Alicia Tostmann: Thank you for joining. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we explore the evolution of omni-channel trends for 2025. I'm Alicia, Customer Success Manager here at Pendula, and I will be moderating this panel interview on key omni-channel trends today.
We've got two industry experts on the panel. Hi, Chris and John, I'll go ahead and let you both introduce yourselves.
Christopher Connolly: Sure. So Hi, everyone, Chris Connolly. I lead solution engineering here at Twilio. I probably got to say early up. I'm a closet marketer. I've been in marketing in a VP role for product marketing at a previous tech company for some time, but I've made my way back to engineering. And it's a lot of fun to see the the intersection of marketing and sales and technology, which is why I'm here today and very keen to talk to you about the topic on omni-channel, which is kind of a loaded word as we as we unpack that as well. So, John, over to you.
John Bevitt: Thanks, mate. Hey, everyone! I'm John, managing director of Honeycomb Strategy. So we're a strategic research agency. We work with brands across all industries, but mainly in service tech and retail. And it's really about helping to understand product market fit. Go to market strategy and brand strategy so very similar journey to Chris. A lot of my passion is around helping product teams and marketing teams come together to make sure they're kicking goals for their customers, and really looking forward to the session.
Alicia Tostmann: Awesome. Well, great to have you both here. So to kick off our discussion, let's revisit the concept of omni-channel marketing, and why it is so important. Omni-channel marketing essentially means engaging with customers across their preferred channels, be it SMS, Whatsapp email apps, or even new channels like RCS. Research indicates that over half of B2C customers engage with 3 to 5 channels during their purchasing or service interactions. And latest reports also show that omni-channel customers shop 1.7 times more frequently, and tend to spend more than those who stick to a single channel. So with that in mind, I'd like to ask, How have you seen omni-channel marketing change in recent years? And what major developments do you expect will influence the landscape as we look ahead to 2025?
John Bevitt: Yeah, I can jump into that one first, Alicia. I think the the perspective I can add is from the customer perspective. And really what they're looking for in in brands and businesses. And if I think about what true omni-channel marketing is from a customer perspective, it's really about creating a seamless, consistent experience for customers. So no matter what channel they're engaging with the brand they're having a similar level of consistency. And in return the same expectations with who they're interacting with.
I think, in terms of trends that we're seeing come up there's definitely over the past few years being an increasing fragmentation of channels. There's a lot more options for customers to interact with brands and even further than that, devices as well. So being able to answer on the laptop, my watch, my smart fridge there's so many devices happening at the same time. But I think what's really exciting heading into 2025 is the power of things like AI and automation, and its ability to create a tighter integration across all of those channels, to really streamline the experiences.
Christopher Connolly: Yeah, I'll probably add to that maybe a dimension of our cookieless future that's been building for several years now as well. So we've been reliant on these cookies, which I think we've all experienced at some point, you know, little bits of crumb data that sits on our browser. That tells us what we've been doing. And increasingly, everything's digital, right? So it's whether it's on your phone or on your mobile or on your partner's computer, that we've been building to a world where cookies are sort of disappearing. And that's kind of driven about a lot of change in the landscape on, on how we're targeting people, how we're segmenting them, what audiences we can build. And that really stretches across every single channel. I mean, your TV is watching you. You're not watching it in so many ways, and so that omni-channel strategy really does extend all the way out to, you know, at home display, and increasingly what we've seen in the last couple of years is that connectivity from what has exclusively been a Martech world, and those signals that are like, you know, targeting audiences to being driven from signals that are driven from service organizations that are using, you know, sentiment. They're using NPS and a lot of that data folding into the experience. And as we look to 2025, and beyond, we think that is really the Holy Grail of personalization of one which I think everyone's been chasing for 20 years now is kind of getting to fruition through generative content, generative experiences, generative everything. And so yeah, it's an exciting time to to be in this space.
