Omnichannel distribution is a fulfillment approach that some companies use to give customers a way to purchase and receive orders from several sales channels with one-touch seamless integration. The goal of an omnichannel logistics strategy is to reduce costs, improve carrier transit times, and ensure the customer gets a great experience from click to arrival.
It’s important for brands looking to outsource logistics to assess the omnichannel distribution capabilities of their potential third-party logistics (3PL) partner. Implementing an effective omnichannel shipping strategy often leads to revenue growth as customers are likely to spend more online than in brick-and-mortar stores.
What is Omnichannel Fulfillment?
Meaning “all channels”, omnichannel fulfillment is a strategy that handles all inventory, going to many different places, from one location or supplier (like a 3PL). With omnichannel fulfillment, your 3PL manages your entire inventory, optimizing their operations for picking, packing, and shipping to whatever channel your product will go to next. Products are pulled from the same inventory pool, which can be distributed among your 3PLs fulfillment centers, and prepared for shipping.
What are the Benefits of Omnichannel Fulfillment?
One of the main benefits of an omnichannel fulfillment strategy is increasing your customer base. If you operate a brick and mortar store and open up an ecommerce website to sell your products you can reach a significantly larger number of customers and having more customers means more revenue.
From the viewpoint of the customer, you are offering convenience and ease of use. They can order, pay, and receive their purchase in any way they choose, be it at a physical location or delivered directly to their door. Since omnichannel also emphasizes good customer service both in-person and online, orders are confidently placed, lessening the chances of returns.
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How to Implement an Omnichannel Strategy
Ready to start experimenting with omnichannel for your business? Take the time to research your online target audience so you can make the most of each channel you sell on. Build your strategy around your customer and their data.
In many businesses, customers are handled separately in different channels. Having customer information integrated in different channels is key to make this work. You should develop a system to acquire information from each transaction done, regardless of platform. Tracking customer preferences for certain products at a certain time will help you to know the demographics of your business and also the loyalty of customers.
The focal point of the strategy should be the user experience and quality of services (especially shipping). As you will be handling multi-channel retail with different mechanisms for ordering and fulfillment, make sure communication between these parties are clear and optimized over time.
“It’s hard to find 3PLs that have a deep expertise in dealing with Amazon, and all of the dot.coms, as well as dealing with brick-and-mortar. We feel like we really have a partner because DCL has that deep experience. DCL has a reputation for being very technology forward, helping companies drive from an omnichannel perspective for their business, not just traditional brick-and-mortar.”
How to Optimize the Omnichannel Experience
The process should be user-friendly across all platforms and categorized so it is easy to manage on the sellers end, too. Managing returns and tracking can give you new opportunities for sales as it increases re-visits. Good communication with the customers throughout the process is a must to ensure the customer’s confidence in you. Find opportunities to save on fulfillment costs with your local market. Offer both in-store pickup or consider using same-day local couriers for faster delivery.
Ecommerce Omnichannel Shipping
When people start a business online, they tend to overlook their shipping logistics, which could wind up being a costly mistake. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed about shipping, considering Amazon has set a high bar for customer expectations. Trying to compete by offering free two day shipping can turn out to be a very expensive experiment, hurting your profits and bottom line.
If there’s any advice we can give you, it’s that free shipping isn’t the end-all-be-all marketing promotion it’s made out to be. While Amazon has the luxury of losing money on shipping and not being held accountable for these losses, unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to you.
Instead, it’s best to seek shipping solutions that squeeze out the best value in terms of price and speed of delivery.
Omnichannel Shipping Strategies
Now that we have established the importance of shipping in Omnichannel ecommerce, we should also discuss the things you can do to optimize your performance in the shipping departments. Many customers expect fast and free shipping, but not all. Consider offering free shipping during limited time periods, such as the holiday season. Or, you can offer free-shipping year-round for your local/domestic market only. You should make sure you get correct shipping information at checkout so you can avoid delivery problems. Automatically send tracking updates to your customer, and stay in contact with them until the items are received. You might want to consider working with multiple shipping carriers. This will help you get cheaper and better rates for any place you ship to. Have a return policy that allows returns from different channels for the ultimate customer convenience. Handling the logistics for increased sales volumes can be challenging. If you are feeling overwhelmed, consider using a 3PL to handle your logistics needs.
