personalized marketing campaigns. 

For example, this meant the company was able to segment its target audiences more precisely and send out personalized emails. This alone yielded a 328% increase in email open rates.

From here, they also started to optimize their mobile app strategy. 

They used Insider’s marketing automation capabilities and push notifications to deliver personalized experiences to their app users. This ultimately led to a massive 356x boost in revenue.   

Finally, Matahari’s team needed to optimize the process of building omnichannel experiences as it was very time-consuming. To do so, the brand introduced automated workflows (powered by Architect) for new members of its Membership program, ensuring a warm and engaging welcome. Our journey builder also integrated seamlessly with their various channels to send automated payment confirmations.

Architect’s AI-powered capabilities helped Matahari’s team improve efficiency and drastically reduce the manual effort required to launch omnichannel campaigns.

Here’s what their Head of eCommerce Marketing had to say about working with Insider:

“Through a strategic partnership with Insider, Matahari went through a full digital transformation to enhance its online presence and customer engagement . By leveraging Insider’s suite of solutions, including Web Push, Mobile Web Suite, App Suite, Architect, and Email, Matahari addressed the challenges of bringing offline customers to the online platform and creating a seamless omnichannel shopping experience to improve key metrics, drive revenue growth, and increase customer satisfaction”

Chow Sang Sang has 80+ years of legacy in crafting exquisite jewelry. Founded in 1934, today the company has over 1000 employees and 200 stores across mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. 

The brand wanted to improve its customers’ onsite and email experience by coordinating its efforts across both channels. Insider’s powerful website personalization capabilities and email marketing platform were a natural fit for this goal.  

First, Chow Sang Sang’s team wanted to optimize onsite recommendations through dynamic algorithms for improved user experience, conversions, and revenue.

Our team recommended the use of Insider’s AI-powered Smart Recommender A/B testing. Chow Sang Sang’s team employed these various smart recommendations across pages and A/B tested these for maximum engagement, including:

• User-based recommendations on the homepage.
• Highest discounted and top-selling product recommendations on cart pages.
• Mixed recommendations (most popular and viewed together) on product pages.

These new recommendation campaigns allowed Chow Sang Sang to achieve a 10.5% conversion rate uplift.

Second, the brand needed to create a consistent omnichannel experience, across their website and email campaigns. This was an issue, as their current product recommendation engine linking the website and email was primitive and required products to be manually added to each email.

Insider’s account managers suggested using crowd-sourced recommendations to create a flexible email recommendation solution. 

Using this strategy, Chow Sang Sang could source recommendations based on the interests displayed by their customers and select all these products to be promoted in the email with just one click. The company achieved a conversion rate uplift of more than 23.5% and a 59% uplift in average session duration from new email campaigns.

Insider is a powerful omnichannel customer engagement platform that can help you build and automate personalized campaigns across touchpoints — from websites and mobile apps to channels like email, push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, and more.

Our solution has been ranked at the top of different categories by customers and industry experts, including omnichannel marketing platforms by IDC .

As an enterprise-grade marketing platform , Insider can:

• Aggregate your customer data from all online and offline sources — including CRMs, analytics tools, customer service software, social media platforms, eCommerce platforms like (Shopify and BigCommerce), and more — into a central database, so you can avoid data silos. 
• Create detailed 360-degree profiles of your customers and reveal their behaviors, interests, and preferred touchpoints.
• Segment your customer base and predict future behaviors, like how much they’re projected to spend and how likely they are to buy or engage with your brand on a specific channel.
• Create end-to-end personalized customer experiences across all channels and at scale, so you can improve key metrics like revenue, customer retention, 
• Use the full power of AI and machine learning to automate many tasks around omnichannel campaign creation and management, such as choosing the right channels and moments to engage customers, generating copy and images, and more.

Finally, our easy channel integrations, experienced customer support team, and versatile templates will help you implement your omnichannel marketing strategy as quickly as possible.

Schedule a demo with our team to learn how Insider can benefit your business specifically.

Katie is an award-winning content marketer with over eight years of experience in content strategy, development, and copywriting. As Global Content Director at Insider, she currently oversees content strategy across 26 regions. Fun fact: Katie read 64 books last year (for which she owes a long commute and two week-long holidays where she spent approximately six hours a day with her nose in a book).

Keep Reading

Katie Morley

Get the latest insights, tips and tricks delivered to your inbox ✉️

Join our community of 200,000+ CX, Marketing & Ecommerce professionals. Subscribe here for the latest news, tips, and success stories.

Customer Data Platform

Journey Orchestration

Personalization

Predictive Marketing Engine

Omnichannel Marketing 

Cross-channel Messaging

Segmentation

A/B Testing

WhatsApp Conversational Commerce

AMP For Email

Integrations

Site Search

Beauty & Cosmetics

Success Stories

Platform Tour

WhatsApp Explorer

CDP Explorer

SMS Explorer

Comparisons

Best Ecommerce Personalization Software

Best WhatsApp Marketing Software

Best Customer Data Platform

We're Hiring

Essential Guides

Enterprise CDP ,   Cross-Channel Marketing ,  Personalized Customer Experience ,  WhatsApp Marketing ,  Email Marketing Platforms ,  Customer Data Integration ,  Market Segmentation ,  Journey Orchestration Platforms,  Customer Journey Analytics,  Recession-Proof CX Strategies,  Migrating vs. Remaining

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• Manage Consent

This website uses cookies

Privacy overview.

• Case Studies
• vs OneSignal

The Power of Omnichannel Marketing: How Starbucks Keeps Customers Engaged

In today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, customer engagement has become a critical factor in the success of any business. As consumers have more options than ever before, companies must find innovative ways to capture their attention and maintain their loyalty. One brand that has mastered the art of omnichannel marketing is Starbucks, the global coffee giant. By seamlessly integrating its physical and digital channels, Starbucks has created a unique and engaging customer experience that keeps its loyal following coming back time and time again.

Understanding Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is a holistic approach that aims to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience across multiple touchpoints. This includes integrating various channels such as physical stores, websites, mobile apps, social media, and even customer service. The key to successful omnichannel marketing is to ensure that the brand message, product offerings, and customer interactions are aligned and consistent, regardless of the channel the customer chooses to engage with.

Starbucks' Omnichannel Approach

Starbucks has been at the forefront of omnichannel marketing, leveraging its extensive network of physical stores, digital platforms, and innovative technologies to create a truly integrated customer experience. Let's explore how Starbucks has mastered the power of omnichannel marketing.

1. Integrated Mobile App and Loyalty Program

One of the cornerstones of Starbucks' omnichannel strategy is its mobile app and loyalty program. The Starbucks app allows customers to order and pay for their drinks ahead of time, earn rewards, and access exclusive offers. By integrating the app with the company's loyalty program, Starbucks has created a seamless and personalized experience for its customers.

When customers use the Starbucks app, their order history, preferences, and reward points are all synced across their various devices and the physical stores. This means that customers can start an order on their smartphone, continue it on a laptop, and then pick it up at their local Starbucks store without any interruption in the experience.

2. Personalized In-Store Experiences

While Starbucks has embraced digital technologies, it has also maintained a strong focus on its physical store experience. Each Starbucks location is designed to create a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere, with baristas who are trained to provide personalized service.

By leveraging customer data from the mobile app and loyalty program, Starbucks can tailor the in-store experience to individual preferences. This could include suggesting favorite drinks, offering personalized recommendations, or even remembering a customer's name and order. This level of personalization helps to strengthen the emotional connection between the customer and the Starbucks brand.

3. Seamless Omnichannel Transactions

Starbucks has also made it easy for customers to move seamlessly between its digital and physical channels when making purchases. Customers can use the mobile app to order and pay for their drinks, then pick them up in-store without having to wait in line. Alternatively, they can visit a physical store, order at the counter, and have their purchase automatically added to their loyalty account.

This flexibility and convenience have been a major driver of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers appreciate the ability to choose the channel that best suits their needs, without sacrificing the quality of the overall experience.

4. Engaging Social Media Presence

Starbucks has also leveraged social media to enhance its omnichannel marketing efforts. The company maintains an active presence on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where it shares engaging content, interacts with customers, and promotes its latest offerings.

By creating a strong social media presence, Starbucks is able to reach its customers where they are already spending time, and to foster a sense of community and brand loyalty. The company's social media campaigns often feature user-generated content, further strengthening the emotional connection between the brand and its customers.

5. Continuous Innovation

Starbucks is constantly exploring new ways to enhance its omnichannel experience. The company has experimented with features like mobile order and pay, delivery services, and even augmented reality experiences in its stores. This commitment to innovation and adaptation ensures that Starbucks remains at the forefront of customer engagement and stays relevant in an ever-changing market.

