Emarsys Omnichannel Marketing: Email, Mobile, and Web Working Together

The term “omnichannel” is overused in retail marketing. Every platform claims to be omnichannel. In practice, most tools connect two or three channels with limited data sharing and significant friction between them.

Emarsys is one of the few platforms where omnichannel is an architectural reality rather than a marketing claim. It was built from the ground up to unify customer data across channels and orchestrate campaigns that span email, mobile push, SMS, web personalisation, and in-store touchpoints — all within a single automation engine and against a single unified customer profile.

This guide explains the Emarsys omnichannel architecture, how to build unified customer profiles, how to orchestrate cross-channel campaigns, and how in-store data feeds email personalisation for retail brands operating both physical and digital channels.

Emarsys’s Omnichannel Architecture

Emarsys’s architecture differs from most marketing platforms in one fundamental way: the customer profile is the central object, and every channel touchpoint enriches it. Rather than having separate data stores for email subscribers, mobile app users, and in-store customers that occasionally sync, Emarsys maintains a single customer record that accumulates data from all sources.

The channels Emarsys orchestrates natively:

• Email — the primary channel for most retail brands; the foundation of the Emarsys platform
• Mobile push notifications — via the Emarsys Mobile Engage SDK integrated into your mobile app
• SMS — for transactional and marketing messages, with carrier-level delivery
• Web personalisation — personalised content blocks on your website, powered by the same customer profile data that drives email personalisation
• Ads — Facebook and Google ad audience sync, allowing email segments to power paid social targeting
• In-store data — loyalty programme data, POS transaction data, and in-store event data synced into the customer profile

The automation engine in Emarsys — the Program Builder — can orchestrate sequences that span all these channels. A single automation programme might start with an email, follow up with a mobile push notification for customers who didn’t open, send an SMS for high-priority messages, and serve a personalised web banner when the customer next visits the website.

Building a Unified Customer Profile

The unified customer profile is the foundation of omnichannel execution. In Emarsys, the profile consolidates:

Demographic data — name, email, mobile number, postal address, date of birth, gender (where collected with consent).

Transactional data — full purchase history from online and in-store channels, including product details, order value, payment method, store location.

Behavioural data — web browse events (product views, category visits, search queries), email engagement (opens, clicks, conversions), mobile app activity, and in-store visit data where loyalty cards or digital receipts provide the link.

Preference data — channel preferences (opted in to email, push, SMS), frequency preferences, product category interests.

Calculated attributes — AI-generated scores (churn probability, lifetime value prediction, purchase propensity) and calculated segments (RFM tier, loyalty tier, NPS score).

The profile builds incrementally. A new subscriber starts with just an email address. Over time, as they make purchases, browse the website, download the app, and visit stores, the profile fills out. The richer the profile, the more personalised every touchpoint becomes.

Identity Resolution

A critical technical challenge in omnichannel marketing is matching the same customer across channels. A person who buys online, uses your app, and shops in-store may appear as three separate records unless there’s a mechanism to merge them.

Emarsys uses several resolution techniques:

• Email as primary identifier — when a customer provides their email at checkout (online or in-store) or logs in on mobile, Emarsys resolves them to their existing profile.
• Loyalty programme linking — loyalty card scans in-store, combined with email address on the loyalty account, create an automatic bridge between in-store and digital profiles.
• Customer ID matching — if your e-commerce platform and POS system share a customer ID, Emarsys can use that as a resolution key.

Invest time in the identity resolution configuration when first setting up Emarsys. Fragmented profiles — where the same customer appears as multiple records — create confusing automation behaviour (the same person receiving duplicate emails) and undermine personalisation accuracy.

Orchestrating Campaigns Across Channels

Emarsys’s Program Builder is the omnichannel campaign canvas. It operates on the same principle as a single-channel automation but with the ability to choose different channels for each communication node in the sequence.

Cross-Channel Abandoned Cart Campaign

A sophisticated omnichannel abandoned cart campaign might look like:

Entry trigger: Cart abandonment event (from e-commerce integration)

Node 1 — Wait 1 hour

Node 2 — Decision: Is customer opted in to mobile push?

• Yes → Send push notification (“You left something behind — complete your order”)
• No → Continue

Node 3 — Wait 23 hours (so Email 1 fires at 24 hours from abandonment)

Node 4 — Send Email 1 — product-specific abandoned cart email with dynamic product block showing cart contents and reviews

Node 5 — Decision: Did customer purchase?

