What is Omnichannel Analytics? 7 Easy Steps to Set It Up

Omnichannel analytics unifies customer data from multiple touchpoints, enabling marketers to optimize campaigns and deliver personalized experiences. Learn how we use it to improve sales for our clients.

Here, you’ll find:

• What is omnichannel analytics?
• How to set up omnichannel analytics
• Why it’s important
• Challenges you’ll face in its setup (and solutions)

Reports show that 76% of consumers are more willing to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences.

Delivering personalized experiences to your audience can increase your sales, retention, and customer lifetime value (CLTV).

So, how can you personalize your digital marketing campaigns?

Omnichannel analytics.

“We believe that omnichannel analytics is key to uncovering greater market share capitalization,” says Rambod Yadegar, President of HawkSEM.

“Understanding user behavior across all channels provides direct insight, which can correlate to higher conversions and more sales if acted on properly.”

In this guide, we’ll cover all the essentials of omnichannel data analytics.

What is omnichannel analytics?

Omnichannel analytics tracks and analyzes customer interactions across various platforms to provide a seamless and cohesive customer experience.

You gain an inclusive view of customer behavior by integrating data from different sources like social media, email, and in-store visits.

This helps you understand how customers engage with your brand on multiple platforms, enabling you to tailor your marketing strategies effectively.

Additional reading: What is Omnichannel Marketing? (+ Examples & Expert Tips)

Example of omnichannel analytics

Imagine a customer sees your ad on Instagram, visits your website, and later purchases through your mobile app.

Omnichannel analytics tracks these touchpoints, providing insights into how your Instagram ad influenced the final purchase.

Another use case is a customer receiving an email promotion, clicking on it, and then completing the purchase in a physical store.

Omnichannel analytics link the email to the in-store purchase, which shows how effective your email campaign was in driving sales.

Tracking these interactions identifies which channels are most effective. It allows you to distribute your marketing budget more efficiently and create targeted campaigns.

Key components of omnichannel analytics

Omnichannel analytics has several critical components that provide a holistic view of customer interactions. These components ensure you can gather, analyze, and act on data from all touchpoints.

• Customer Data Platform (CDP): Centralizes all your customer data in one platform, making it easier to integrate, manage, and analyze data from various sources
• Data integration: Gathers data from various sources like social media, emails, and physical stores to get a complete view of customer interactions
• Segmentation: Groups customers based on behavior, demographics, and preferences to personalize your marketing efforts
• Customer journey mapping: Maps the entire customer journey across all touchpoints to understand their behavior and preferences
• Real-time analytics: Monitors customer interactions in real-time for quick and informed decision-making
• Data visualization and reporting: Displays complex data in graphs, charts, and other visual formats to enhance understanding and interpretation
• Attribution modeling: Identifies which channels and touchpoints contribute most to conversions to optimize your social, paid, and search engine marketing strategies

How to set up omnichannel analytics

Here are the broader steps to implement omnichannel reporting and analytics:

1. Define your objectives
2. Identify your data sources
3. Select an analytics platform
4. Integrate data sources
5. Establish data governance
6. Create a single customer view
7. Analyze and optimize

1. Define your objectives

Start by clearly defining your objectives to guide your omnichannel analytics strategy.

Determine what you want to achieve — improving customer experience, increasing conversion rates, or optimizing marketing spend.

For instance, if your goal is to enhance customer experience, aim to reduce cart abandonment rates or improve customer satisfaction scores.

Write down these goals and ensure they’re specific and measurable. This clarity will let you focus your efforts and evaluate the success of your initiatives.

2. Identify your data sources

Identify all the channels and touchpoints where your customers interact with your brand. These may include your website, mobile app, social media platforms, email campaigns, in-store interactions, and customer service interactions.

Make a comprehensive list of these data sources to ensure you gather complete information about customer behavior.

For example, if you run an ecommerce business, track website visits, social media engagements, email click-through rates, mobile app usage, and in-store purchases.

Collecting data sets from these sources provides a holistic view of your customers’ interactions.

3. Select an analytics platform

Choose a customer data platform or analytics tool that integrates data from various sources, provides robust analytics capabilities, and supports artificial intelligence for deeper insights.

Think about your business needs and how the platform can scale as you grow.

Look for platforms that support real-time data collection, have predictive analytics and automation capabilities, and offer detailed reporting and visualization features.

Some of the top names include Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel, Google Cloud Platform, Heaps, and Marketo Engage.

When evaluating these tools, consider their ease of use, cost, and ability to handle the volume of data you expect to collect.