The Impact of Starbucks' Omnichannel Approach

Starbucks' successful implementation of omnichannel marketing has had a significant impact on the company's overall performance and customer loyalty.

Increased Customer Engagement and Loyalty

By providing a seamless and personalized experience across all channels, Starbucks has been able to foster a deep emotional connection with its customers. This has resulted in increased customer engagement, with the Starbucks app boasting over 30 million active users and the company's loyalty program having over 25 million members.

Improved Sales and Profitability

Starbucks' omnichannel strategy has also had a positive impact on the company's financial performance. The ability to offer a convenient and personalized experience has led to increased customer visits, higher average order values, and improved overall sales. In 2021, Starbucks reported a 24% increase in global comparable store sales, demonstrating the power of its omnichannel approach.

Enhanced Brand Reputation and Loyalty

Starbucks' commitment to providing a consistent and engaging customer experience across all channels has also contributed to the company's strong brand reputation. Customers perceive Starbucks as a reliable and trustworthy brand, which has helped to solidify its position as a market leader in the coffee industry.

Lessons for Other Businesses

Starbucks' success in omnichannel marketing provides valuable lessons for other businesses looking to enhance their customer engagement and loyalty:

• Integrate digital and physical channels seamlessly: Starbucks has demonstrated the importance of creating a seamless experience across both online and offline channels, allowing customers to move fluidly between them.
• Leverage customer data and personalization: By collecting and analyzing customer data, Starbucks is able to provide personalized experiences that resonate with its customers, strengthening their emotional connection to the brand.
• Embrace innovation and continuous improvement: Starbucks' willingness to experiment with new technologies and features has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve and meet the evolving needs of its customers.
• Foster a strong brand identity and community: Starbucks has cultivated a strong brand identity and sense of community, which has been instrumental in building customer loyalty and advocacy.

By learning from Starbucks' omnichannel success, businesses can unlock the power of customer engagement and position themselves for long-term growth and success in the digital age.

Why Starbucks is Considered One of the Top Omni-Channel Experiences

The more technology advances, the more it’s integrated into our daily lives. And as consumers change their behaviors as a result of technology businesses need to react to follow a single, holistic approach – an omni-channel experience that customers can access whenever they desire.

Omni-channel is a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers with an integrated customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out.

It’s important to separate an omni-channel experience from a multi-channel experience. All omni-channel experiences will use multiple channels, but not all multi-channel experiences are omni-channel. Your company might have an incredible website, social media presence, and mobile marketing – but it’s not omni-channel if they don’t all work together.

Companies focusing on omni-channel experience use knowledge about a customers’ platform and device that is used to interact with them in order to deliver an integrated experience. This integrated experience means that messaging, goals, objectives, and design is consistent across each channel and device — and information is shared quickly and accurately between them.

Consider Starbucks, widely regarded as the one of the top omni-channel experiences. Like similar apps, Starbucks offers a free drink when you sign up for their loyalty program. One major differentiator between Starbucks and traditional customer loyalty programs? You can check and reload your card through phone, website, in-store, or on the app — and any change to the card or your profile gets updated across all channels, in real-time. Realize you don’t have enough money on your card while you’re standing in line to order a latte? You can reload it on the spot and it’ll been updated by the time you swipe to pay.

So how do you accomplish the integration you need to provide a Starbucks-level omni-channel experience? Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) offers restaurants and retailers fresh network competencies that enable omnichannel strategies to keep customers coming back.

Ready to talk about SD-WAN?  Contact [email protected] to learn more.

Latest News & Blogs

Latest news & blogs.

  This post originally appeared on www.cbts.com. View the original post here. CBTS is thrilled to award Parallel Technologies powered by Bridgepointe the Regional Channel Partner of the Year for 2023, for a record four years in a row. This recognition further solidifies the partnership between the two entities and their mutual commitment to providing […]

For Immediate Release Dublin, OH, November 6, 2023 — Parallel Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of business communications solutions, is proud to announce its official endorsement as the first Dialpad Certified Partner in the Midwest. This recognition marks a significant milestone in our commitment to delivering cutting-edge communication solutions to businesses in the region. Dialpad, […]

Dublin, OH – We’re pleased to share that we have received a strategic investment from Bridgepointe Technologies, a tech advisory firm that helps mid-market and enterprise companies transform tech investments into unrivaled business results. Building on our 40-year history as one of the most prominent voice communications companies in the Midwest, the investment will enable […]

This article was originally published by CBTS.  Read the original article here. CBTS is delighted to name Parallel Technologies, Inc. as the Regional Channel Partner of the Year for 2022. This marks the third year in a row that Parallel has earned this award due to its explosive growth. CBTS honors high-performing partners with this […]

Full Name *

Phone Number *

Dublin 614.798.9700

Cincinnati 513.769.8777

Dayton 937.222.8777

More From Forbes

Starbucks: using big data, analytics and artificial intelligence to boost performance.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Not only does Starbucks go through mounds of coffee beans to satiate its raving fans, but they also have mounds of data that they leverage in many ways to improve the customer experience and their business. With 90 million transactions a week in 25,000 stores worldwide the coffee giant is in many ways on the cutting edge of using big data and artificial intelligence to help direct marketing, sales and business decisions.

Adobe Stock

Starbucks Rewards and Mobile App

When Starbucks launched its rewards program and mobile app, they dramatically increased the data they collected and could use to get to know their customers and extract info about purchasing habits. The mobile app has more than 17 million and the reward program has 13 million active users. These users alone create an overwhelming amount of data about what, where and when they buy coffee and complementary products that can be overlaid on other data including weather, holidays and special promotions. Here are just some of the ways that Starbucks uses the data it collects.

Personalizing the Starbucks experience

Members of the rewards program and mobile app authorize Starbucks to gather a lot of info about their coffee-buying habits from their preferred drinks to what time of day they’re usually ordering. So, even when people visit a “new” Starbucks location, that store’s point-of-sale system is able to identify the customer through their smartphone and give the barista their preferred order. In addition, based on ordering preferences, the app will suggest new products (and treats) customers might be interested in trying. This intel is driven by the company’s digital flywheel program , a cloud-based artificial intelligence engine that’s able to recommend food and drink items to customers who didn’t even know, yet, they wanted to try something new. It’s so sophisticated that the recommendations will change based on what makes the most sense according to the day’s weather, if it’s a holiday or a weekday, and what location you’re at.

Targeted and personalized marketing

The same intel that helps Starbucks suggest new products for to try also helps the company send personalized offers and discounts that go far beyond a special birthday discount. Additionally, a customized email goes out to any customer who hasn’t visited a Starbucks recently with enticing offers—built from that individual’s purchase history—to re-engage them.

Virtual barista

My Starbucks Barista through the Starbucks mobile app, allows you to place an order through voice command or messaging to a virtual barista using artificial intelligence algorithms behind the scenes. Since there are so many nuances to an individual order, it’s quite an accomplishment for an artificial intelligence engine to provide a seamless customer experience.

Determine new store locations

It’s common knowledge that the right location is essential to succeed in retail. The Starbucks market planning team doesn’t rely on their gut feelings to determine where stores should be located, but taps into the power of data intelligence through Atlas, a mapping and business intelligence tool developed by Esri. This tool evaluates massive amounts of data, such as proximity to other Starbucks locations, demographics, traffic patterns and more, before recommending a new store location. This system even predicts impact to other Starbucks locations in the area if a new store were to open. Even though it feels like there’s a Starbucks on every corner (and some so close to each other you might imagine that they would cannibalize sales from one another) rest assured the data told them to build it.

Expansion of products into grocery stores

When the company decided to expand and offer Starbucks products customers could purchase at grocery stores and enjoy at home, they turned to data to determine what products they should offer . It combined data it had from its stores about how customers ordered their beverages and combined that intelligence with other industry reports about at-home consumption to create their grocery store product lines. From pumpkin spice caffe latte K-cups to iced coffee without milk or added flavors, Starbucks’ data-driven approach to production expansion is smart business.

Menu updates

Some Starbucks locations serve alcohol, but the company decided which ones would offer “Starbucks Evenings” based on areas the data was signaling would have the highest alcohol consumption to support success of the menu update. Data also drives special limited-offering menu items based on what’s happening at the time. In one example, when Memphis, Tennessee was enduring a heatwave, Starbucks launched a local Frappucino promotion to entice people to beat the heat! And, although there are 87,000 drink combinations available at Starbucks they continue to monitor what drinks sell the best to continue to make menu modifications.