• Yes → Exit programme
• No → Continue

Node 6 — Wait 48 hours

Node 7 — Decision: Has customer visited the site in the last 24 hours (browse data)?

• Yes (engaged but not purchased) → Send Email 2 with a targeted incentive and social proof for the specific abandoned product
• No → Send SMS (if opted in and it’s a high-value cart): “Your basket is waiting — complete your order before your items sell out [link]“

Node 8 — Decision: Did customer purchase?

• Yes → Exit
• No → Close out programme after final SMS or email

This example uses email, push, and SMS in a single coherent programme — each channel selected based on the customer’s opt-in status and their behaviour at each decision point.

Web Personalisation Integration

Emarsys’s web personalisation module (powered by the Smart Insight layer) allows you to serve personalised content blocks on your website based on the customer’s Emarsys profile. When a logged-in or identified customer visits your site, Emarsys can serve:

• A personalised product recommendation carousel (different products for each visitor based on their purchase history)
• A personalised hero banner (showing the category or product type most relevant to their buying behaviour)
• A targeted popup or on-site message for customers in specific Emarsys segments (e.g., “You’re 200 points away from Gold status” for loyalty programme members approaching a tier upgrade)

The connection between email and web personalisation creates a more coherent customer experience. A customer who received an email about a new collection clicks through and sees a website homepage that reflects that same collection message, with personalised product recommendations within it. The continuity increases conversion.

In-Store Data for Email Personalisation

For retail brands with physical stores, in-store data is often the richest and most differentiated data source available. In-store purchases reveal category preferences and brand affinities that may not be evident from online shopping alone — particularly for customers who browse online and buy in-store.

Syncing POS Data to Emarsys

In-store transaction data reaches Emarsys via several routes:

• Direct POS integration — Emarsys has integrations with several major POS platforms. The integration syncs transaction records (customer ID, products purchased, store location, transaction date) in near real time.
• Loyalty programme data — if your in-store loyalty programme uses email as the identifier, each loyalty transaction is inherently tied to an email address and syncs to the Emarsys customer profile.
• Nightly batch imports — for retailers without a direct integration, a nightly file export from your retail data warehouse, imported into Emarsys via SFTP or API, achieves the same result with a 24-hour lag.

Once in-store data is in Emarsys, it becomes available for segmentation and personalisation in the same way online purchase data is. You can build segments like “has purchased in-store in the last 30 days” or “prefers in-store to online shopping (more than 70% of purchases are in-store)” and treat those segments differently in email campaigns.

Practical In-Store Data Applications

Store-specific personalisation — if a customer primarily shops at your Manchester store, email campaigns can reference relevant local content (Manchester store events, local delivery options) alongside the personalised product recommendations.

Cross-channel conversion programmes — customers who browse online but consistently buy in-store can be identified via their Emarsys profile (web behaviour shows browsing, transaction data shows in-store purchases). Email campaigns for this segment might emphasise “reserve online, pick up in-store” or in-store appointment booking rather than direct online purchase.

Post-in-store-purchase follow-up — trigger a post-purchase email when an in-store transaction is recorded in Emarsys, following the same logic as your online post-purchase programme. In-store buyers are often less active email customers — a well-timed follow-up email can bridge them into the digital relationship.

Measuring Omnichannel vs Single-Channel Performance

The commercial case for omnichannel is that customers who engage across multiple channels generate higher lifetime value. This is consistently supported by retail data — customers who shop both in-store and online, or who engage via both email and mobile, typically have higher purchase frequency and AOV than single-channel customers.

Emarsys’s Analytics module (powered by Smart Insight) allows you to measure:

Channel engagement breadth — segment your customer base by how many channels they actively engage with. Compare the average lifetime value, purchase frequency, and churn rate of each segment.

Cross-channel campaign lift — for a campaign orchestrated across email and mobile push, compare the conversion rate against an email-only control group. The lift attributable to the mobile push layer is the incremental value of that channel.

Online/offline customer value — compare the LTV and retention rates of customers who are identified as omnichannel shoppers (purchase both online and in-store) against single-channel customers.

This analysis almost always demonstrates that omnichannel customers are your most valuable segment — and quantifies the revenue opportunity in converting single-channel customers to omnichannel engagement.

Working With Excelohunt

Building a functioning omnichannel programme in Emarsys — from unified profile configuration and cross-channel automation to in-store data integration and performance measurement — requires both platform expertise and a clear commercial strategy. Excelohunt works with enterprise retail brands to design and implement Emarsys omnichannel programmes that are grounded in revenue outcomes, not channel complexity for its own sake.

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