Customer Engagement For Dummies

We tend to hear a lot about worker engagement, but getting customers to emotionally connect with your brand is equally important, if not more so. The benefits of enhanced customer engagement include deeper personal relationships between clients and your brand, more sales, greater loyalty and increased customer spend over their lifetime. 

Today, there are many examples of successful customer engagement strategies being used all over the world. For instance, Coca-Cola launched the highly effective “ShareACoke” campaign back in 2014 that involved printing personalised labels on bottles with common first names on them, making them easier to give as gifts. 

So how do you ensure higher customer engagement in your enterprise? Here’s what to do:

Use All Available Data

You don’t always know ahead of time what’s going to engage your customers. For that reason, it’s critical to collect as much data as possible. You want to understand their behavioural patterns, the digital channels they use, and the percentage who convert once they hit your website.

Most companies collect as much data as possible and then get data scientists to stitch it together into a fully-fledged database. They then use forecasting tools to try to predict whether certain strategies will engage customers more than others. Critically, they measure all their marketing campaigns, looking for those that seem to strike a chord and then emphasising them. 

Think Like A Big Business

Even if you are a small business, you should aim to engage customers as though you were a much bigger one. Large companies tend to use all the technological tools available to them, and so should you.

How you act on the data you generate is very much up to you. Even if it is calling customers or sending them personalised emails, it can make a tremendous difference in your bottom line. 

See What Customers Love Already

Chances are that if you run a successful business, you’re already doing something right. The challenge is to figure out what. 

Take a look at what is right in front of you now and look for signals in the data telling you what your customers like. The majority of customers will provide you with feedback directly, letting you know what’s good about your brand, and what could benefit from some more work. 

Check Customer Triggers

Even if you have high engagement levels, it’s still a good idea to check customer triggers – that is, what makes them buy? If you can identify these, then you can encourage existing customers to carry on spending. 

Check Your Assumptions

Challenging your assumptions is part business tactic, part marketing strategy. Just because methods and practices have worked well for you in the past, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will again in the future. Reframe your existing data insights to make sure that you are always using the best data available. Check that you are adopting the right strategies and look for evidence that you might need to change them with the times. 

Ultimately, to be successful, you need to build a brand voice. Look for opportunities to get people excited about what you do and the money will flow naturally.