Imagine you’re trying to promote an upcoming conference to your association members. You start by filming a video that highlights your past events and creating ads with details about your conference’s location, agenda, and registration instructions.

A member of your marketing team suggests focusing your strategy on Instagram as that’s the platform where you typically see the most engagement. However, another team member proposes leveraging several social media platforms, your website, and direct mail to increase touchpoints with your target audience.

Which approach sounds better to you?

The second example represents an omnichannel marketing strategy that allows you to reach your audience on multiple channels, keeping your association top of mind. In this guide, we’ll review the steps for developing an effective, data-driven omnichannel marketing campaign to fully engage your audience across online and offline channels.

1. Define your target audience.

Start by determining who you’d like to reach. This exercise will set the groundwork for your campaign, helping you hone your messaging and decide on the channels you’ll focus on.

Let’s say your association is trying to build membership amongst young professionals. Your campaign may use channels like TikTok, SMS marketing, and billboards in the heart of your city whereas a campaign targeting older professionals may leverage Facebook, email advertising, and direct mail.

2. Gather data about your audience.

Once you have an idea of who you’d like to reach, it’s time to learn more about your audience so you can personalize your campaigns and leverage all of the channels your current or prospective members use. Start by working with a data provider to enrich your database with member information from third-party sources.

This approach works best if you’re looking to target current members but need to dive deeper into who exactly they are. Information you may gather through data enrichment includes:

• Demographics

• Contact information

• Education

• Marital status

• Income

• Net worth

• Lifestyle information

For example, if you’d like to run ads in a magazine but aren’t sure which one to choose, data enrichment can help you predict which magazines your members subscribe to so you can be sure to reach them. Then, to add an SMS marketing component to your campaign, you may also append member phone numbers to ensure your texts go through.

If you want to reach an audience that’s not currently reflected in your member base, you can work with a data provider to build a custom marketing audience. For instance, your healthcare association based in Indianapolis may want to expand its reach to healthcare professionals in Fort Wayne. A data provider can compile information about this specific audience and help you launch a campaign to reach them.

3. Identify lookalike audiences.

Knowing more about your target audience allows you to effectively reach members who fit those criteria and find others with similar qualities. This knowledge unlocks a broader audience of individuals who may also be interested in becoming a member, attending your event, accessing your educational resources, or whatever else you’re promoting.

This is called a lookalike audience; the process identifies prospective members or supporters who mirror or “look like” your target audience. This way, you can focus your efforts on those who are most likely to engage with your campaign and convert.

You may have used single-channel audience-building tools on social media platforms like Meta and TikTok before, selecting demographics or qualities of the audience you’d like to reach on that specific platform.

However, as Deep Sync explains, there are several risks associated with relying on this method to build your lookalike audience:

• It’s hard to tell who clicks on your ads and converts versus who doesn’t.

• Your understanding of your target audience as a whole is limited since you receive disparate data from each individual platform.

• Since each lookalike audience learns in its own environment, you’ll have to experiment with the audience you create on each channel separately, making the process more time-consuming and expensive.

• You miss out on the multiplier effect that occurs when people see your ads on multiple platforms and develop brand awareness and recognition.

To avoid these issues, you can work with a data provider to build a precise, portable lookalike audience model, allowing you to target the same, exact lookalike audience across channels with certainty. With a data provider’s help, you can customize your lookalike audience based on your members’ demographics and interests and activate this audience on the platforms of your choice.

4. Track your results.

After you launch your campaign, track your results to measure your success and adjust your approach accordingly. Depending on the channels you use, NXUnite by Nexus Marketing’s nonprofit data collection guide recommends leveraging marketing metrics like:

• Email metrics, such as open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate

• Ad performance, such as click-through rate, impressions, and conversions

• Website key performance indicators (KPIs), such as traffic sources, engagement rate, and click-through rate

• Social media amplification, such as likes, comments, impressions, and shares

While it may be less straightforward to track metrics for your offline channels, there are some KPIs—such as direct mail response rates—you can use to determine how successful your strategy was. Additionally, you can survey your members to capture their feedback on your campaign. Questions you may ask include:

• What was your initial reaction to the campaign?

• Which channel(s) did you find it on?

• What was engaging about the campaign?

• What would you change about the campaign for next time?

• Do you have any other thoughts about the campaign?

Once you gather the results of your survey, store these insights in your association management system. That way, you can use the information about individual members’ specific preferences and your campaign’s overall performance to inform your future outreach efforts.

The key to a successful omnichannel marketing campaign is relying on data every step of the way. When you take the time to understand your audience, build a precise lookalike audience, and measure your results, you’ll better engage your audience and unlock important insights to improve future campaigns.

 About the Author

Gabrielle Perham, MBA

Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing & Sales Operations for Deep Sync. She joined the organization in 2017 and brings 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, sales enablement, and digital marketing. With a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done attitude and a big-picture mindset, Gaby loves solving marketing and business challenges. She earned both a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A. in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa. Gaby enjoys spending time with her fiercely outspoken daughter; hiking and kayaking; rocking out in the first row of a live show; and giving back to her local community.