Digital Experience ≠ Omnichannel Experience

Many companies, marketing consultants, and analysts love to talk about omnichannel experience management. However many times when the topic is discussed the details become synonymous with pure digital experience management. There is often little to no integration with offline channels. Even most digital asset management systems often only feature lightweight image picking plugins to Adobe® InDesign® and other common creative tools. In many circumstances, offline customer touchpoints are relegated to 2nd class status and often developed by entirely separate teams with little or no coordination with the online or ecommerce teams. The fact remains that offline touchpoints remain incredibly effective at lead generation, new product introduction, and traffic generation to online channels.

One of the biggest impediments to delivering a truly integrated omnichannel experience is still the time gap that exists in the production lifecycle between digital and offline. Organizations have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or more one applications to deliver highly targeted and personalized digital experiences in real or near real time, but are still utilizing the same tools and business processes from 15 years ago on their offline channels or even worse cutting them completely. Closing that gap and enabling the flexibility to produce the same kind of segmentation and personalization via the offline channels is the key to delivering and complete customer experience management.  Organizations that are able to capitalize on true omnichannel experiences are they ones that will be able to truly differentiate themselves from their competitors.