FAQ: Omnichannel Shipping Strategies
Q: What is omnichannel fulfillment and how does it work?
A: Omnichannel fulfillment is a strategy where all of your inventory — regardless of which sales channel an order comes from — is managed from a single pool and fulfilled through one integrated system. Whether a customer orders through your website, Amazon, a retail store, or a marketplace, the order is pulled from the same inventory and shipped through the same fulfillment infrastructure. The goal is a seamless experience for the customer and operational efficiency for the brand, with no siloed channel-specific inventory or separate fulfillment processes.
Q: What are the main benefits of an omnichannel shipping strategy?
A: The three core benefits are: expanded customer reach (selling across multiple channels — DTC, Amazon, retail, social commerce — exposes your products to audiences you wouldn’t reach through a single channel), improved customer experience (customers can buy, receive, and return products through whichever channel is most convenient for them), and operational efficiency (managing all channels through one inventory pool and one fulfillment partner reduces complexity, prevents overselling, and lowers per-order costs through consolidated shipping volume).
Q: How should ecommerce brands approach free shipping in an omnichannel strategy?
A: Free shipping across all channels year-round is rarely sustainable for brands that aren’t Amazon-scale. A more strategic approach is to offer free shipping during high-conversion periods (holiday season, promotional events), set a minimum order value threshold to qualify for free shipping, or offer free shipping only for domestic orders where carrier rates are manageable. The goal is to use shipping incentives to drive conversion and average order value without eroding margins — not to match Amazon unconditionally.
Q: What role does a 3PL play in enabling an omnichannel shipping strategy?
A: A 3PL with omnichannel capabilities manages your entire inventory from their fulfillment centers, optimizing pick, pack, and ship operations for whatever channel each order is destined for — DTC, retail, Amazon, B2B. They maintain the carrier relationships, EDI connections, and technology integrations needed to fulfill accurately across all channels simultaneously. For brands expanding beyond DTC into retail or marketplace channels, a 3PL with proven omnichannel experience is essential — the routing rules, labeling requirements, and compliance standards differ significantly by channel.
Q: How do you implement an omnichannel strategy without creating inventory chaos?
A: The foundation is a single integrated inventory system that updates in real time across all sales channels — every sale on any platform immediately reduces available stock everywhere else. Build your strategy around unified customer data so you can track purchasing behavior across channels. Establish clear communication protocols between your ecommerce platform, fulfillment partner, and each sales channel. Start with your highest-volume channels and add new ones systematically rather than launching everywhere at once. A 3PL with strong technology infrastructure and existing channel integrations dramatically reduces the complexity of this rollout.
How DCL Enables Your Omnichannel Shipping Strategy
Omnichannel shipping works when all your channels draw from a single inventory pool managed by one partner — and that’s exactly how DCL operates. DCL’s eFactory WMS manages your entire inventory across all sales channels simultaneously, routing each order through the correct fulfillment workflow whether it’s going to an individual DTC customer, an Amazon buyer, or a retail distribution center. DCL’s SelectShip engine then optimizes carrier selection for each order based on destination, speed, and cost — not just defaulting to one carrier for everything. As Fire and Flavor’s co-founder put it: “DCL has a reputation for being very technology forward, helping companies drive from an omnichannel perspective for their business, not just traditional brick-and-mortar.” Learn about DCL’s omnichannel fulfillment capabilities →
Bottom Line
With planning, being willing to experiment, and putting the customer at the center of the process, you can make omnichannel retail work for your business. If you are a growing ecommerce company, and are overwhelmed by the number of sales channels you deliver to, an omnichannel shipping strategy is a great option. By partnering with an experienced 3PL you will have access to multiple fulfillment centers and relationships with major shipping carriers. Your 3PL can help get your products, whether B2B or B2C, into your customers hands faster and at a lower cost than fulfilling them yourself.
If you are looking for omnichannel fulfillment we would love to hear from you. Send us a note to connect about how we can help your company grow. You can read DCL’s list of services to learn more, or check out the many companies we work with to ensure great logistics support.
Tags: Omnichannel Fulfillment
