What to do prior to an omni-channel campaign

An omni-channel marketing campaign utilizes multiple channels to reach out to potential customers. An example is a campaign that combines telemarketing (companies still do this) with onsite web forms, email, and a LinkedIn campaign. This is what I did for several software vendors. In order to maximize the effectiveness of a campaign however, you should think of a couple of things in advance. It will make your life as a marketer much easier.

• Make sure you know or have a fair idea of who your target group is. Do research and test! 
• Do a competitive analysis and benchmark! Also have a good sense of where your competitors run their campaigns
• Describe personae in various stages of a buying circle. For instance a stage in which 'they' are just informing, one where they consider your product, and finally, the stage in which they actually buy, subscribe or request a demo. Adjust campaign content accordingly.
• Have an updated CRM-database. It will increase your reach and prevents annoying things such as misspelled names, wrong offer to wrong customer etc.
• Have proper marketing automation installed and make sure you or your team can operate it! Examples: Hubspot, Marketo, Active Campaign. (I do not recommend latter. I've used it and found its interface very obscure) If nobody knows how to operate the platform, get them (or yourself) trained. In my opinion, companies that don't invest in furthering knowledge of their employees lack vision.
• Create multiple customer journeys based on customer data you have and start with journeys to attract, engage and learn about your customer.
• Make sure your budget is allocated beforehand. Prevent getting sidetracked by some finance rep or 'manager' who doesn't know shit about marketing
• Always draw up follow-up scenarios for nurturing purposes. F.i. after sending out a mail campaign, after demo requests or webinar subscriptions. Especially latter is very suitable for follow-ups since the incentive is already there: if someone is interested in your product to follow a webinar, he might be more open to a follow-up call or mail or whatever you choose.
• Organize a brainstorm session with your marketers
• Be consistent in branding, tone of voice, style. That way a recipient will know that they are a part of the same campaign.
• Kill your darlings: if one channel does not work, even after testing, throw it out or lower budgets. 
• Don't forget to have a measuring-plan installed. Usually, you can track campaigns through tracking scripts, or pixels. If applicable, always make data coming in through statistics tools recognizable through intelligible names or codes.
• Make sure your marketing automation platform connects to a platform sales uses. That way, marketing qualified leads get imported and assigned automatically
• Make things 'closed-loop'. Know which leads or online customers converted. Apart from the obviously reasons it will keep you sharp about your target groups
• Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: it's a consumer's market which means you are going to have to appeal to your customer and create content that is as personalized as possible. Merely stating 'buy us, because we're the best' will make your potential customers laugh and completely ignore your offer. It's usually the delusional dinosaurs that still think this way. 
• Have valid reviews by existing customers ready to show potential customers you're genuine!
• Don't be afraid to give away! Especially if you're a newb in the market. You need to be prepared to create awareness and engagement with free content, trials, information etc. 
• Make sure every channel in which you will rollout your campaign has options for someone to contact you.