Alicia Tostmann: Right. So it sounds like true omni-channel marketing is all about giving customers smooth, consistent experiences everywhere they engage even as channels and devices get more and more scattered, thanks to AI and automation helping to title together. Well, that's a perfect segue into our next question, which is that we've seen that organizations that integrate AI into their customer engagement platforms can enhance operational efficiencies by at least 25%. So thereby significantly improving customer service. For example, how do you see AI and automation influencing organizations' omni-channel marketing strategies? And do you anticipate these to become even more important next year?
Christopher Connolly: Happy to take that. I'm going to say that in reverse order, so do I see it in 2025? Absolutely. And AI is infused in everything. It's not just a thing that you buy. It's something that is a way of programming. It is a feature that is included in so many platforms. And as software vendors, everyone is infusing some type of AI in really interesting ways, whether it is just getting the tone and voice right for the content that is being produced, using generative AI for images or entire campaigns, using generative AI to build audiences and sequences. It is absolutely pervasive. It's everywhere, and there's kind of a rise of new touch points as well. So one of the things that we're most excited about as we look to, particularly in Australia in 2025 is RCS, which is a real-time communication service. It is essentially the evolution of SMS. Now, everyone's got probably a phone in their pocket, or at least probably a meter away from them at this point in time, and you can probably see it. SMS is still one of the most opened pieces of content that you get. You'll ignore an email. But you probably won't ignore a text. And so as we get into RCS, it essentially brings out new capabilities for images, for carousels, for buttons, new ways to engage. So it's sort of the revival of what is an old school channel into 2025. Now, the reason we're waiting is because we need carriers on board. We need Google on board. But when that comes and it starts to land in our region already. And it's in iOS 18 now. So it's coming really soon. That also gives us a surface to put even more generative content into those channels. So I think what we're gonna see for automated outreach is hyper-targeted individualization of communications. You're gonna target like John specifically with, you know, a display ad and a picture about the conversation that he's just had with his banker on a different channel. And it's hyper relevant. And so this is one of those areas that as we unpack into 2025 is going to be vital for for marketers as they, they look at the reinvigoration of like personal communications in your pocket. John, what do you reckon?
John Bevitt: Yeah, I I agree. I really feel like we're still very early stages in where AI can take us, especially in this space. The way I kind of describe it to my team is we're very much in the Wild West era still of AI, and what it can do. And there's a lot of, I guess experimentation, and I genuinely feel that we're still at the tip of the iceberg with what it can do. I think what you're saying before Chris, around personalization is a really big opportunity there, and the ability to do real time, two-way interaction and personalization to create that one-to-one experience for customers is huge. We did a big piece of research earlier this year on data privacy, and some of the most sensitive types of data from a customer's perspective is things like name email bank details, phone numbers, current location, which is challenging. Obviously, there's a lot of personal data there, I think, where there's a lot of opportunity is on what customers see as less sensitive data, things like interaction data like browsing behavior filters that sort of thing that can really help to take that personalized experience to the next level and really help to build a I guess, a more meaningful value. Exchange for the information that consumers are giving. A good example that comes to mind is like, how do we define that one-to-one customer. A good example is like Amazon. A single account is a definition of one customer. In theory. My wife and I share the same account. So we access Amazon on different devices, I think, where AI and automation can really take it to the next level is identify that distinct devices are behaving quite differently in terms of what they're searching for as an example. So a dream state for me is to not get as many kids, books and kids toys affiliate marketing as I'm browsing, cause that's my wife's business, and I prefer to keep it over there.
Christopher Connolly: You know, it's funny you mentioned that. So we've been watching YouTube. I've got an 8 year old, and I've noticed he's on my account. But the YouTube videos that show up at certain times of day are clearly for him and not for me. And so it feels like Google's figured that out exactly to your point of like shared device different times a day. Different users. I don't know how they're doing it. We know how they're doing it. But yeah, incredible. I love that insight. John.
John Bevitt: Yeah. And Bluey brings us all together.
Christopher Connolly: Very true.
