It’s a bit of an understatement to say that consumer behavior is evolving at a lightning pace across a growing number of touch points. This pace of change has made it necessary for companies to map out and undergo digital transformation journeys of their own to keep up.

Why?

Because customers expect to be engaged at the right time and place, with interactions, messages, and offers that form a singular, seamless experience. This challenge only appears more daunting when the “average” customer journey is becoming increasingly non-linear, lacking a boundary between online and offline channels—web, email, mobile, social media, brick-and-mortar, IoT devices, and more.

To meet and perhaps exceed these skyrocketing expectations, companies need to have state-of-the-art back and front ends that operate in lockstep to analyze, deliver, and improve omnichannel customer experiences based on the latest insights available.

Such transformations—simultaneously strategic, technological, and operational in nature—require time and resources, but the costs of turning away digitally immersed consumers are simply too great. What’s more, done well, omnichannel customer engagement presents ample opportunities for distinguishing the company and cultivating brand advocates that could lead to exponential growth.

So, where does the transformation begin? Data, of course. A successful omnichannel customer engagement roadmap needs to be rooted in the vast amounts of data already available to the company, waiting to be unified and fully utilized across all sources.

This is why solutions powered by a robust data backbone, or customer data platform, empowers companies to make better decisions in real time and understand their audiences better by answering questions such as:

• Where do the customers come from?
• Where and when does each of them prefer to be engaged?
• Are they offer-dependent customers?
• How much value will they potentially bring to the company?

With built-in AI/ML models and integrated modules, the next generation of marketing automation solutions translate those insights into tailored customer experiences and highly detailed analytics that ensure the relevance of engagement and the consistency of top-line growth.

In short, omnichannel customer engagement, enabled by the right martech capabilities, points to an integrated way for companies to utilize marketing data, engage their customers, and move towards the new paradigm of audience-centricity.