So, next time you need your coffee fix, take a moment to appreciate all the ways data and artificial intelligence are at work behind the scenes guiding your Starbucks experience (and to keep you coming back for more!)

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

A survivor's guide to omni-channel retail disruption from Starbucks management

There was a starting statistic in a recent Wall Street Journal article that pointed out that more retail stores closed down in the first three months of 2017 than in the whole of 2016. To add an extra dose of pain to that, more US retail stores are expected to close before the end of 2017 than have since the financial crisis of 2008.

It was a telling article, says Kevin Johnson, the new CEO of coffee behemoth Starbucks:

The article illuminated once again the seismic shift in consumer behavior underway and the devastating impact that this sea change in behavior is having on many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

This raises a critical question for all such firms, he adds:

What are the critical, transformative components required to propel a brick-and-mortar retailer into the future…what it's going to take for a brick and mortar retailer to survive in the future, and to explain how in the face of tremendous retail headwinds and cross currents underway?

These are questions that Starbucks has addressed to such an extent that Johnson feels that he has “a clear perspective on the answers” which he can share with the rest of the retail sector:

The critical transformative components required for any brick and mortar retailer to survive, let alone succeed in the future are an engaging, digital and mobile relationship with customers that is threaded into a branded, immersive, experiential retail destination. The attributes of the destination will vary. They may include theater, intrigue, or romance. But the common denominator will be the creation of a consumer experience that evokes human emotion and connection. I firmly believe that these are the ingredients that will determine which brick and mortar retailers thrive in the future, and which become victims of the current trend.

The retail sector shouldn’t assume that its plight is somehow unique, argues Johnson. There are lessons to be learned from other markets:

The analogy from my years in the tech industry is how companies respond when a new disruptive technology, like cloud computing, for example, emerges. Those who recognize the disruption think long term and innovate for the future are the big winners. Those who don't, struggle. The retail industry is going through a period of similar profound disruption right before our eyes.

Early starter

Starbuck’s reaction to all this was heavily influenced by Johnson’s predecessor as CEO, Howard Schultz, now the firm’s Chairman. It was Schultz who recognized the need to rethink the business model to focus on digital relationships with customers, and branded experiential retail that are customer destinations:

We anticipated and we saw very early on that there was going to be a very, very significant disruptive, almost cataclysmic, change in the landscape of physical retailers. The number of store closures, consolidations, we're in the nascent stage of that - and there are going to be many, many losers.

Schultz believes that he can idenitify chartacteristics of such losers and, in contrast, the sort of firms that will emerge as winners. One element of this is striking the right omni-channel balance between online and offline presence, a balance that has been a topic of discussion across the entire retail sector in recent months:

Every retailer that is going to win in this new environment must become an experiential destination. Your products and services for the most part cannot just be available online and cannot just be available on Amazon. You have to believe that in order to win and win big, domestically and globally, in this new environment, that a company's capability and competency as a four-wall bricks and mortar retailer must be as good digitally and on mobile in all things that make the brand as relevant outside of the store and on a mobile device as it is inside the four walls of the store. We had a leadership position in our loyalty program in mobile payment, in Mobile Order & Pay, and, given what is in the pipeline in terms of the investments we're going to make over the long term, our ability to toggle back and forth between the physical and the digital world is only going to make our four walls retail business stronger in the future.

Mobile Order and Pay is a big deal for Starbucks, despite the problems that resulted as a side effect when bottlenecks in fulfilment of orders in store built up alarmingly . That said, 20% of of peak time transactions at Starbucks 1800 busiest stores in the US are being executed via Mobile Order and Pay.

The glitches that occured are being addressed successfully, says Johnson:

Steps we have taken since the beginning of the calendar year to increase throughput have enabled to us to better and more efficiently handle increased demand from both Mobile Order & Pay and non-Mobile Order & Pay customers at peak. We are maintaining sharp focus on further increasing throughput. Our action plan includes three ways to unlock growth in all day-parts, and particularly at peak.

This three point plan is:

• Wave One - additional training and reallocation of staff roles to Mobile Order & Pay during peak, testing of additional labor at peak in select stores, implementation of new approaches to order consolidation at the hand-off plane, and new tools and processes to support beverage and food production.
• Wave Two - the introduction of a new Digital Order Manager. This is a tablet-based device that provides baristas with visibility on all incoming orders and enables better tracking and real-time order production management. It also enables a digital notification to a customer's mobile app when their order is ready, reducing congestion at the hand-off plane.
• Wave Three - sharpening focus on the selection and addition of in-store equipment and pursuing improvements in overall store layout and design, all with the goal of delivering a great customer experience and further increasing throughput.

Wave One is complete, says Johnson, while Wave Two is now underway, with DOM technology being rolled out to the highest volume stores. But there’s more to DOM than just congestion management, he adds:

As we deploy this high value, low cost technology across our store portfolio, we will create an extremely valuable source of new data insight around operations and customer experience. Data that will enable us to further optimize store operations, increase throughput, and elevate our customer experience.Looking to the future, this is all about how our digital relationships with customers intersect with experiential retail in our stores.

Starbucks as retail sector digital exemplar has been a consistent theme at diginomica and it’s clear that Johnson’s priorities aren’t that different to Schultz’s, so there’s no reason to assume that won’t continue to be the case. Again, I find it interesting how the offline component of omni-channel strategies has risen up the agenda. The days of ‘stick everything online and that’ll work’ are well behind us.

Starbucks & China: a mobile-first, omnichannel strategy

How we helped Starbucks create membership, loyalty and e-commerce experiences across all channels in China.

Almost 3 years ago, coffee behemoth Starbucks reached out to Wiredcraft for their mobile strategy in China. This laid out the foundation of a long term partnership with the iconic brand, leading us to gradually take the lead on the execution of their omnichannel strategy in China, including mobile, WeChat and Web.

With the roll-out of the Starbucks Delivery Service, our latest partnership, we thought we’d take the time to reflect on the many aspects of our collaboration which saw the creation of one of the most successful omnichannel play by a foreign brand in China.

Launching on iOS and Android with a bang

Taking over an ageing codebase, we relaunched the iOS and Android apps in February 2015, getting the average ratings to jump from 1.2 to 4.9 and a soaring 20x the amount of reviews.

While we look at more meaningful metrics when evaluating the success of our omnichannel strategies (for example gift card purchase conversion rate), a frictionless experience through your digital touch-points is a definite pre-requisite.

Important as well was our gradual refactoring of the codebase, moving to more current technologies (Swift and Kotlin).

Supplemented with a healthy dose of automation and best practices (e.g. DevOps, automated testing, intelligent monitoring…), we were able to gradually increase the pace of development from a single release every 2 quarters to one every second week.

A seamless redesign for a unified experience across channels

In 2017, our team worked closely with Starbucks to bring a completely new experience to all apps in China. Building on a design language created by the digital team in Seattle, we brought a localized, responsive, mobile-first UI and UX strategy to Web and mobile.

We talked before about how we created a UI kit to help us relaunch Starbucks.com.cn . Keeping a consistent, documented design language across platforms has been a huge factor in our success and our ability to move fast.

An innovation culture rooted in data

Our core tenants when creating digital products is to be user centric and data informed. Our work with Starbucks is no exception to this.

Gathering all interactions with users on the Web and mobile platforms, we are able to provide a realtime 360° view of user engagement across their membership, loyalty and e-commerce activities.

Relying on our data measurement methodology and analytics implementation practice, we combine quantitative data in Google Analytics and qualitative data onto our proprietary OMNI Form platform, in order to validate our assumption and inform back business and digital teams.

Last thing to notice, is our effort to increase accuracy; our latest revamp of the measurement plan saw a 10x increase in the amount of data we capture through the whole user journey.

Frictionless payment & loyalty

Key to any successful omnichannel strategy in China is the ability to make any user interaction absolutely painless. The local audience is used to getting things on-the-go, now and with little effort.

From the get-go we worked on making the reward system as simple (and secure) as scanning a dynamic QRCode. And following that logic, we rolled out WeChat Pay, AliPay and UnionPay integrations to ensure engagement or conversion are as simple as a scan.

A cross-channel infrastructure that scales

All these innovations were made possible by an architecture that sits at the core of all of our omnichannel strategies.

Relying on common APIs for everything from membership and loyalty to order management, all of Starbucks’ apps from iOS and Android, to Web and WeChat share the same backend and the same data pool.

This is how we unlock smooth and meaningful cross-channels experiences. And this scales safely and reliably to tens of millions of users.

