In the field of marketing, companies use a wide variety of strategies to make their brand and products known and to establish closer relationships with their customers. In this blog we have already talked about customer experience, customer scoring and customer lifecycle. These concepts are relatively simple to understand and use. However, there are other more complex strategies, such as customer engagement.
Attempts have been made to define customer engagement in many ways, but marketing experts cannot agree on a single description, as each company must determine what it looks like and what impact it has on its objectives and needs. However, most definitions focus on developing loyal customer relationships. For example, Paul Greenberg from Hubspot offers the following definition:
"Customer engagement is the recurring interactions between company and customer, offered by the company, chosen by the customer."
Paul Greenberg (HubSpot)
Therefore, customer engagement can be simply defined as the interactions between the customer and the brand, although the interactions that each company qualifies as engagement will be particular to its business.
This means that this is an area where companies can leverage to differentiate themselves by initiating these interactions critically and creatively by defining what they mean to them and their customers.
The main advantage of customer engagement is that it extends the period of time that a customer spends in the purchase process, which decreases the rate of customer churn.
In addition, customers who have a good relationship with the brand buy regularly in the same business and have a higher value shopping basket.
Generating engagement with customers requires a deep understanding of each of their needs at different stages of their life cycle. Companies can achieve this knowledge in various ways, which must be determined according to the company's objectives. These objectives will also set the metrics that the company should use to evaluate the performance of its strategy.
In the online environment they can "listen", that is, be alert to comments and suggestions that their customers or potential customers can make in social networks, blog, website, reviews, email...
Another way, in the same line as the previous one, is to get actively involved in these conversations. There are several studies that show the benefits of creating emotional business-client relationships. The easiest way to do this is for the customer to see that they are dealing with a person and not a corporation. In this way, customers feel cared for and see the company as more human.
To make it easier to detect clients' information or support needs, the company can create a community or forum where clients can relate to each other and to the company. In this way it is easier to respond to comments and doubts.
The company can generate its own instances of interaction with its customers based on its products or services directly or through customer service. This includes many things, from offering discounts, making contests or celebrating events, to including the customer in the company's events such as anniversaries, among many other options.
To evaluate the performance of the engagement strategy, metrics should be used. As we have already mentioned, the complexity of engagement lies in the particularity of its forms according to the needs of the company, so the ways to measure its success are not easy to determine either. However, we can comment on some examples:
From these metrics or others that the company considers relevant, it is possible to extract patterns of customer behavior in terms of interaction.
Bismart offers consulting services for customer engagement. We are experts in data management and artificial intelligence. Our machine learning algorithms allow us to know current and potential customers in detail, as well as prevent rotation and offer the best experience in the relationship with the brand. We help you determine what customer engagement means to you, how to encourage it and to choose the most appropriate metrics to evaluate your strategy.
In today's world, the competition is fierce and only companies that use all of their aces will be able to differentiate themselves from the others when it comes to offering a personalized experience that allows them to retain their customers and build brand loyalty. Therefore, it is important to know what benefits technology can bring us, not only in the field of analysis, but also in the field of artificial intelligence.
If you wish to know in detail our customer engagement offer, please contact us.