Why omnichannel marketing strategies are the future of success

Customers are presented with mismatched information if a retailer offers an exclusive promotion on its website while keeping mobile applications and stores unsigned

Highlights:

You’ll learn about why a headless CMS is a must for omnichannel strategies:

• Consistency across channels: Delivers a unified brand experience on websites, apps, social media and IoT devices
• Removes content silos: Centralizes content management, ensuring teams work collaboratively with up-to-date information
• Real-time updates: Sends instant changes across platforms, improving agility
• Scalable & flexible: Adapts to global markets, diverse channels and personalized campaigns

Like many businesses, you might search for new software when your existing tools fail to perform. You come across a promising platform. After browsing their website, you download a free guide. But you move on without making any decisions.

Fast forward a week, and suddenly you see that software everywhere. You see their ads on Instagram, read a blog post from a company like yours that switched to them and even hear their name in a podcast you follow.

Next thing you know, you're talking to their sales team. How did this happen? The company had a smart omnichannel marketing strategy. They showed up on social media, in industry conversations and during your decision-making process, guiding you from prospect to paying customer. That’s multichannel marketing done right.

When you meet customers where they are and share content they want to read, you encourage customer loyalty. Marketers using three or more channels in their marketing campaigns witness a 494% higher order rate than those using a single channel, making omnichannel a must-have strategy.

In this guide, we’ll explore how an omnichannel marketing strategy is your key to success. 

What is an omnichannel marketing strategy?

An omnichannel marketing strategy is the integration of various online and offline marketing channels to create a consistent and cohesive branding experience for all your customers. These channels include email, social media, websites and even brick-and-mortar stores. By using an omnichannel strategy, you produce a single brand message and voice. In an omnichannel strategy, you would not send product emails to customers who have already purchased that item.

Still not convinced?

If a retailer offers an exclusive promotion on its website while keeping mobile applications and stores unsigned, customers are presented with mismatched information. Customers who encounter differing levels of promotional details lose trust in the brand.

Why is a traditional CMS not enough for omnichannel marketing?

Your customers expect connected digital experiences. They dislike restarting their purchase process when they switch between your website and mobile app to complete the transaction. 

This doesn’t go well with a traditional CMS as it cannot deliver adaptive content to every platform. Traditional CMSes, such as WordPress, cannot send omnichannel messages. Here are some other reasons why traditional CMS architecture isn’t enough for your omnichannel marketing:

Content silos

In most companies, different teams manage content for different channels. You have one team managing your email marketing and another team managing your social media. This produces disconnected workflows which results in content silos across various channels. Your marketing campaigns posted on Instagram might differ from the versions sent through email. Your customers receive inconsistent messages. A lack of a centralized content strategy allows duplicate or inconsistent material to reach your audience, creating confusion and damaging your reputation.

Complex updates

You cannot launch marketing updates across multiple touchpoints using a traditional content management system (CMS). During a product update, it’s not easy to reflect changes on your website, mobile app and email campaigns. Delays in updates mean you miss out on the campaign’s momentum, jeopardizing your omnichannel approach.

Scaling issues

Traditional CMS systems are not designed to meet complex business needs. A brand operating in 10 different countries cannot survive on a traditional CMS because every region will have its own language, culture, and regulations. Updating and managing all your websites manually is not feasible. For example, when you launch an online store in France, Brazil and Japan simultaneously, you must manually translate product descriptions and adjust your offers based on local holidays and legal compliance checks in each market. 

Lack of integration

Modern tools like marketing automation tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and advanced analytics software cannot integrate with monolithic CMS platforms. For example, you may encounter challenges when integrating a monolithic content management system (CMS) with a new email marketing platform. This leads to subpar outcomes. A lack of platform integration hinders the ability to maintain consistent, personalized shopping experiences across different channels. This forces you to spend longer periods on disconnected data structures, hindering the opportunity to improve your marketing strategy.

Rigid workflows

Traditional CMSs are not flexible and scalable, so they create a rigid workflow that slows down marketing campaigns. For example, waiting for developers to update a website results in the campaign’s launch being delayed. Your marketing, IT and design teams struggle to collaborate effectively when priorities shift or deadlines are tight. Such rigid workflows can hurt productivity and creativity.

