Multichannel marketing: Effectively leveraging all your channels
6min • Mar 5, 2025 • Last updated on Mar 6, 2025
Olivier Renard
Content & SEO Manager
A BVA study reveals that a consumer interacts with an average of 8.1 touchpoints before making a purchase. Shops, websites, traditional media, customer reviews, social networks: the possibilities are numerous.
Communicating and distributing across multiple channels is essential, especially since consumers who navigate between different touchpoints tend to spend more (Harvard Business Review).
Key Takeaways:
Multichannel marketing enables businesses to interact with customers across multiple touchpoints (stores, websites, SMS, email, etc.), enhancing engagement and sales.
It differs from cross-channel and omnichannel marketing: as the name suggests, it utilises multiple channels, but without necessarily connecting them.
An effective multichannel strategy relies on a solid understanding of the customer journey and consistent messaging across all platforms.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) supports this approach by unifying customer data to personalise interactions and optimise marketing performance.
🔍 What is multichannel marketing, and how does it differ from cross-channel and omnichannel approaches? Discover its benefits, limitations, and key strategies for building an effective multichannel strategy. 🚀
What is multichannel marketing?
Multichannel marketing refers to the use of multiple channels to communicate with customers and sell products or services.
It encompasses both physical and traditional channels (stores, events, catalogues, print media, outdoor advertising) and digital channels (websites, social media, emails, mobile apps).
In the digital era, consumers continuously switch between these channels before making a purchase. Google calls this the Messy Middle: a phase where consumers hesitate, explore, and evaluate multiple options before making a decision.
This concept challenges the traditional linear AIDA model, which has long been favoured by marketing professionals. For a business, adopting a multichannel approach ensures presence at the right place, at the right time, while adapting to customer preferences.
AIDA vs Messy middle
An evolving approach
A multichannel strategy is based on the idea that each customer has a unique purchasing journey. Some prefer physical stores, while others shop online.
Many also visit a physical store after researching offers online, a behaviour known as ROPO: Research Online, Purchase Offline.
💡 A situation you've probably already experienced as a consumer. You see a pair of shoes on Instagram. You check reviews on the brand’s website, then visit a store to try them on before making your purchase.
In this simple scenario, the business used multiple channels to attract your attention and guide you towards a purchase.
Multichannel marketing is not a recent concept. Sending a promotional coupon via email to encourage an in-store purchase is already an example of multichannel marketing. However, today’s buying journey is more fragmented than ever.
The challenge is no longer just about being present on multiple platforms but about providing a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints. Businesses must adapt to consumer expectations to maximise engagement and optimise conversions.
This is why we now talk about cross-channel and omnichannel marketing.
Multichannel, cross-channel, and omnichannel: What are the differences?
Multichannel, cross-channel, and omnichannel marketing are closely related concepts, but they have important distinctions. The comparative table below clarifies their differences and outlines the steps towards delivering a seamless customer experience.
Criteria | Multichannel | Cross-channel | Omnichannel |
|---|---|---|---|
Definition | Use of multiple independent channels to engage customers. | Touchpoints are connected to ensure a smooth transition. | All channels are fully integrated for a unified experience. |
Connection between channels | No connection. | Partial connection between some channels. | Full synchronisation across all platforms in real time. |
Customer experience | Fragmented; each channel operates in silos. | Smoother, but with limited integration. | Consistent and seamless across all touchpoints. |
Example | Shopping in-store or online, but with no interaction between the two. | Click & Collect: purchase online, collect in-store. | Shopping basket synchronised across website, app, and store, with personalised tracking. |
Personalisation of the customer journey | Low; each channel follows its own approach. | Intermediate; some channels share data. | Optimised, with a unified view of all touchpoints. |
Data / Technology | Isolated data, no sharing between channels. | Data is shared between some tools (CRM, ERP, CMS). | Centralised data, activated in real time through a CDP. |
Multichannel vs cross-channel vs omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel marketing is the most advanced version of multichannel marketing. It integrates all channels to deliver a seamless and personalised customer journey.
Multichannel marketing vs Omnichannel marketing
Advantages and limitations
A multichannel strategy allows businesses to better meet customer expectations, but it also presents some challenges.
Advantages of multichannel marketing
Better customer experience: Presence across multiple channels enables customers to choose their preferred engagement method, improving satisfaction and engagement.
Greater brand visibility: By reaching a broader audience across various communication channels, businesses boost brand awareness and attract new customers.
Increased sales and ROI: Customers who use multiple touchpoints spend more on average than single-channel buyers. A wider presence creates more sales opportunities and improves conversion rates.