Alicia Tostmann: Yeah, so well, we're clearly still in the early days of AI, and just scratching the surface there. It's really interesting to hear that we're increasingly moving towards interaction data rather than just personal data. And it's really all about creating meaningful, valuable exchanges for customers.
Talking about omni-channel strategies. It seems like data, integration and data management are all are really at the heart of it all. We know that over the next 5 years, as much as 2 trillion dollars in revenue will shift to companies that know how to create personalized experiences and communications and leaders in personalization grow revenue 10 percentage points faster annually than laggards, and also enjoy higher customer satisfaction scores. How do you both see the role of data and creating personalized customer journeys? And can you share any insights on how you have seen effective data management impact approaches to connecting with customers across different channels?
Christopher Connolly: Look happy to take that one as well. Data is vital, and if we look at the last, probably again, last couple of years, the race has been on from all these tech companies to build these large language models, and the way they've done that is, by harvesting all of our data by harvesting Reddit comments and Facebook comments. They've used our pictures to build these incredible models that have kind of bringing about the next, you know, I remember when Google landed, and it was sort of profound in the way that we use the Internet, we're living through that moment with large language models at the moment, and it's starting to be infused. But that race of data is starting to come to an end, because now the the walls are going up. You know the terms and conditions are starting to make it harder for organization to harvest that. What that has the byproduct of that is that now the data that companies have is incredibly important as the unique differentiator to them. So what we're seeing is a world where the the role of like a customer data platform with real time context that can feed an LLM is becoming the thing, at least for the next couple of years, that organizations are going to race to because we're taking advantage of the hard work, and we're paying for it through, you know, incremental tokens on the large language models to build these audiences, but content or whatever it may be. But having that real time data of you know, what did Alicia do 5 seconds ago on the website or in the mobile app. To then inform an LLM. To then create a personalized experience is vital. So the data and integration of all of that data from real time data. And that's kind of the underscore. Here is your data. That's an hour old is stale. It's immediately stale, because that user's moved on. They've gotten off the train. They're no longer thinking about that. So that in moment, data that you can use to personalize and engage is critical for not just omni-channel, but the entire journey through marketing and into service. So again, what we're seeing with some of our clients that are doing this well is they're taking their service data. Did John have a bad experience with an agent in contact center, and then using that to inform whether or not they actually do a display. Add to John in real time, because if his sentiment is low he's probably not going to buy now. But if he had a great interaction with someone. Maybe he'll buy something else, and we can start to target him. So it is vital, I guess, is what my takeaway there. But that real time data. Nature is what we see, John, is that borne out in your research, or you got a different perspective on that as well.
John Bevitt: I think it complements it nicely. It's interesting. Because if we look at the past couple of years of this data privacy piece of research that I mentioned before. We've seen this increasing level of distrust between customers and organizations asking for data. And the the context around. That is really that customers don't up until this point feel like they're getting the value exchange. So they're giving a lot. And they're not getting as much back because they feel the personalizations that they've historically received. Token, at best, and they haven't really seen it effectively executed. What I think is really interesting. And I love that you mentioned LLMs. Because, I mean, if you look at anyone interacting with Chat Gpt, it blows my mind how much personal information. They're willingly giving the large language model, and it's mainly because they're getting value directly in exchange immediately. And so if I go back to, I guess where the opportunity is for for data, integration and management. It's around really having that single source of truth on the customer, so that no matter what channel the customer is interacting with you, it's centralized in one place, you're able to make sure that the data that you have on them is completely usable and accessible, so that you can really maximize the customer experience and really ensure that you're delivering on the expectations that for a long time customers have wanted. But they've gotten a bit tired of not actually receiving it in kind.