Why is a headless CMS the best for omnichannel marketing strategies?

So, what’s the gold standard for modern marketing? It’s delivering personalized communication across multiple channels. That’s where a headless CMS like Contentstack comes in. Apart from providing content optimization, these tools deliver content to multiple channels simultaneously. Because of these features, a headless architecture supports blog posts, sales promotions, in-person events and product launches. 

Here’s why a headless CMS is your only solution for acing your omnichannel marketing strategies:

Supports multiple digital platforms

A headless CMS enables multichannel content delivery, allowing publishers to distribute content across various channels. For instance, you can update blog posts on your website, push product descriptions to an e-commerce app, share promotions on Instagram or provide interactive content for Alexa voice assistants or Apple Watches. Regardless of whether your customers are using a mobile app, website, social media channels or emerging technologies like wearable and voice assistants, a headless architecture adapts content to each channel. Because back-end content management is different from the front-end display, it allows for faster updates, consistent messaging and a more personalized customer experience. 

Integration with tools and platforms

A headless CMS integrates with your existing tech stack and new platforms. Contentstack integrates with a customer data platform (CDP) like Lytics, automation systems, CRMs and analytics software to gather, analyze and use customer data to build highly personalized experiences. Your company gains deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences. Moreover, your team gains immediate access to opportunities for developing more effective marketing strategies and targeted approaches. 

Removes content and data silos

Decentralized content management enables marketing and IT departments to work from a single, central platform, leading to improved cooperation and reduced data and content silos. A marketing team working on email campaigns can get up-to-date product information directly from the same database that the sales team uses.

Provides a real-time update

You can make on-the-spot changes to your campaigns using the real-time editing feature, ensuring quick responses to market developments and changing customer behavior. This feature also allows you to modify messages to better connect with your audience and adjust your promotional offers. Thanks to your adaptable strategies, your audience will consistently receive relevant content on time. This fosters brand loyalty by providing information that aligns with your customers’ dynamically changing needs.

Offers scalable and flexible solutions

Your systems become more flexible with a headless content management system (CMS). It’s an excellent choice for targeting local campaigns, personalizing content across different audiences and market expansion.

As the content management is separate from front-end presentation, you can distribute content across various platforms and devices. A business can scale its operations without limitations, adjust rapidly to market changes and provide customers with a smooth user experience.

Enhances personalization

Personalized marketing and a headless CMS are two sides of the same coin. As the headless platform integrates with CDPs and marketing automation tools, you can create personalized experiences across various platforms. The platform delivers smart and relevant interactions to every customer. Using customer behavior, an online store can suggest products that your customers love. With a headless CMS, those recommendations can pop up wherever the customer prefers on the website, in the app or even through targeted ads.

Moreover, using a headless CMS, you offer perks like individual recommendations based on the customer journey and real-time transactional information via SMS. Personalized experiences increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. 

Faster time to market

A headless CMS can update and share content across multiple platforms at the same time. Using a headless architecture, an online store updates product details and prices on their website, app and smart home assistant all at once. They even deliver consistent messaging and offers to all customers. 

This approach separates how content is managed from how it’s shown, giving you more freedom. It helps you launch campaigns, make updates and keep content the same everywhere. For marketers on tight schedules or managing multiple platforms, completing tasks on time and ensuring a seamless user experience is essential.

Case study: How Generali Austria provided omnichannel engagement with Contentstack

Generali Austria migrated to Contentstack’s headless CMS solution to achieve flexible systems, optimized content management and omnichannel delivery capabilities across web, mobile and intranet functions. As the platform centralized content in a single store, marketing teams gained autonomy in publishing, reducing reliance on IT. The intranet now supports 5,000 employees with knowledge sharing, and the website has seen a 15% increase in engagement. Generali plans to use Contentstack’s personalization features to enhance user experiences. Key benefits include centralized content management, increased website engagement and improved employee satisfaction.

After using Contentstack, Bettina Divos, Content Manager at Generali Austria, said:

“Before Contentstack, marketing couldn’t build a campaign landing page without involving the IT department. Every change required a request to IT. Now, we can do it on our own — just build what we need and publish it. Developers can concentrate on building new functionality, and we can take responsibility for deploying content. It’s added a lot more trust and collaboration to the relationship.”