More flexible and adaptable marketing: A multichannel strategy allows businesses to experiment with different channels and adjust efforts based on performance insights.
Challenges
Inconsistent messaging: Managing multiple communication channels, each with its own processes and resources, requires careful coordination.
Poorly aligned messaging can harm the customer experience.
More complex performance tracking: Marketing attribution becomes challenging when multiple channels are involved.
Marketing mix modelling (MMM) solutions help assess the impact of different campaigns.
Fragmented customer data: Each channel collects its own data, making it difficult to unify and analyse the customer journey.
Higher Costs and Resource Demands: Managing multiple channels requires more human and technological resources to maintain an effective presence. There is also a risk of spreading efforts too thin.
A step towards an omnichannel vision
To overcome these challenges, businesses are gradually shifting towards an omnichannel approach. Unlike multichannel marketing, which operates in silos, omnichannel marketing unifies all channels to create a seamless and consistent customer experience.
👉 Nike is a prime example of omnichannel success, integrating its mobile app, stores, and website. Customers can shop online, try in-store, and receive personalised recommendations via the app.
(Source: Nike)
How to implement an effective multichannel strategy?
Achieving success in multichannel marketing requires a deep understanding of customers and consistent interaction management. Here are the key steps:
0️⃣ Identify your target audience
It's obvious: an effective strategy begins with a precise understanding of your audience. What are their needs, motivations, obstacles, habits and preferred channels?
A clear vision of your ideal customer enables you to adapt your marketing actions. To do this, create detailed buyer persona profiles.
1️⃣ Map the customer journey and identify key touchpoints
Study where your buyers personas are at each stage of their buying process (information search, comparison, purchase, opinion, etc.). Map this path to identify the most strategic contact points and focus your efforts.
Set your objectives: acquire new prospects, improve customer relations, retain existing customers?
2️⃣ Ensure messaging consistency and implementing strategy
This is the action phase. Adapt your communication to each channel while ensuring consistency with your overall positioning. Customers need to recognise your identity and style, whatever the medium.
The same message must be adapted to the specificities of each platform. Offer your customers a familiar experience, while providing them with specific interaction.
3️⃣ Track performance and optimise continuously
Regularly monitor the progress of your objectives and measure the performance of your multichannel approach. Track the right metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy.
KPI analysis and A/B testing will help you optimise campaigns and improve the user experience.
Effective multichannel management also requires appropriate solutions. CRMs, marketing automation tools and, above all, CDPs enable data to be centralised and interactions to be unified.
The Customer Data Platform as a growth lever
A successful multichannel strategy relies on the ability to centralise, analyse, and activate customer data. Without a dedicated tool, data remains siloed across CRM, social media, and physical stores.
The consequences:
Inconsistent communication
A disorganised customer experience
Loss of valuable information for personalisation
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) offers this 360° vision, for more effective actions. By unifying data, it enables fluid activation and better personalisation. Each channel benefits from the same information, guaranteeing a seamless, optimised customer journey.
DinMo's composable CDP goes even further. Unlike traditional solutions, it makes direct use of the data stored in the data warehouse, without duplication.
Our Customer Journey Studio feature enables you to create a flexible and scalable campaign based on a multi-step workflow—making it easier to transition towards omnichannel marketing.
Customer Journey Studio DinMo
Segmentation, retargeting, personalisation: with DinMo, companies can deploy a high-performance, agile and scalable omnichannel strategy.
FAQ
How to measure the effectiveness of a multichannel marketing strategy?
The effectiveness of a multichannel marketing strategy is measured using several key performance indicators (KPIs):
Conversion rate per channel: Assesses which channels generate the most purchases or interactions.
Customer engagement: Measures consumer interaction with content (email open rates, social media engagement, click-through rates).
Social listening: Analyses customer feedback on social media to identify potential inconsistencies in messaging.
Sales attribution: Identifies which channel had the greatest influence on the purchase decision.
Using analytics tools such as Google Analytics, a CRM, or a Customer Data Platform (CDP) helps aggregate this data and continuously optimise the multichannel strategy.
Which industries benefit the most from multichannel marketing?
Retail and e-commerce: Fully leverage multichannel marketing to combine physical and digital sales (click & collect, mobile apps, in-store digital experiences).
Banking sector: Integrates branches, websites, and mobile applications to offer seamless customer journeys.
Tourism: Travellers interact with multiple platforms before making a purchase (comparison sites, online travel agencies, hotel websites).
B2B services: Benefit from multichannel strategies by combining digital campaigns, trade shows, and direct outreach.
In all these industries, unifying customer interactions with a CDP helps optimise customer relationships and enhance performance.
