Understanding Customer Behavior Across Marketing Channels

One of the principal challenges in expanding a marketing mix to a new channel is parsing apart the differences not just in channel performance but in the user-level behaviors for that channel. A marketing team can't expect users from a new channel to engage in the same patterns, with the same cadence, as users from existing channels. So onboarding a new channel requires not just an accommodation of that new traffic into the measurement model but also an understanding of how the underlying monetization prediction model needs to adapt to that channel's users. This makes intuitive sense, but it's often overlooked. Even across direct response channels, the media formats could be different, or the platforms could feature fundamentally different demographics. Compare TikTok to Snapchat to Pinterest to Instagram. Can all of these consumers be expected to behave the same when they reach your product after clicking on an ad? This kind of model adaptation is a difficult task absent deterministic identifers. But the challenge is most pronounced when expanding a media portfolio from exclusively direct response to include things like CTV or podcasting. This measurement adjustment is a deliberate process that needs to be planned and carefully orchestrated -- a marketing team can't just wing it.

Grateful to be featured in the "Shoptalk Hot Takes" interview by Blenheim Chalcot and ClickZ.com alongside George Looker to unpack omnichannel commerce. 5 key takeaways and tactics from my conversation: 1. Design for Customer Continuity, Not Just Channel Expansion 💡 71% of customers expect brands to personalize interactions across every touchpoint. Tactical: Map out customer journey across channels, then design experiences that recognize and reward continuity—cart persistence, loyalty rewards, browsing history sync, etc. 2. Build the Infrastructure: Unify Data Streams Across All Touchpoints 🧠 Data fragmentation = missed opportunity Tactical: Integrate POS, e-commerce, mobile, social, and marketplace data into a centralized data lake or unified commerce platform. 3. Establish a Single Source of Truth for Customer Profiles 🔍 Brands with unified profiles see up to 2x better campaign performance. Tactical: Implement Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to consolidate behavioral, transactional, and engagement data into unified customer profiles. 4. Partner Strategically for Scale, Not Just Stack ⚙️ A bloated tech stack doesn’t equal agility As I noted, Retailers are getting sharper about which partners can scale with them. Ecosystem efficiency matters more than ever. Tactical Step: Audit your tech stack and partnerships consistently. Prioritize partners that offer extensibility, future-proofing, and proven omnichannel success. 5. Measure What Matters: Unified KPIs Across Commerce 📈 You can’t optimize what you don’t measure holistically Tactical: Align your analytics stack to report holistically across channels—tie marketing to merchandising, CX to LTV, and inventory to revenue. 🧠 Bottom line: think holistically, move strategically, and build ecosystems that scale experience with agility, not just transactions. Complete list in comment 👇 #ecommerce #omnichannel #unifiedcommerce