This very same approach combined with the obvious product market fit for an omnichannel solution encouraged us to develop OMNI, the platform behind our clients’ omnichannel strategy in China, which powered Burberry’s latest retail initiative in September .

The foundation for new retail

The investment Starbucks has made so far into its digital platform is just the beginning. It created a competitive edge that can now be leveraged to achieve more complex goals: hyper personalization, DMP & segmentation, predictive analysis & recommendation.

This investment in new retail is crucial in particular for brick and mortar companies, as Starbucks’ very own CEO puts it:

“The critical transformative components required for any brick and mortar retailer to survive, let alone succeed in the future are an engaging, digital and mobile relationship with customers that is threaded into a branded, immersive, experiential retail destination.” Kevin Johnson, CEO at Starbucks

Starbucks has done the ground work and we’re excited to help them implement their vision for the Alibaba partnership.

At WCL, we help MNC create holistic digital services that add real value for your customers, as well as to your bottom line.

This often is a discussion we must initiate with organizations approaching us and wanting to skip these difficult initial steps to jump to the exciting (and buzzwordy) topics. This is also what led us to create OMNI, our omnichannel platform to help accelerate this investment.

Our commitment to creating a transparent digital product culture does pay off. This is challenging work, particularly in the context of multinational corporations, but it is what has brought us the outstanding results we’ve witnessed with teams at Nike , Burberry or Hilton.

“Wiredcraft is different and knows how to get things done. Their strong technical chops, rigorous processes and no-nonsense mindset makes them one of the best teams you can work with to ship any kind of digital product.”

Share this post

Scan to open in wechat.

Follow our newsletter or our WeChat account; every other week you'll receive news about what we're up to, our events and our insights on digital products, omnichannel, cross-border ecommerce or whatever the team fancies.

Add us on WeChat

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Starbucks Done Successfully with Omnichannel Marketing

Marketing for businesses must be more than just a logo on a website or a billboard in Times Square. It’s about creating a consistent experience across all channels and platforms, from the moment someone enters your store to when they leave it.

One of the most effective marketing strategies is omnichannel marketing.  

Omnichannel marketing integrates digital and physical channels to drive customer engagement, loyalty and revenue.

Having multiple touchpoints in the marketing funnel allows you to reach customers where they are and keep them engaged with your brand through every stage of their buying journey. This results in more significant sales, increased conversion rates and higher lifetime value.

One particular brand that is successful at omnichannel marketing is Starbucks. The company has built a multi-channel presence that extends beyond its stores into mobile apps, social media and email campaigns. 

So what can we learn from Starbucks when it comes to omnichannel marketing?

Reward Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is crucial for any business. When people feel like they have been rewarded for their past purchases, they will continue to come back.

Starbucks rewards its loyal customers by offering various benefits such as membership cards, discounts and special promotions. These perks help to build trust and encourage repeat visits.

In addition to these benefits, Starbucks also offers free Wi-Fi, power outlets and charging stations in each of its locations. This helps make the overall dining experience easier and more convenient for customers.

It is important to note that not everyone who shops at Starbucks is a member of their reward program. However, those who do belong to a program benefit from additional perks.

For example, members receive 10% off their beverage order if they pay thru the Starbucks member card.

Provide Add-Ons While On The Shop

As mentioned earlier, they provide Wi-Fi networks throughout their stores, but unlike other cafes, Starbucks Wi-Fi is gated, meaning only paying customers can access it.

The reason behind this is simple: coffee drinkers are willing to spend money on their drinks, so why would they want to waste time browsing the Internet while waiting for their latte to brew?

This approach makes sense because it encourages customers to stay longer within the shop, which means more opportunities to sell their range of coffees and food while browsing the Internet.

They also take advantage of email marketing, making it easy for their customers to opt into their newsletter. In their newsletter, they would share news about new products, events and promotions.

Promoting their products via email is one way Starbucks keeps their customers up to date with what’s going on in their stores. Plus, the gated Wi-Fi would encourage customers to buy more coffee or food to keep using the free Wi-Fi within the Starbucks premises.

Utilize eCommerce Channels

Online shopping has become increasingly popular among consumers.

However, many retailers still don’t offer a seamless shopping experience across different channels. They often create separate websites for desktop and mobile devices, making it difficult for shoppers to complete transactions.

Starbucks takes advantage of eCommerce by integrating its website with its store app. For example, customers can buy coffees or food items using their phones and top up their card through the app.

images from istock.com , freepik.com

Omnichannel marketing is about creating a consistent experience across all channels. It requires businesses to rethink how they operate and interact with customers.

Omnichannel marketing is becoming increasingly important as consumers demand convenience and ease of use. By combining traditional offline marketing strategies with innovative digital ones, businesses can gain a competitive edge over their competitors.

Starbucks has done well at implementing omnichannel strategies. Their success is primarily due to their focus on rewarding customers and providing them with a seamless shopping experience.

The Rise of Digital Marketplaces: How B2B Trade is Evolving in 2023

MDEC Malaysia Digital Dialogue Penang 2022

5 Reasons Why Companies Should Outsource Their Information Technology (IT) Departments

Salt Tech Solutions Scammer Disclaimer Alert

eTail Boston 2025

August 11 - 14, 2025

Sheraton Boston, MA

Lessons Learned From Starbucks On Experimenting With Mobile Marketing At Retail

Up to 60% of consumer's time spent online is spent on mobile devices, presenting a vast opportunity to engage your customers on mobile as they interface with your retail locations. This type of marketing is still developing, but learning first how to effectively experiment with different uses of mobile to see what works and what doesn't now is important for continued success in the future.

Starbucks is a leader in omni channel marketing , and there are a variety of strategies that you can glean from their mobile initiatives to better prepare your organization for mobile opportunities.

Starbucks Creates an Engaging Mobile Retail Experience

Starbucks has considered the desires of their customers by researching their buying habits and developing a strategy to cater to their customer’s wants and needs. They discovered that by developing a mobile application , they could create an opportunity to engage their audience with their mobile offerings more frequently.

The app, simply called Starbucks, features a store locator, gift card information and a rewards program for its members. Starbucks understands that to best engage their customers in retail, they should offer them special incentives such as discounts, free beverages and birthday gifts. This helps to keep their customers retained and engaged, since they’ll need to continuously use the application to receive rewards.

By creating an engaging mobile retail experience and simplifying the transaction process for their on-the-go customer base, Starbucks has proven that they understand the desires of their customers, something that you should focus on when experimenting with mobile marketing.

Research the motives of your audience when you develop a mobile marketing campaign and ask yourself how you can make your offerings more valuable to them while ultimately guiding them to make a purchase.

Starbucks Increases Loyalty and Retention by Offering Personalized Incentives

Starbucks has improved their mobile marketing by seamlessly incorporating a loyalty program into their Starbucks mobile application, and while not a new concept, by doing so, they have effectively removed the need for stamp cards for their mobile users.

This incentivizes their customers to continue using their mobile program, because they have found that their users are more likely to continue making purchases to earn a free prize. As a result, Starbucks is able to continue to gather more data about their customer base.

Starbucks incentivizes its customers with free rewards on their mobile app.

After a user has received a certain number of stars, in Starbucks case 30 within a year, a customer is then eligible for more benefits. While this tactic may not work for all retail business models , by using mobile to reward customers for their continued support, you may be able to increase customer retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

Additionally, Starbucks entices it’s more engaged customers to take surveys for stars, which many are happy to complete because they know they will be closer to earning another reward. Consider this when seeking additional consumer information from your mobile marketing efforts.

Tactful SMS - Taking Advantage of Mobile Properties

Developing a mobile application may not always be the best option for a variety of retailers; however, we can learn from other Starbucks other mobile strategies, such as how they perform their SMS marketing. Starbucks focuses their SMS marketing on their consumers and less about their brand, which invites more customers to opt in for rewards, similar to how their loyalty program works.

SMS can act similarly to email marketing but be an effective alternative because often times it achieves extremely high open rates, up to 90% . By creating another channel for their customers to interact, Starbucks helps to avoid alienating the customers that don’t have or maybe don't want to use their mobile application, but still want to receive rewards.

Starbucks appeals totheir target fan base through SMS marketing.

Starbucks primarily uses SMS to entice customers to visit their brick-and-mortar locations by creating content that is focused around their latest specials,which can increase their chances of driving more customers to visit their stores.

Retailers should experiment with a variety of mobile marketing strategies when learning to find which initiatives will work best for their business. Focus your marketing offerings around the desires of your customers and ask yourself the value that you can provide for them. Success in mobile marketing can be achieved by developing trust and loyalty with your audience like Starbucks.