4. Integrate data sources

Next, connect all your data sources to your selected omnichannel customer analytics platform.

This means ensuring data from your website, mobile app, social media, email marketing, in-store interactions, CRM, and customer service channels are collected and synced in real-time (or at regular intervals).

Most CDPs provide connectors or APIs that make this process straightforward.

For example:

• Add tracking codes to your website to gather user behavior data
• Use software development kits (SDKs) to integrate your mobile app
• Link your social media accounts to pull in engagement metrics.

5. Establish data governance

Implementing data governance ensures your data is accurate, secure, and compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

Start by creating clear policies for how data should be handled and protected.

Assign specific roles to team members responsible for data management and protection.

Audit your data regularly for accuracy and consistency, and update your practices to comply with legal requirements.

Effective data governance builds customer trust and prevents legal issues. It ensures your marketing efforts are based on reliable and compliant data.

6. Create a single customer view

Unify data from various sources to get a comprehensive look at each customer.

This includes combining demographics (like age, gender, and location), behavior (such as purchase history and website visits), and interaction history (like emails opened and social media engagements).

Aggregate this data on a CDP.

Then, design intuitive dashboards within your platform to display real-time insights, like key metrics, customer behavior, and campaign performance.

Make your dashboard easy to understand (and collaborate on) with other team members.

This centralized 360-degree view will help you understand your customers better and tailor your marketing campaigns to meet their needs.

7. Analyze and optimize

Analyze the data you collect regularly to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.

Use your analytics platform to track key performance indicators (KPIs) aligning with your goals.

Generate reports that reveal important insights into customer behavior and campaign performance. Analyze patterns, such as the marketing channels that drive the most conversions and the customer segments that show the highest engagement.

Use these findings to refine and optimize your marketing strategies and tactics.

For instance, if email campaigns drive more conversions than social media ads, allocate more budget and resources to email marketing and SEO lead generation strategies.

Ongoing data analysis and optimization keep your omnichannel strategies effective and aligned with your business objectives.

Omnichannel data challenges and solutions

As you implement omnichannel analytics in your digital marketing strategy, be aware of common challenges you may encounter (especially in omnichannel retail environments).

• Data silos: Integrating data from various marketing channels, such as social media, email, and websites, can be difficult if your systems aren’t interconnected
• Data quality: Maintaining data quality by ensuring the accuracy and consistency of marketing data across all channels can be challenging and may affect campaign effectiveness
• Technical complexity: Setting up and maintaining the infrastructure for omnichannel marketing analytics can be technically demanding and require specialized skills
• Real-time data processing: Collecting and analyzing marketing data in real-time is key for timely campaign adjustments but requires robust technology and resources
• Attribution difficulties: Accurately attributing conversions to the right marketing channels and touchpoints can be complex, which makes it hard to measure campaign ROI
• High costs: Implementing and maintaining an omnichannel analytics system for marketing can be expensive, especially for small businesses

Why is omnichannel analytics important in digital marketing?

The omnichannel approach to analytics drives higher sales and grows your business by providing deep customer behavior insights.

Here are six reasons why it’s important:

1. Provides holistic customer understanding
2. Enables personalized marketing
3. Enhances campaign performance
4. Improves attribution and ROI calculation
5. Identifies high-value customers
6. Improves customer experience

1. Provides holistic customer understanding

Get a comprehensive view of your customers by integrating data from multiple channels into your omnichannel analytics platform.

This shows how customers interact with your brand across social media, email, websites, and physical stores.

For example, if a customer follows your brand on Instagram, clicks on an email promotion, and purchases in-store, omnichannel data analytics captures all these interactions.

Getting this holistic view ensures you understand your customers’ preferences and behaviors better.

2. Enables personalized marketing

Tailor your marketing messages based on customer data from all channels using omnichannel data analytics. This means you can send relevant offers and recommendations to each customer, enhancing their experience with your brand.

For example, if a customer frequently buys sportswear from your online store, you can send them personalized emails featuring new arrivals in sportswear.

This makes customers feel appreciated and understood, which increases their likelihood of making repeat purchases.

3. Enhances campaign performance

Gain insights into your marketing campaign’s effectiveness across different channels (like Google Ads) through omnichannel analytics.

You can track which campaigns are bringing traffic and conversions. And then optimize your campaigns for better performance.

For instance, if you run a paid social media campaign and notice a spike in website traffic and sales, you can analyze the data to understand the most effective aspects of the campaign. Then, you can refine future campaigns to achieve even better results.

4. Improves attribution and ROI calculation

You can better attribute conversions and revenue to specific channels and touchpoints with omnichannel analytics.