Christopher Connolly: I almost want to debate you on one of those comments. And then data needs to be in one place, and I think it doesn't. And the reason is, it needs to be accessible, but it can be distributed. And I think this is one of the things that we're seeing with the, you know, so many systems that we've got in our ecosystems. Now. the data is never in one place. It's always everywhere. But if we can get to it in some structured way or through a tunnel. Then then it's you know, it's that's okay, right? We don't have to put it all in a big snowflake or a a data warehouse to to make it accessible, it can be distributed.
John Bevitt: Think you're bang on as long as it can talk to each other. I think that's the key thing. Because otherwise, if it's fragmented. And say, you're having an engagement with someone on Instagram and then you submit a complaint because you've had a bad experience. It's on their website, and they don't know about that interaction. Then there's a red flag there, and that leads to frustration from a customer perspective.
Christopher Connolly: Yeah, I totally agree.
Alicia Tostmann: Yeah, so it's all about in in moment, real-time data to create value. Now, essentially.
Moving on to our last question, this seems like an important question for all marketers measuring the effectiveness of omni-channel strategies can be a bit of a puzzle, right? So from your experience, what metrics or tools. Have you found most helpful in assessing how well a brand is connecting with customers across different channels? Do you have any particular success stories you'd like to share?
John Bevitt: I have as many success stories as I have mixed bags, and I think going back to that like, as long as marketing's exist. There's always been a drive to find a metric to measure how successful successful that marketing is. And it's so important to have the right Kpi, because if you're focusing on the wrong metric, it can lead a business in the completely wrong direction. Slightly biased being a customer research and insights person. But I I think where I've seen the most success is when they look at it at a broader level and evaluate success, as have I created customer value based on the interactions I've had and have I delivered on the Value exchange, I think. whether there's a bit of attention, though. And, Chris, I'd be keen to get your thoughts on. This, too, is that I've seen businesses try and look at Roi and effectiveness at 2 levels. One is channel effectiveness. So trying to understand attribution and direct impact of an individual chat channel on customer value versus overall effectiveness of our channels as a holistic ecosystem. And I think the key thing with omni-channel is. It's not dependent on any one channel. It's the whole fact that the ecosystem is working as a whole. So where I've seen the best success and buy-in across an entire organization is when you look at it, at that higher level as an omni-channel strategy in total.
Christopher Connolly: Total, I totally agree. And I think if we go back to basics some of the the best measures that we have are still. you know, speed to lead, and you know, getting through the pipeline so that we actually see a sale come out. The other end of of it. However. we're all one of the ideas that that we've seen. Which is not necessarily new is a sort of a customer effort. Score minutes of engagement. which is, or minutes of friction sometimes. which is, can be a bit of a leading indicator, and it depends on if it's B2C or B2B, but I'll talk in the B2B context for a second. In the B2B world, we're seeing, you know the account group or the buying group identification as being critical to the measure. Because then we can say, Well, well, how many personas did we have engaged is that deviating from our norm? How many minutes are they spending with our content? How many minutes they spending, at our events, did they show up to an all day workshop. We can count that as 60 minutes. So, having that scoring of a leading indicator that is just based on time, which is the most valuable thing that we have as humans. That's a good measure to start with. And then hopefully, seeing that back end into well, did that result in a lead? And did the sales team agree? And did we, did we accelerate that through the pipeline from Ffirst touch all the way through, you know, multi-touch attribution into ultimately what we're here to to do, which is help our sales teams engage. So that's so. Just to put a button on that. It. It is sort of that minutes of friction as well, or minutes of non friction as well as effort like is the customer going to the effort to understand what you're trying to do, and what your products or services, or whatever you're selling, what you offer that can be a really good indicator of whether or not it's being effective.
Alicia Tostmann: Very interesting. Well, that brings us to the end of our session. Thank you all for a fantastic discussion. Today we've covered topics like the importance of clear value, exchanges the launch of new channels like RCS. And how to leverage data as efficiently as possible. Those are some great and thought provoking contributions, and thank you to everyone else who joined us. We appreciate your time, enjoy the rest of your day.
John Bevitt: Thanks. Alicia, thanks. Chris, thanks. Everyone.
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