About eTail: eTail is an interactive conference focused on intimate group learning and peer to peer networking. The “X Factor” of a conference experience is the interaction of thousands of peers, and eTail presents the unique opportunity to exchange information and ideas with the brightest minds in the industry. We've put together a great program chock full of networking opportunities and industry specific, actionable insight.

Related Posts

Here's How Le Tote Created its First Influencer Collection Using Customer Data

Here's How Vistaprint is Using Online Resources to Help Small Businesses Grow

Wayfair Adds Augmented/Virtual Reality to Help Find the Best Furniture

Omnichannel Marketing Triumph: Starbucks’ Brand Strategy Case Study

In an era where digital reigns supreme, businesses, large or small, are swiftly recalibrating their marketing strategies to stay afloat. A praiseworthy embodiment of this is none other than the globally venerated coffeehouse chain, Starbucks. Having keenly understood the pulse of this digital revolution, Starbucks has not only survived but has been thriving remarkably. Taking an in-depth look into Starbucks’ exemplary marketing tactics makes for a compelling exploration.

Within this vast market scape teeming with competing establishments, Starbucks has differentiated itself by pioneering an effective and sophisticated omnichannel approach. An approach that seamlessly morphs the customer’s offline and online experiences, thereby generating a singular, cohesive customer narrative. It is this ingenious underpinning of their adaptive marketing vision that has set them apart as an industry leader. Let’s delve into the brilliance behind this vision and discuss how Starbucks has deployed its omnichannel strategy to gain an impressive market advantage.

Chapter 1: What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a multifaceted approach that focuses on delivering a seamless customer experience across various marketing channels. This invariably powerful mode of marketing has risen in prominence in the era of personalized and immediate customer service where businesses are required to interact with customers on various platforms.

The need for coherence between different marketing channels is paramount in omnichannel marketing. Customers expect a consistent brand experience across all channels, be it a company’s website, social media pages or in-store interactions. Companies must therefore align their branding, sales strategies, and customer service in all channels to meet these expectations.

Moreover, leveraging omnichannel marketing broadens the scope for customer engagement. It opens up new avenues to interact with customers and provides them with an interconnected shopping experience. This heightened level of engagement can not only increase customer satisfaction but also foster loyalty, leading to higher customer retention rates.

Chapter 2: Starbucks – The Pioneer of Omnichannel Marketing

Starbucks, a world-renowned coffee company, has been a paragon of omnichannel marketing, implementing a revolutionary approach which enabled them to offer a seamless customer experience across multiple channels. They underlined their commitment towards the changing market dynamics and customer preferences by restructuring their Starbucks Rewards program, a move that aligned their existing in-store and digital experiences.

Using this approach, Starbucks has been able to deincentivize single-channel use and incentivize the combined use of in-store, mobile app, and online purchases, thereby driving customer interactions across all marketing mediums. It has helped them to foster loyalty and provide personalized perks on an individual consumer level, resulting in significant brand stickiness.

Inc.com has indicated that the remodel of Starbucks’ rewards program exemplifies the effective integration of omnichannel experiences. The transformation of their services onto one unified digital platform has allowed them to ensure a consistent brand experience, regardless of how or where a customer chooses to engage with Starbucks.

Diving into omnichannel marketing, Starbucks has set a benchmark in the retail industry, demonstrating how businesses can enhance customer experience and engagement by integrating their services into a single, unified platform. Hence, they’ve successfully leveraged technology to create a seamless, customer-friendly journey across multiple touchpoints, setting a gold standard for other businesses to replicate.

Chapter 3: Dissecting the Success of Starbucks Brand Strategy

Starbucks exemplary usage of both online and offline marketing channels is one of the prime subjects of this segment of the article. It describes in depth how this seamless integration has provided the global coffee company an edge in the highly competitive market. Rather than viewing the digital and physical channels as two separate entities, Starbucks has successfully managed to leverage them into one cohesive unit. This strategic approach has greatly benefited the customers, offering them a more convenient and streamlined experience whether they choose to interact with the brand online or in-store.

The fusion of these marketing channels has also significantly contributed to Starbucks’ rapid growth. The unique blend of online and offline channels creates a highly personalized customer experience and caters to a wider demographic of coffee enthusiasts all over the world. This strategy enables Starbucks to maintain its existing customers whilst attracting new ones, fueling the brand’s ongoing popularity and growth. Understandably, this innovative omnichannel strategy has been instrumental in Starbucks’ success story, demonstrating the immense potential of integrated multi-channel marketing.

The article further elucidates that adopting this omni-channel strategy is not a feat exclusive to Starbucks. Other companies can also employ similar techniques to bridge the gap between their online and offline operations. The McKinsey’s insights about omnichannel might be a good reference for those interested in learning more about this approach.

Conclusions: Key Learnings from Starbucks Brand Strategy

In the world of corporate success stories, Starbucks stands out, forming the subject of analysis and study. A major aspect of its success is the emphasis the company places on understanding the customer journey – every touchpoint, interaction, and experience that a customer has with the brand is deeply analyzed. This rich insight enables them to personalize their offerings and engage effectively with their customers.

Another cornerstone of Starbucks’ success can be attributed to creating an effortless user experience. The brand consistently works on minimizing friction for the customers, be it through streamlining the order process or providing a pleasant environment in their stores. Technology plays a significant role, providing quick and easy ways to order ahead, pay, and earn rewards. This focus on user experience aligns well with a Nielsen Norman Group’s explanation for enhancing user experience.

Last but not least is the power of consistent messaging across all channels to create a singular, unified brand image. Each contact point with the brand, be it in-store, on the website, through the mobile app, or any other platform, conveys the same brand message, reinforcing Starbucks’ identity. This consistency across channels suggests a solid brand strategy, rooting trust and recognition among customers as outlined by Forbes. This holistic approach is a testament to the power of a well-orchestrated omnichannel strategy, that keeps Starbucks ahead in an increasingly competitive market.

In conclusion, Starbucks stands as a shining example of successful fusion of traditional and digital marketing, essentially embodying the essence of omnichannel marketing. They have skilfully merged online and offline experiences, turning them into a cohesive, engaging journey for consumers. Their innovative approach doesn’t just sell products, but also the brand as a whole, which has set a new standard for customer engagement within their industry.

Thus, other businesses can look to Starbucks’ use of omnichannel marketing as an influence, aiming to replicate their success by leveraging both traditional and digital channels to enhance customer experience. Whether it’s through a carefully paced marketing campaign or the harmonious merger of online and offline experiences, the bottom line remains to intertwine the world of digital services with physical touchpoints effectively.

More about Marketing : Captivating Audiences through Sprout Social: A Comprehensive Review, click here Boosting Client Devotion: An Integrated Marketing Strategy, click here Unraveling B2B Marketing: Innovative Strategies for Business-to-Business Achievement, click here

• Revolutionizing E-Commerce: Amazon’s Digital Marketing Case Study
• Exploring Successful Branding Strategies: Nike’s Marketing Case Study

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter hebdomadaire ci-dessous et ne manquez jamais les dernières actualités marketing.

Thanks, I’m not interested

Ecommerce Personalization Blog

Ecommerce tips, strategies, and news – all without ever having, [case study] build customer loyalty like starbucks + costco.

Building customer loyalty is a primary way to increase conversions and multiply profits. Below we explore two case studies in how to build customer loyalty, featuring Costco and Starbucks.  But first, we cover customer loyalty program basics, including how to define customer loyalty, why it is important, and ultimately, the types of loyalty you can build. If you would like to skip the theory and head straight to the case studies , click here .

What is customer loyalty program marketing?

A customer loyalty program, often called a rewards program, is a customer retention strategy that focuses on repeat purchases. Customer loyalty programs are designed to incentivize customer actions. Programs can offer many types of benefits such as rewards, points, cash back, gifts, free shipping and more.

Next we will see the benefits of customer loyalty, including improved add to cart rates, conversions, and AOV.

Why is customer loyalty important in eCommerce?

Returning visitors dramatically increase profitability. In our study on New vs Returning customers , we found that retained visitors

• Added items to carts 65.16% more than first time visitors
• Converted 73.72% more than first time visitors
• Spent 16.15% more per transaction

Further studies confirmed these benefits of customer loyalty. One study by Harvard Business School found that "Loyalty leaders - companies at the top of their industries in NEt Promoter Scores or satisfaction rankings for three or more years - grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers and deliver two to five times the shareholder returns over the next 10 years." And another study by  ZenDesk found that 75% of customers are willing to spend more from companies that give them a good customer experience, while 50% will switch to a competitor after one bad experience.