This provides a clearer view of the customer journey and enables more accurate ROI calculations.

Let’s say a customer first discovers your brand through a Facebook ad, signs up for your newsletter, and then purchases through an email promotion.

Omnichannel historical analytics can track this entire journey.

You can find which channels contribute most to your sales to allocate your marketing budget more effectively.

5. Identifies high-value customers

Identify your most valuable customers by analyzing their behavior and lifetime value across all channels using omnichannel analytics.

Knowing your high-value customers will concentrate your efforts on retaining and nurturing them.

This focused approach can result in higher revenue and profitability.

For example, data shows that customers who purchase high-end products online also spend significantly in physical stores. So, you create exclusive loyalty programs or special offers for these high-value customers.

This makes them feel appreciated and encourages further engagement with your brand, potentially leading to higher customer retention.

6. Improves customer experience

Deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience across all touchpoints using data from omnichannel analytics.

You can ensure every customer’s interaction with your brand is consistent by understanding their preferences and behaviors.

Let’s say a customer may research a product on your site, add it to their cart, but complete the purchase in-store. With omnichannel journey analytics, you can recognize this behavior and offer offline exclusive deals that enhance their shopping experience. This is one of the key benefits of omnichannel analytics.

Top organic SEO agencies use this tactic to deliver a consistent user experience that builds greater trust and satisfaction, encouraging customers to return.

Get help from experts at HawkSEM

At HawkSEM, we use ConversionIQ, our proprietary marketing tool with advanced reporting and analytics capabilities.

It helps us track every step of the customer journey at a granular level, providing full-funnel attributions and actionable insights. This enables us to optimize campaigns in real-time, consistently delivering our clients exceptional results.

For instance, AppDynamics, a full-stack application performance management solution, doubled its targeted traffic and increased its conversion rate by 20%. Our team of specialists leveraged PPC campaigns with robust tracking and analytics infrastructure to help them achieve this.

“The HawkSEM team prioritizes omnichannel marketing analytics. It gives us deep insights into every customer interaction,” says Yadegar.

“Using ConversionIQ, we can track each touchpoint — from initial engagement to final purchase — and understand the nuances of the customer journey. This detailed tracking allows us to identify successful tactics and areas needing improvement. As a result, we not only optimize campaigns for higher ROI but also create more personalized and effective experiences for end consumers.”

HawkSEM is one of the fastest-growing digital marketing agencies, working with brands such as Microsoft, Nike, Honda, and Verizon.

With a large and multidisciplinary team of specialists, we offer end-to-end digital marketing services — from SEO, PPC, and content marketing to CRO, remarketing, and omnichannel analytics solutions.

All our clients get free access to ConversionIQ. Want to know more? Get in touch with us.

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer 360?

Customer 360 is a comprehensive view of a customer created by combining data from various touchpoints and channels.

It includes demographic information, purchase history, online behavior, and interactions with your brand.

This unified view helps you understand your customers better, enabling you to deliver personalized marketing messages and improve customer experiences.

How to build a customer 360?

Integrate data from all your customer touchpoints, such as your website, social media, mobile app, email, and in-store interactions.

Use a customer data platform to aggregate this data.

Next, clean and standardize the data to remove duplicates and correct errors.

After unifying the data, create detailed customer profiles that include demographics, behavior, and interaction history.

Use these profiles to gain insights into customer preferences and behavior to personalize your marketing strategies.

How to measure omnichannel performance

Measure omnichannel performance by tracking KPIs that align with your digital marketing objectives.

Common KPIs include customer lifetime value, conversion rates, customer engagement metrics, and return on investment. Use your omnichannel analytics platform to monitor these KPIs across all channels.

Set up dashboards to visualize your data and identify trends or patterns.

What is omnichannel tracking?

Omnichannel tracking involves monitoring customer interactions across various channels to understand their journey with your brand.

This includes tracking activities on your website, mobile app, social media, email campaigns, and in-store interactions.

What is omnichannel reporting?

Omnichannel reporting involves compiling data from multiple marketing channels into a single, unified report.

This report provides a comprehensive view of your marketing performance, showing how different channels contribute to your overall goals.

The takeaway

As consumers’ digital footprints widen and their need for a streamlined, omnichannel experience matures, you need a defined system that tracks their interactions across all channels.

This makes omnichannel analytics essential for your digital marketing strategy.

However, building a centralized reporting and analytics ecosystem is challenging. It requires time, money, and expertise.

If you need help with marketing, tracking, and analytics, talk to an expert at HawkSEM. Book your free consultation today.