The Rules of Engagement

Loyalty. Trust. Communication. Appreciation. These are the cornerstones of successful and fulfilling personal relationships. But guess what? Customer relationships are no different. And nothing has made that more clear than the rise and influence social media has had on today’s businesses.

With the transparency and immediacy of social networking, authenticity in voice, self-awareness in practice, and forthrightness in deed are necessary for creating, maintaining, and growing relationships with customers. All of these attributes together are what create customer engagement. Certainly, there is no singular formula out there that every business owner could apply because how those attributes play out in action are largely a result of a business’s approach and its customers’ characteristics and preferences. Despite that the methods and magnitude may vary and that there isn’t a universal winning formula, customer engagement is here to stay.

In fact, according to a McKinsey & Company report released in June 2014, executive respondents “most often rank[ed] digital customer engagement as a top strategic priority.” However, many companies struggle with bringing that goal to scale. The same report identified five major challenges (picture at right) to truly exercising the digital efforts necessary for achieving bottom-line growth. So you can see why such a nebulous concept as “customer engagement” has been left widely open to interpretation.

First of all, what is customer engagement? (For the sake of concision, we’ll stick to the social media world.) Certainly, you can find many definitions but the folks over at customer loyalty agency Sweet Tooth came to a definition that is particularly on-point:

Customer engagement is the degree and depth of brand-focused interactions a customer chooses to perform.

This description is particularly relevant for a few reasons.

•  Degree and depth implies that there is a rich way to measure the metric.
•  Brand-focused keeps the metric from such fluff as chatting with customers and increasing likes.
•  Interactions makes it very clear that this metric is not a one-way street.
• Customer chooses to perform drives home the fact that this metric is all about how well a brand compels customers to take action.

The true value of customer engagement is only beginning to show its hand. The metric is vibrant enough to color a wide range of experiences; has both a short and long tail; and is misunderstood enough that in March 2014 eMarketer reported fewer than 42% of U.S. agencies and executives said their company was able to quantify engagement. Part of the issue may be that, in essence, engagement is in fact a goal and it involves a journey of experiences. So how does a brand “achieve” engagement? It may help to think about engagement as having several levels, as illustrated in the graphic below from We Are Social Media.

A company will have different customers at different levels of engagement. So there could be metrics for the customer types and levels on which a brand is focusing. For instance, if a company has identified a core group of customers who could be described as being at the Animation level, a goal could be to move 33% of that group to an Advocacy level. You would then define Advocacy based on your customer interaction opportunities and business objectives.

Digital Sherpa reported a number of Fortune 500 marketing executives sharing ways in which they measure engagement.

Coca-Cola. Jonathan Mildenhall, a Vice President at Coke, launched an ambitious content marketing strategy named Content 2020. Mildenhall told TWEED:
“We captured familiar quantitative metrics (such as views, visits, impressions and expressions) as well as qualitative data that reflected the positive sentiment and changes in brand perception gleaned from the global conversation.”

Sears. Julia Fitzgerald, Chief Digital Officer at Sears Holdings, told Forbes:
“Depending on the program, we have various ROI related metrics. For some programs, we are measuring membership acquisition, engagement, page views, return visits, coupon redemption, or purchase.”

Ford. Jim Farley, Ford’s CMO, has used content marketing to help revitalize the brand. Farley told McKinsey & Company:
“(A) metric I care about in the social digital space is the amount of content we’re generating, including engagement with the content.”

General Electric. Katrina Craigwell, Digital Marketing Manager at GE, told Forbes:
“We continue to look at the standard site and social metrics – unique visitors, time spent, pages/visit, follower counts, social engagements and sentiment. We’ve also been looking very closely at sharing…At the end of the day, if the content isn’t good enough for the end user to want to share it with a friend or colleague, we haven’t quite succeeded.”

Customer engagement doesn’t have to be confusing — identify how you want your customers to engage and realize that engagement is a journey not a destination. And that much like a good personal relationship, it takes time to develop.