Image Credit: Zendesk's 2021 Customer Experience Trends Report

How to build customer loyalty?

There are two major types of customer loyalty. The first is transactional loyalty, and the second is emotional loyalty.

How to build transactional customer loyalty

The first is transactional loyalty. This type of loyalty is rational in nature. Customers perceive it is in their best interest to stay with this company based on repeated past experiences. For example, they may believe that the brand is the least expensive, most convenient, or least risky option. Famous brands who have built their business through transactional loyalty include Walgreens and CVS. In fact, certain industries compete primarily on transactional loyalty, including pharmacies, gas stations, and grocery stores. There are many ways to generate transactional loyalty. Below are few principles.

• Loss aversion: Customers value losing more than gaining. By incorporating rewards, points, and bonuses you can influence customers to continue shopping with you else they lose the points they have earned
• Recency Bias: Customers overweigh what has happened most recently. Brands can take advantage of this by introducing daily deals or other tactics to boost
• Reciprocity: Finally reciprocity is a well documented social norm where people respond to a positive action with another positive action. (link to Wiki). Brand can create transactional loyalty by leading with value, such as a gift or credit, which can spur customers to want to respond.

How to build emotional customer loyalty

The second type of loyalty is emotional loyalty. As the name implies, this type of loyalty is not based on a "rational" calculation that being loyal is better for the customer, but instead is based on an emotional connection. Typically, this connection takes the form of status, the brand becoming part of the customer's identity, or the brand being used to express their identity. Because of this, they are much less likely to be influenced by competing offers and brands may enjoy higher price elasticity when they set their pricing strategy . Again, there are a few principles at work that eCommerce stores may take advantage of to maximize customer emotional loyalty. There are many famous examples of brands that have created emotional loyalty with customers, including Apple, Disney, Starbucks, Coke, and Pepsi.

We've covered how Starbucks creates loyalty through their omnichannel-retail strategy here .

Customer loyalty examples: tactics and strategies from top companies

Below we break down examples of customer loyalty programs, and call out specific tactics these companies make in a running list.

How Costco creates customer loyalty

Costco is a multinational company that operates membership big-box retail stores. The company has grown to 152.7 billion dollars annually, and makes for a fantastic case study on customer loyalty. As their management states in their latest 10-Q filing , "We believe the most important driver of our profitability is sales growth, particularly comparable warehouse sales growth.... Comparable sales growth is achieved through increasing shopping frequency from new and existing members and the amount they spend on each visit (average ticket)."

“We believe the most important driver of our profitability is sales growth, particularly comparable warehouse sales growth.... Comparable sales growth is achieved through increasing shopping frequency from new and existing members and the amount they spend on each visit (average ticket) ” - Costco 10-Q, 2021

1. Cross subsidizing with a membership model

Costco's loyalty program begins with their membership business model.  Members pay an upfront cost to be able to enter the store and purchase goods. In return, Costco provides low, competitive prices, private label items, and other exclusive perks.

“Our membership format is an integral part of our business model and has a significant effect on our profitability. This format is designed to reinforce member loyalty and provide continuing fee revenue. ” - Costco 10-Q, 2021

2. Using loss leaders to promote transactional loyalty

Part of Costco's loyalty strategy is to "provide members with quality goods and services at the most competitive prices." Instead of maximizing profits per transaction, they focus on maximizing each customer's lifetime value to the company. This is exemplified most clearly in their gasoline service.  "We believe that our gasoline business draws members, but it generally has a significantly lower gross margin percentage relative to our non-gasoline business." Costco takes measures to ensure members will always save on their gas bill. They are able to do this because of their membership business model, which doesn't rely on profits in gasoline to fuel the business.

3. Using unique, private label products to increase loyalty

Private label products increase customer loyalty in a number of ways.  First, it distinguishes Costco. Instead of competing in purely commoditized products, Costco can offer exclusive options for their members.  Further, as customers become habitualized to these products, it improves their membership retention rate . If customers want to enjoy these products, they must continue shopping at Costco.

Because of the exclusivity and collapsing the supply chain, these product are often more profitable on a unit basis as well. 

Image Credit 

4. Maxime loss leaders with creative financing options

Finally, Costco compliments their product offering with a branded credit card. They have tailored the rewards card to maximize customer loyalty, highlighting some of the biggest reasons to be a member.

• 4% cash back on Costco gas
• 2% cash back on Costco purchases
• Costco membership is bundled with the price of the card

How Starbucks improves customer loyalty

Starbucks is another premier case study of how to improve customer loyalty.

5. Cross channel marketing

Starbucks does an incredible job driving customers into their loyalty program. We've covered before in our case study of Starbucks' omnichannel strategy how they tie in different channels, all leading to subscribing to their renowned loyalty program. Below we see a clear example. Once subscribed to their email list, customers receive member exclusive offers. If they would like to partake, they must enroll in the loyalty program.

Starbucks extends their Rewards program to lower margin grocery items as well. The rewards themselves help drive traffic to their in-store locations, increasing frequency, lifetime value,  and accessing a whole new group of customers.

6. New product development

Starbucks also drives repeat purchases through new product development.  With a steady stream of new options, customers are nudged to come back and try their latest creations. These new products often embody other aspects of the business, in this case Starbuck's new relationship with OATLY.

“We recognize that we are a beverage-forward concept. Beverage is our key point of differentiation.” - Pat Grismer

7. Create urgency with limited time products

Additionally, seasonal holiday beverages create excitement in their customer base and provides a sense of urgency to come into the store. In fact, there are now many seasonal beverages that customers pine for, including Pumpkin Spice Latte, Peppermint Mocha, and Irish Cream Cold Brews.

Further, Starbucks constantly rotates in limited run premium products.  Combined, holiday and limited time products give a reason to return.

8. Unique experiences for Rewards Members

Finally, Starbucks routinely creates rewards member engagement campaigns. These often take the form of exclusive games and rewards Starbucks Rewards Members can participate in. Below is just one example. In Starbucks For Life, Rewards Members collect game pieces that can earn them rewards ranging from a $500 gift card, Bose  Earbuds, and of course, the namesake grand price, free Starbucks for Life.

Next Steps...

Starbucks and Costco are great case studies in how to build customer loyalty.

At it's core, customer loyalty is about providing a better experience. While there are many ways to improve customer's experience in an eCommerce context, the primary ways revolve around creating personalized, relevant experiences and offers across all channels. Below are a few resources we have put together to help.

• Advanced eCommerce personalization examples  - In this guide, we showcase numerous personalization examples, including digital first brands such as Thrive Market and Third Love. 
• Triggered email examples and best practices  - Email remains the best channel for driving profit. In this guide, we showcase how top brands like Nike, Amazon, and Google use triggered emails to increase AOV.
• Database marketing examples  -  Finally, leveraging first party data on your customers is the best way to create better offers. We've found RFM analysis to be especially useful here.

Lastly, we help hundreds of premier eCommerce stores generate customer loyalty and repeat purchases. If you would like to see if we can help your store, schedule a personal demo here .

You Might Also Like

Your business depends on repeat purchases.  To get customers to buy from you again and again, you must lower custom

RFM analysis increases eCommerce sales.  Today, we explore how we can use recency, frequency, and monetary data to

• © 2009 - 2024 Barilliance Ltd.
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of services

Omni channel customer service strategy and case study

• Shivam Verma
• 15 January 2023
• Customer Support

Your competitors are just a click away from your customers, you must provide a personalized customer experience so that your customers happily stay loyal to your brand. And Omni channel customer service is a key driver for customer satisfaction..

Customers connect emotionally to those brands to whom they can easily connect via any channel (phone, email, social media, web chat, etc). And it’s not just customers who benefit from it, even businesses can fulfill their orders from anywhere.

As per Internet retailer companies having a strong Omni channel customer service strategy have customer retention of an average of 89% as compared with 33% for companies with a weak strategy.

Omni channel customer support strategy that leading brands use

Starbucks email strategy.

In 2018, Starbucks had 60 million loyal groups of customers who were actively enrolled in Starbucks rewards, but those customers didn’t have any digital relationship with the brand.

Therefore Starbucks implemented an Omni channel retailing strategy. They forced a digital relationship by providing free wifi in exchange for an email ID. For that, they offered a solution where users would get a 10% off code in exchange for their email address.

The newly acquired email addresses were then used to drive retention and purchase frequency. They sent unique triggered emails with discount offers on specific products which expired on the same day and were available during a certain timeframe.