Read the complete case study here.

How to implement an omnichannel marketing strategy with a headless CMS

Use the following steps to implement an omnichannel strategy in your CMS:

Define your goals

You need to know your desired outcome before starting any strategy and change process. Begin by answering these questions:

• What are your omnichannel strategy goals?
• Would you like to enhance customer engagement, increase sales and improve corporate identity?
• Do you have a clear understanding of how your audience interacts with platforms, their behavioral patterns and how they choose a product or service?
• How will customer data shape your strategy?
• How will you ensure your messaging resonates with your target audience?

It helps you create a blueprint of your omnichannel marketing strategy.

Choose the right CMS

Not every headless CMS is the same. Select one that aligns with your business objectives. Start by evaluating features like:

• APIs
• Flexibility
• Ease of use
• Scalability

A scalable CMS grows your business, supports additional tools and future-proofs your business’s tech stack. Conduct a thorough market research to compare different platforms. Headless CMS like Contentstack is built to serve your business needs. 

Integrate your CMS with existing tools

Integration is what separates a headless CMS from a traditional CMS. As the CMS acts as a central hub for your content, sync it with your existing tech stack. Without facing any vendor lock-in, you can easily use your tech stack.

Develop a centralized content hub

Unless you manage your content somewhere, you cannot provide an omnichannel experience to your customers. That’s why you should develop a central hub to organize, manage and distribute your content consistently.

Structure your content

Transform your content into small, reusable units such as headlines, images and descriptions to reuse on different platforms and audiences. This method is efficient because it guarantees your content matches all channel requirements. 

Add tags

Use tags and metadata to manage your content better. Tagging your content properly allows you to search for desired materials easily and tailor them to suit your audience's needs for instant messaging results. 

Create clear workflows

Establish clear workflows for content creation. Review and approve the content before sharing. Streamlined workflows enable better teamwork while minimizing processing delays. This ensures your system operates smoothly as your business scales up. 

Design personalization and consistent messaging

Through the use of a headless CMS, customers receive personalized messages adapted to their specific audience groups. The platform maintains branding consistency. Build a content style guide to maintain consistency across your brand’s communications, tone, personality, voice and visual identity. For example, you can run a promotional campaign that looks the same across your website, email newsletters and mobile app and still offer unique product suggestions to each customer.

Distribute content across channels

Push your content through appropriate distribution channels after you finalize your content and offers. The application programming interface (API) allows you to expedite content delivery to digital kiosks, social media apps, websites, mobile applications and smart home devices.

Monitor and optimize your campaigns

To get the most out of your marketing efforts, monitor your analytics to see how people are engaging with your content, what’s converting and how they’re behaving across different platforms. Try experimenting using A/B tests. Experiment with various headlines, visuals and messages to determine what resonates with your audience. Apply what you learn to refine and enhance your strategy. If your email campaigns with personalized offers are getting more attention than your social media ads, it’s a good idea to shift more of your energy there.

FAQs

What is an omnichannel CMS?

An omnichannel CMS delivers consistent, personalized messages to customers who interact through various online and offline channels.

How is a headless CMS different from a traditional CMS? 

A headless CMS separates where your content is stored from how it is displayed, giving you more freedom to share content across multiple platforms. But a traditional CMS couples these two layers together.

What are the 4 C’s of omnichannel? 

The four C’s that describe omnichannel are Customer, Convenience, Consistency and Communication. 

How does a headless CMS improve SEO?

A headless CMS enhances your mobile design, accelerates load times and maintains fresh and optimized metadata.

Learn more

Omnichannel marketing strategies are slowly becoming the standard best practice. The benefits of integration with tools like Lytics, higher scalability and flexibility, real-time updates, future-proofing, faster time to market and, most importantly, an enhanced and unified customer experience, have made traditional CMSes unfit for omnichannel experiences. With a headless CMS, you can experiment with apps, voice search, chatbots, IoT devices and wearables. You can even use the CMS to capture those micro-moments when customers are ready to make a purchase. 

Talk to us to see how a headless CMS can elevate your brand’s omnichannel marketing strategy and prepare your business for the future.