Read time 11 minutes
AI in Retail (AI and the future of the retail marketer)
Why it matters:
In 2026, omnichannel marketing performance will be based on relevance, speed, and coordination across every customer touchpoint. This post shows marketers which trends will impact execution and how to leverage real-time data, inventory signals, and AI to create connected journeys that boost conversion and retention. Readers will leave with practical steps to prioritize the right journeys, reduce channel noise, and improve incremental impact.
Key takeaways:
Omnichannel marketing in retail involves brands that sell and serve customers across multiple touchpoints that work together, including in-store, website, mobile app, email, SMS, paid media, social media, and more.
An “omnichannel trend” is any shift that changes how customers behave, how teams operate, or how technology enables the experience across those touchpoints. Some trends are behavioral, some are technical, and many are a combination of both.
To gain a better understanding, it helps to separate three terms that often get mixed together:
A unified customer experience means marketers have a single view of customers, products, inventory, and orders. This is what makes true real-time experiences possible.
Multichannel marketing is not new. What is new is the expectation for speed and precision.
Shoppers expect seamless experiences across all channels, including stores, apps, websites, email/SMS, paid social media, and marketplaces.
They also expect the brand to be accurate. For example, if an item is out of stock, they want to know now, or if delivery will take longer than expected, they want a clear promise date. And if a promotion is irrelevant, they don’t want to see it.
Two forces are expected to intensify this trend in 2026. The first is AI acceleration, which will raise the bar for what “personalized” means. Decisioning will need to happen in real-time, always using fresh signals (not last week’s batch).
The second is rising marketing fatigue. Customers will not accept constant messaging, but rather relevant messaging that is useful.
In 2026, marketers will need orchestration, not volume, to drive conversion and repeat purchase.
Below is a list of omnichannel retail trends marketers must keep tabs on in the new year:
Unified commerce is becoming a requirement, not a roadmap slide as customers expect accurate availability and delivery commitments. This requires inventory and order data that updates fast and flows everywhere.
To succeed here, marketers must also ensure that:
Personalization will expand beyond onsite modules. It will shape email content blocks, push timing, SMS triggers, paid social audiences, and in-store associate prompts.
The shift is not “more personalization.” It is better to have personalization based on meaningful signals, such as browse intent, price sensitivity, replenishment cycles, and predicted next best action.
Retail media will continue to grow as it links ad spend to in-store and online commerce outcomes. First-party data will become even more valuable as third-party signals decline.
The key shift is audience quality as brands will need cleaner identity resolution and better consented profiles that can be activated across onsite, offsite, and lifecycle messaging.
Social commerce will mature from impulse buys into full journeys. In 2026, consideration of whether to make a purchase from a brand will commonly occur through short-form content and live shopping.
In other words, brand discovery occurs through creators, and consideration is facilitated through short-form content and live shopping. If the customer then makes a purchase, it will likely occur via a quick handoff to the brand’s site or app. Therefore, a click from a creator video should not land in a generic funnel, but rather in a tailored path that reflects what the shopper has just engaged with.
Although this may come as a surprise, stores will matter even more in the new year, not only as fulfillment nodes, but also as relationship engines.
This year, brands need to focus on physical stores by hosting events, offering services, scheduling appointments, and fostering communities to drive differentiation.
Remember, many “online” journeys start with store intent. Brands that treat stores as part of their marketing strategy create tighter loops, including pre-visit, in-store, and post-visit follow-ups.
BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In Store) and ship-from-store are expected to be available in many retail categories. Therefore, brands must ensure that returns are simple and that exchanges are fast.
The trend is less about offering options and more about orchestrating options. Customers should see the best fulfillment choice based on location, inventory, and urgency.
In 2026, loyalty will shift from points to value. That value can be better access, better service, and more relevant experiences.
A loyalty member’s status should influence the full journey, not just a monthly email. It should change what they see on the site and in the app, which offers they receive in email, SMS, and push, and how the brand treats them in-store and through support.
Loyalty is no longer a program. It is the operating model for retention.
Privacy scrutiny and regulations will prompt brands to enhance their consent management and data governance.
