Customer engagement: from theory to practice
With the concept of “customer engagement” thus goes to define the set of strategies aimed at creating an ongoing and lasting relationship with the consumer.
Therefore, an effective engagement marketing strategy cannot ignore the enhancement of the customer experience and the creation of personalized communications, purchase experiences and offers.
But it does not end there: customer engagement involves the active participation of the consumer/customer who takes part in the creation of the brand experience.
Sharing but also co-creation: it is thanks to the latter and to feeling like an active protagonist in the relationship with the brand that consumers strengthen their cognitive and emotional bond with the brand, reaching a high level of loyalty.
The purchase of a product/service thus transcends its functional value and is enriched, in the eyes of the customer, with values, aspirations that deeply bind him or her to the brand.But how what actions and activities can a brand deploy for a customer engagement strategy?
- Encourage the sharing and creation of content (text, images, video) within brand channels in order to stimulate active consumer participation in events and campaigns. In this case, the use of branded hashtags is recommended.
- Implementing campaigns of lead generation in which, in exchange for valuable data and information that users are asked to release by filling out a form, they are provided with exclusive content.
- Create online communities by exploiting the spontaneous tendency consumers have to congregate around interests, passions
- Facilitateconsumer interaction through comments, reviews that not only help increase brand visibility but, in part, can help streamline customer care service activities.
As can be easily seen from the examples above, a good engagement marketing strategy obviously cannot be separated from a necessary openness of the brand to engage with its consumers and a necessary management of any critical issues that may arise from this.
Customer engagement: 3 basic rules
According to a report prepared by Forbes titled “How leading companies are connecting with customers,” there would be 3 rules underlying a good customer engagement strategy:
- engage consumers by pursuing a specific purpose: community building must be an integral part of a broader strategy, and the marketing engagement strategy itself must be perfectly planned at every stage
- Supporting a customer engagement strategy through corporate culture: it is by the willingness of the company’s internal resources to create a relationship with the customer that the success of a customer engagement strategy is measured.
- Ensure a personalized customer experience at every touch point: It is important to create experiences that are relevant in the eyes of the consumer at every stage of the customer journey through omnichannel strategies.
Engaging the user: the contribution of marketing automation and artificial intelligence
From the physical store to the online store, not forgetting APPs, social, loyalty programs and more:
in the age of the experience economy, the ability to be able to aggregate, normalize and manage customer and prospect data from a single platform(customer data platform) such as Blendee is the real key to understanding their customer journey and implementing truly effective marketing strategies.
In fact, data provides the basis for targeted profiling and segmentation of the target audience for their campaigns, enabling marketers to engage and consider consumers as individuals first and foremost.From content marketing to newsletters, to advertisements, push notifications and SMS: marketing automation platforms such as Blendee enable the right message to be delivered to the right person, so that it is relevant, useful and valuable to the recipient.Artificial intelligence and machine learning finally increase the potential of marketing automation, making it possible to accurately analyze and predict what the behaviors will be for each individual user.Customers are becoming increasingly open to brands, and new technologies can only foster this openness: their happiness depends on the quality of products and services but also on the company’s commitment to creating personalized customer experiences.
This is how you get to create true consumer loyalty.
