Omnichannel Strategies for Driving Millennials to Your eCommerce Site

If driving millennials to your Ecommerce site is part of your 2019 plan, it is important to make sure that you are taking an omnichannel approach to your efforts.

There will be estimated 73 million millennials in 2019. In order to acquire some of this market share, here are 4 strategies to consider adding to your marketing plan:

Strategy: Go beyond multi-channel.

While multi-channel and omnichannel seem very similar, there are some important distinctions between the two that will help you craft a more cohesive and comprehensive campaigns.

Related: How to Achieve True Omnichannel Commerce

It is important to make sure that you are using more than one channel to share your story, and that the channels are planned together so no matter where your audience is accessing the information, they have the same experience with your brand.

Strategy: Be Proactive

While studies show that millennials may spend 6 hours per week shopping online, with 67% of Millennials and preferring to shop online rather than in-store, it is difficult to rely on them finding your Ecommerce site on their own. No matter how much time millennials spend shopping online, they will never visit your website if they are not aware that your brand exists.

This is not a reflection of your current marketing efforts. Chances are, you are doing all of the right things for SEO and have a great digital marketing plan in place. But perhaps there is room to be more proactive in your outreach.

One way to do this is to use direct mail to activate the online experience. The tangible, physical experience of direct mail makes it a great tool for grabbing attention.

You can take a brand awareness approach and introduce them to your brand and nudge them online to learn more, or you can take a more direct sales approach by including product/service discounts or free shipping offers on their order.

Either way, using direct mail as one of the first touchpoints is great for driving website traffic, and from following up from there with a combination of email, social media ads, banners, etc. will help drive conversions.

Strategy: Personalize your messages.

Marketing to every millennials in the exact same way will not be effective, as they each have unique motivations and behaviors. Younger millennials may be entering college or preparing to graduate, mid-range millennials may be in the initial stages of their career, and older millennials are likely in more advanced stages of their career and may have started or be starting a family.

It is important to know what stage of life they are in because that is what drives their decisions. Personalizing the message to their life experience will go a long way to reach them.

In addition, knowing which “subset” they fall into may dictate which channels they prefer for communication – if they grew up with mail they may be the most comfortable with mail, and vice versa for email. This will determine what the initial touchpoint should really be, and the rest of the omnichannel approach can be shaped around it.

Strategy: Share Your Story 

If you have a great story of how your organization came to be, share your story with the world!

As Simon Sinek said, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. That might be especially true for millennials. They care about what drives you and motivates your company.

Being authentic and clear about that and ensuring that that your messaging is consistent across channels and aligned with your mission, vision, and values will go a long way toward establishing trust with your brand.

The Bottom Line

Millennials require an omnichannel approach for reaching them. Not sure how to get started integrating your marketing plan across channels? Here's what to keep in mind when it comes to creating an omnichannel campaign.

Compu-Mail will be at NEMOA from March 20-22. If you see Chris Hill or Allison Jensen, say hi and ask how they can help you integrate your direct mail with your online efforts!

About Compu-Mail, LLC.

Compu-Mail (www.compu-mail.com) provides end-to-end direct marketing and business printing services to companies across the U.S. and Canada. Headquartered in Grand Island, NY, Compu-Mail services include direct mail, email marketing, data driven marketing with database management, statement rendering, variable imaging, and digital retargeting through Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Compu-Mail’s subsidiary company, Dual Print & Mail, provides complete commercial print solutions. Compu-Mail can be reached at 800.255.0670 or marketing@compu-mail.com.