The strategy helped Starbucks to drive digitally registered customers into stores during non-peak hours.

Spotify uses social media support for a better customer experience

Days are gone when you had to simply send a request for your favorite songs and wait for them to play on the radio or television. Or save some bucks to buy cassettes and CDs to listen to your favorite song.

Today, you can stream your favorite songs online or offline via mobile phones, computers, and smart TVs. And Spotify has been one of the major drivers causing a shift in the way we consume music. Not just that, their outstanding customer support has won them the Webby Award for social media customer support.

Spotify leverages its product on social media like Twitter. Those Spotify users who reach out to the Twitter handle @SpotifyCares get to listen to thematically appropriate songs selected by the support team. Not many brands have the opportunity to play their songs on other social media platforms.

Not just that, Spotify offers a knowledge base where consumers can find up-to-date contents about the product and service whenever they want without having to wait for the support team to fetch a suitable solution.

National Geographic

National Geographic employed a conversational chatbot who would interact like Einstein. The bot was created to promote their new show Genius. It would reply to the users with information about the show and other interesting facts.

The bot made the users feel connected by answering professional and personal questions in real-time in a human and friendly way.

As a result, there were 6-8 minutes of average conversation, 11 turns per conversation, and 50% of user re-engagement. Thereby the user-friendly chatbot strategy did a wonderful job.

Case studies of Omni channel customer service enabled companies

AirHelp is a famous brand that advocates and protects passengers’ rights. By now it helped more than 16 million passengers with delayed, canceled, and overbooked flights.

Having a support team in over 35 markets who spoke 16 languages, AirHelp faced problems in monitoring their performance through their social media profiles with a single dashboard.

They wanted to reduce the agent’s response time with proper ticket assignment but couldn’t assign the ticket to the right expert due to the language barrier.

AirHelp Implemented an Omni channel support strategy and integrated social media and messaging apps.

They added 846 response templates to improve response time.

Incorporated one dashboard to evaluate all metrics of customer service, assign resources based on real-time data, and measure team performance with the help of KPI.

• It helped AirHelp to improve their response time on Facebook by 65%
• Their customer service coverage expanded.

Datamatics is a technology company that builds data-driven business intelligence solutions to digitally transform itself with the help of Robotics, AI, mobility, cloud, and advanced analytics.

The clients asked for better customer service. The lack of efficient customer service resources largely affected the customer experience. Therefore Datamatics wanted to provide exceptional customer service to their ever-growing client base which in return would help in the growth of a digital marketplace business on an expandable platform.

Datamatics focused on customer service infrastructure and deployed Omni channel customer service (phone, email, chat support) and dwindled issues related to service and scalability.

• The quality output increased to 98.33%.
• The live chat answer response improved by 98%.
• There was a reduction in email TAT by 4hrs.
• Feedback rating on Amazon virtual marketplace improved to 5.0.

Walmart case study

Walmart is a very famous retail corporation from the USA, headquartered in Arkansas. It’s well known for operating discount department stores, grocery stores, and a chain of hypermarkets.

Founded in 1969, Walmart grew exponentially by opening large stores in the suburbs, streamlining its supply chain, and offering high sales at low profits. But the rise of E-commerce giants like Amazon lured away their customers. As a result, they were losing customers.

Studying the crisis, in 2010, Walmart opted for the Omni channel strategy. Having a large network, they made the most out of it by focusing on improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales at existing stores. Started Offering online grocery delivery service which delivered the food ordered online from stores to customer’s doorstep. Also, it allowed customers to receive products purchased online at the store parking via ‘online grocery pickup’.

Walmart’s performance returned to life. Their online sales would now compete with Amazon.

How to implement omnichannel support for your business?

Identify customers.

Before you implement Omni channel support for your customers, you need to identify your prospective customers first. You can’t sell your product to just anyone and everyone. You need to understand who your idle customers are going to be. You need to have a target audience. It makes the Omni channel strategy more effective.

You should be aware of your customer’s demographic, customers’ behavior, the preferred mode of communication, buying habits, and various other preferences.

Digging into the minute details helps you assist your customers better.

Conduct audience segmentation

Once you have a detailed understanding of your target audience, categorize them into groups. It helps you offer relevant products to the right customers.

Customers get frustrated when they receive irrelevant content. Segmentation helps you offer personalized service.

And if you think segmentation is a tough task. Worry not. Most Omni channel marketing automation solutions carry out rule-based customer segmentation based on the target audience you’ve set. It can be based on gender, customer loyalty, previous engagement level, geography, etc. The solution allows you to even customize the persona if you want to expand them.

Prioritize channels and devices

Be it using your website or speaking with support agents over the phone, every channel has a unique role to play. Customers perceive your brand as per their experience. There are innumerable channels. Each of them provides a unique customer experience. The channel you select to bring your customer strategy to life is equally as crucial as the messages that you communicate on their platforms.

However, selecting the right support channel that mixes right with your organization is not that simple. You’ll have to be mindful while selecting the right channel.

For instance, individuals in traditional sectors may expect human interaction, while individuals working in fast-moving technology sectors may prefer a high-level response via devices.

Use analytics to understand your audience’s preferences and select the right channel.

Integrate Omni channel

Integrating all the online and offline touchpoints is the toughest part of adopting Omni channel customer support . Smooth integration of different channels forms the foundation of the Omni channel strategy. Failing to integrate the channels successfully will harm your business.

You’ll have to carefully select the right set of technologies to smoothen the process.

Chat360 helps you unite different channels that involve tracking your customers and their shopping experience across every channel and connecting it with others without having to use heavy codes or programming language.

Train your team

Customer support staff are the pillar of customer service. Since social media is expanding, smartphones are upgrading, and websites are updated every day, the support team should be able to adapt to the change and understand current expectations.

Therefore proper training plays a huge role in keeping the staff updated. Make sure your support agent understands Facebook, Twitter, and other channels, along with contact center AI software , to offer a flawless customer experience.

Measure your performance

While implementing an Omni channel customer support strategy, you should also define the key performance indicators (KPI) that measure the success of the strategy. Accessing your omni channel strategy is critical to understand what is working and where improvement is required.

With several channels in the mix, it can be difficult to evaluate them and compare their results. And for that, you might need tools to study all the cross-channel data. Therefore keep an eye on reports and analytical data as they give you an idea about which way your campaign is heading.

Also, only measuring the efficiency is not enough. Your Omni channel strategy should be flexible enough to adapt to continuous growth and development.

An omni channel strategy streamlines your communication channels, enabling your team and customer to work smoothly between them. It promotes Quality service that improves ROI. It’s no wonder most enterprises are investing in providing omnichannel support.

Thereby, follow best practices for perfect omnichannel customer support . 24/7 availability and outstanding mobile service will boost sales.

© Sumanel Technology Ventures Pvt Ltd

Just released: Learn more about Talon.One’s Gamification Engine, and how to gamify customer interactions into rewarding challenges.

18 Jul 2024

7 outstanding examples of omnichannel marketing

Mohammadreza Javanian

Talon.One loyalty expert

8 minutes to read

What is omnichannel marketing?

Best omnichannel marketing strategies, 1. zalando and boris, 2. paypal happy returns, 3. jetblue and ai, 4. self-checkout on the rise, 5. amazon hub, 6. netflix and omnichannel hyper-personalization, 7. starbucks, reinforcement learning, and blockchain, develop an omnichannel strategy for your promotions and loyalty with talon.one, faqs on examples of omnichannel marketing.

As the number of platforms where customers can interact with a brand continues to grow, delivering a seamless customer experience everywhere a brand sells is more important now than ever.

Ensuring customers experience a consistent and frictionless journey requires an omnichannel marketing strategy that connects customers’ online and in-store behavior to provide them with a frictionless, integrated experience regardless of the channel they’re using.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with consumers in new ways by leaning in on digital, omnichannel, and in-store technology ambitions.” - McKinsey

Omnichannel marketing is a strategic approach that seamlessly integrates various communication channels, such as social media, email, retail stores, websites, and mobile apps, to provide a consistent and personalized customer experience. It aims to create a unified brand message and enable customers to engage and transact across different platforms effortlessly, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty while driving business growth.

Moving to the omnichannel environment has accelerated in recent years, with many companies across different sectors striving to create a frictionless experience for their customers.

Here’s a list of 7 remarkable examples of omnichannel marketing strategies which have led to high customer engagement and a surge in sales.

“Buy online, return in store” is a growing omnichannel functionality, allowing customers to use digital platforms to buy and use physical platforms to return the item if that’s not what they expected.