This is not only compliance-driven but also performance, as cleaner data improves identity resolution and personalization accuracy. It reduces wasted spend and customer frustration.
In 2026, brands with the best data quality will execute faster and safer, and can market to customer segments more accurately.
In 2026, more shoppers are expected to use AI assistants to do the heavy lifting. They will ask tools to find the best options, compare features, track price drops, and summarize reviews. That shifts discovery and consideration away from browsing and toward shortlists generated by AI.
To show up in those shortlists, brands need structured product content, clear availability and delivery promises, and explicit differentiators that are easy for an AI to understand and rank.
Measuring marketing impact across digital and physical touchpoints will be harder to ignore in 2026. The goal isn’t perfect attribution; it’s usable signals that connect exposure to outcomes, such as store visits, pickups, returns, and repeat purchases.
With those connections in place, teams can prove what drives impact, iterate journeys more quickly, and optimize omnichannel experiences using measurable outcomes.
Successful brands in 2026 will prioritize integrating existing systems over acquiring new software. This strategy focuses on mastering unified data and real-time events to ensure information moves instantly across all marketing channels. By mastering identity and embracing always-on experimentation, brands can make smarter decisions that eliminate costly delays from the customer experience.
The elimination of these delays prevents irrelevant messaging and reduces budget waste caused by the use of uncoordinated tools. Rather than succumbing to tool sprawl, effective teams will focus on a few high-impact customer journeys and connect only the essential data needed to power them. This disciplined approach allows a brand to prove success on a small scale before expanding its technological reach. Integration and focus become the primary drivers of growth, ensuring that every piece of technology works in harmony to serve the shopper.
A strong omnichannel strategy feels like one conversation, not five campaigns.
A common example is a browse-to-buy journey: A shopper views a category on their mobile device, abandons, and then sees a product-specific email with availability at the nearest store. If the shopper clicks, the onsite experience reflects that same intent. If the shopper visits the store, the brand can follow up with a replenishment reminder or a complementary recommendation.
Another example is back-in-stock and price-drop orchestration: a customer browses a product, opts in to receive alerts, and then receives a push notification when inventory returns. If the push is ignored, an email follows later with alternatives. On-site, the product is highlighted without repeating the same offer. In both examples, frequency is controlled across channels, so the brand stays helpful rather than noisy.
Store-driven journeys are another area where “good experience” is immediately apparent. A customer books an appointment, gets a reminder, visits, and then receives a post-visit message that reflects what they did and what they might need next. If the purchase suggests a replenishment window, the next nudge arrives when it is actually useful.
Loyalty is also a clear test. New member onboarding should prompt the second purchase quickly, and VIP recognition should be visible across service and in-store interactions, not just in an email header. Loyalty must feel genuine in every channel.
In 2026, retail teams should focus on execution paths that can be launched, measured, and improved. See the five steps below to begin:
Omnichannel marketing fails when it becomes “everything everywhere.” That creates channel conflict and customer fatigue. The best marketing teams keep their strategy focused in the following ways:
Optimove helps brands turn customer data into orchestrated journeys across channels, focusing on execution at scale with continuous optimization built in.
With Positionless Marketing principles, teams can move faster with less dependency. Trigger-based journeys can be launched without heavy handoffs, and prioritization logic can reduce channel overload.
Lastly, self-optimizing tests can continually improve performance without requiring quarterly resets.
This is what omnichannel marketing needs in 2026: relevance, speed, consistency, and a system that keeps learning.
The latest retail trends for 2026 converge on one idea: customers expect connected experiences that are accurate, fast, and personal.
Omnichannel retail trends are no longer about adding channels; they're about integrating them. They aim to build a single, coordinated system that responds in real-time.
Brands should select a small set of trends to operationalize now and start with the journeys that drive retention and margin. They should unify the minimum data needed, orchestrate with prioritization, measure incrementality, and improve continuously.
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Dafna is a content marketing manager and writer who generates branded content for online industries, specializing in lead generation, SEO, CRM, and lifecycle stage marketing.
With over ten years of professional writing experience, she helps brands grow and increase profitability, efficiency, and online presence. Dafna holds a B.A. in Persuasive Communications from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya).
