It’s What You Know About Who You Know That Matters

Welcome to April’s word of the month: engage. No, this isn’t about getting down on bended knee with a romantic marriage proposal (as fun as that might be)! It’s about exploring ways to engage with our customers.

Customer engagement, or CX as it is often referred to in marketing circles, is a trending metric that CMOs, CEOs and marketing professionals are hyperfocused on and there are many reasons why.

Success in the area of customer engagement translates into:

  • Increasing customer loyalty
  • Increasing brand loyalty and reputation
  • Increasing sales and overall bottom line
  • Decreasing customer acquisitions costs
  • Improving customer retention
  • Improving customer satisfaction

While customer engagement may be the secret to achieving many of your most important business objectives, it can also be ever-so-elusive to measure and even harder to succeed at.

Drill down on best practices to win at customer engagement:

Understand your audience. When it comes to customer engagement, it’s not just who you know that matters…it’s what you know about who you know. Understanding your audience is key to effectively engaging with them. In fact, I often work on campaigns that I personally don’t prefer or initiatives that even go against the latest trends and best practices. Why? Because my client knows something about the customer that’s more important than personal preference or keeping up with the latest trends. Customer insights allow you to give your audience what they want (and they’re going to appreciate that).

Personalize the experience. Customer engagement does not come in a one-size-fits-all strategy. In fact, your business may have to tailor its strategy to a wide range of audiences who wish to engage with their favorite brands in multiple ways and in a diverse array of channels ranging from social media to email. The more targeted and personalized the effort, the sweeter the success.

Deliver greatness. every. time. The world’s leading brands compete on the customer experience. From innovative products to over-the-top service, customers stay loyal to (and are more likely to engage with) companies that blow them away at every turn.

Keep your audience connected. Connecting with your audience as well as connecting them with each other is easier than ever with social media and other tech tools. Facilitating these types of interactions allows you to engage with those who have brand affinity to your business and draw in prospects.

Reward good behavior. Reward programs, when done effectively, are excellent tools for increasing customer engagement. Make your rewards programs free, easy to access and be sure to reward the types of engagements you want to encourage from your customers. Rewards may be doled out for actions other than purchases such as check-ins, social shares, referrals, etc.

Now that we’ve outlined strategies to help you achieve greatness in the area of customer engagement, let’s define how we’ll measure our progress. Your unique KPIs will look different than others in completely different industries, but this should give you an idea of the types of metrics indicate a high level of customer engagement. Your perfect mix of engagement success may measure actions such as:

  • Customer account logins
  • Purchases
  • Repeat purchases
  • Social shares
  • Net promoter score
  • Page views per visit
  • Number of brick and mortar visits per year
  • Email open rate
  • Submitting user-generated content

Jeff Bezos, the ultra-successful entrepreneur and current CEO of retail behemoth, Amazon was quoted as saying this about customer engagement, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”  To stay with this analogy, just throwing a party doesn’t mean the attendees are going to have fun. You have to provide their favorite foods, play mood-setting music and surpass their expectations every step of the way. Make sure your customers leave your “party” raving about what an epic time they had!

Need help developing customer engagement strategies for your business? Let’s talk!