German ecommerce company Zalando is a leading company in terms of the BORIS feature . The brand allows its customers to return their shopped item at a nearby store at no cost up until 100 days after their purchase. This is very reassuring to an ecommerce brand’s users especially when the purchased item is a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing that may not fit.

Working in an omnichannel environment is gaining popularity among fintech companies.

In a recent move that strengthens its relationship with the retail industry, PayPal expanded access to the returns service it acquired last year, Happy Returns, by making it available to PayPal Checkout merchants at no extra cost.

PayPal’s omnichannel solution releases customers from the burden of visiting a separate website/app if they wish to use the return service. Instead, they begin their purchase return journey from the retailer’s website by receiving a QR code which they can take to their nearest Return Bar location along with the item. They don’t even need to package the item or have the box or label with them. The customers receive a real-time refund once their QR code is scanned. To ensure its customers will have super easy access to the return locations, PayPal has additionally partnered with Ulta Beauty to increase Return Bars to over 1,300 locations across the US.

Courtesy: happyreturns.com

Airlines have long offered their customers loyalty programs, known as “frequent-flyer programs,” encouraging passengers to accumulate points (also called miles) which can be later redeemed for air travel or other loyalty rewards. Some airlines, however, have moved beyond legacy FFPs to create an outstanding, frictionless customer experience.

Last year, JetBlue announced a partnership with ASAPP to add the company’s AI platform to its tech stack. The ultimate aim of the partnership was to amplify the productivity and efficiency of JetBlue customer support on digital and telephone channels.

The IA feature allows JetBlue customers to use digital messaging on their cellphones to communicate with the airline’s customer support, just like they’re texting a friend.

ASAPP’s real-time voice transcription and analytics feature enables JetBlue contact centers to provide customers with the best-suggested responses and actions based on their conversations.

Self-checkouts are machines that enable customers to complete their transactions from a retailer without having to wait for a legacy staffed checkout. Self-checkouts play a vital role in transforming monolithic POS systems , turning transactions into memorable customer experiences.

Self-checkouts play a crucial role in omnichannel retail by providing customers with a convenient and efficient way to complete their purchases. By allowing shoppers to scan and pay for items themselves, self-checkouts reduce checkout wait times and enhance the overall shopping experience. Last year, London-based market research and consultancy firm RBR anticipated that the number of self-service checkout units installed worldwide will triple by 2025.

French sporting goods retailer Decathlon has installed self-checkout units almost at all its stores.  You can place the item at the checkout counter, scan your credit card or mobile payment app and that’s it. Many other retailers such as the Dutch company C&A are also welcoming self-checkout units to their stores, creating a seamless experience for their customers by linking all touchpoints during their journey.

The primary aim of any omnichannel strategy is to remove the online-offline divide for the customers. In other words, customers shouldn’t feel any friction when they decide to move from one channel to the other.

Amazon has removed the borderline between the physical and digital worlds with a number of innovations including Amazon Hub. Amazon online shoppers can choose to pick up their items from Hub Counter or Hub Locker .

Amazon Hub Counter is a pick-up station where the customer’s packages are handed over to them by staff. Customers can pick up their packages at nearby locations.

Amazon Hub Locker is a secure self-service station where customers can collect their packages at a time of their choosing. Locker locations can be found in many different locations in countries such as the US, UK, and Germany.

Courtesy: Amazon.de

One of the key elements of the omnichannel experience is hyper-personalization. Like personalization, hyper-personalization highlights the interaction of a brand with its consumers on a customized, individual level. However, hyper-personalization goes beyond basic customer information , pulling from real-time and behavioral data to deliver highly relevant, individualized messages. AI, NLP (natural language processing) and ML (machine learning) can in particular help brands create hyper-personalized experiences for their customers.

One of the best examples of hyper-personalized omnichannel interactions with customers is Netflix’s viewing experience. No matter which device you use, Netflix provides you with a totally seamless experience. The brand also leverages AI and ML to process customer data, suggesting customized content to every individual.

Saki Takeda, director of product management at Netflix, says the omnichannel strategy is key to the company's customer experience policy. Takeda, however, warns against the blind expansion of channels :

“The top things to avoid are expanding channels blindly for the sake of ‘being omnichannel’ or ‘needing to show the brand presence’, and creating unnecessary silos by segmenting/grouping support agents per channel.”

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a machine learning paradigm that provides both qualitative and quantitative frameworks for understanding and modeling adaptive decision-making in the face of rewards and punishments.

RL can help companies design seamless, individualized customer journeys. Starbucks, for instance, has added Microsoft Azure’s RL platform to its app, generating tailor-made order suggestions based on their behavior, store inventory, and other contextual elements such as weather. 

Microsoft Azure’s Blockchain service has also enabled Starbucks to show its customers lots of interesting information about their order including where the coffee beans come from, how Starbucks supports farmers in those locations, where and when it was roasted, and more.

Starbucks’ digital display menus are another omnichannel move by the coffee giant. The displays are not only available to online and in-store customers but also to the drive-thru shoppers.

An omnichannel solution enables brands to remove the divide between online and offline channels, creating a seamless shopping experience. This seamless shopping experience not only enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty but also allows brands to gain valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences across all touchpoints.

Your promotions and loyalty program, as important elements of your omnichannel strategy, define the shopping experience as much as your website, app, or online store. For example, the Italian fashion brand Twinset used omnichannel promotions to power its sales campaigns, enabling customers to have an integrated experience regardless of their shopping channel. 

"With Talon.One, we’ve massively reduced the time between deciding to run a promotion and delivering it in our shops or online. Now, when we decide to run a campaign, our retail and ecommerce teams sit together and select the target shops, digital platforms, products and the time‐frame. They set up the campaign in Talon.One and that’s it. It’s a fast and efficient way of implementing a campaign."

Daniele Nigro

Chief Information Officer of Twinset

Discover Twinset's case study to see how Talon.One enabled omnichannel promotions for the Italian fashion brand.

How does omnichannel marketing benefit smaller businesses or those with limited resources compared to larger corporations?

Omnichannel marketing empowers smaller businesses by providing access to diverse customer touchpoints, leveling the playing field against larger corporations. It offers cost-effective digital platforms and automation tools, enabling smaller enterprises to reach wider audiences without hefty investments. By delivering consistent messaging across channels, smaller businesses can forge deeper connections with customers, driving loyalty and growth in competitive markets.

Are there any notable challenges or drawbacks associated with implementing omnichannel strategies, particularly for companies operating in niche markets?

Implementing omnichannel strategies, particularly for niche market companies, poses challenges such as integrating disparate systems, maintaining brand consistency, and reaching target audiences effectively across channels. Limited resources and expertise in digital marketing, along with industry-specific regulations, further complicate the process. However, by focusing on unique strengths and prioritizing channels strategically, niche businesses can overcome these challenges and leverage omnichannel marketing to drive growth and success in specialized markets.

Can you provide examples of industries or sectors where omnichannel marketing has seen slower adoption or less success, and what factors contribute to this disparity?

Industries such as traditional retail, furniture, and home improvement, as well as sectors like manufacturing and industrial goods, have seen slower adoption of omnichannel marketing. Factors contributing to this include challenges in integrating offline and online operations, legacy systems, and complex supply chains. Additionally, businesses in niche markets may struggle to justify the investment in omnichannel infrastructure and technology due to limited consumer demand and fragmented customer bases. Despite these hurdles, focusing on customer needs and gradually integrating digital and offline experiences can help overcome barriers to omnichannel success.

The ultimate guide to omnichannel retail

Monthly loyalty newsletter

Join thousands of marketers and developers getting the latest loyalty & promotion insights from Talon.One. Every month, you’ll receive:

Loyalty and promotion tips

Industry insights from leading brands

Case studies and best practices

Isabelle Watson

Loyalty & promotion expert at Talon.One

The World's Most Powerful Promotion Engine

Wiener Strasse 10 10999 Berlin Germany

41 Church Street B3 2RT Birmingham United Kingdom

One Boston Place, Suite 2600 02108 Boston, MA United States

1 Scotts Road, #21-10 Shaw Centre 228208 Singapore Singapore

• Promotion engine
• Coupon software
• Loyalty software
• Referral software
• Gift card software
• Discount software
• Wallet solutions
• Product bundles
• Geofence marketing

By Industry

• Retail & ecommerce
• Travel & Mobility
• Financial Services
• Telecommunication
• Documentation
• Content library
• Promotion heroes
• Code generator
• Customer loyalty
• Cookie Settings

© 2024 Talon.One GmbH. All rights reserved.