One of the most pressing issues facing advertisers and affiliates today is customer engagement. Why? Because it’s precisely the entire reason why they exist: to establish relationships with customers that ensure:
- They choose you over your competition;
- Benefit from your product or service;
- Return for more;
- Recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues.
You must engage customers to reach, convert, and retain them –– and turn them into your promoters. Brands can no longer rely solely on catchy slogans or celebrity/influencer endorsements. You should be online at all times on social media, ready to engage with customers anywhere and at any time.
Don’t be scared if that sounds like a difficult task. You can use a variety of tactics and methods to increase client engagement, and they don’t have to be complicated.
What is the customer engagement strategy?
A customer engagement strategy is a plan to improve customer satisfaction by positively interacting with them. You can execute this strategy by any means, including in-person, online, and over the phone. Using the right strategy, you can turn customer engagement from reactive (always replying) to proactive (reaching out). It should cover how your team relates with customers when they reach out by themselves and also how your company can take the lead in actively engaging with your customer base.
Customer engagement vs. User engagement
The first is about customer loyalty, lifetime value, upselling, and customer service. You keep in touch with the client from the first interaction with the company until the end, and you try not to let them go.
The second point to consider is the effectiveness of advertising and marketing. User engagement via content (reading articles) or advertising over a short period (increase in CTR and conversions). Unlike social media ads, traditional banners fail to provide engagement. As a result, smart ad networks are developing new ad formats. Classic web push notifications were used at first, but they were eventually replaced by advanced In-Page Push. Today, there’s a format with engagement levels as high as TikTok videos: the Social bar.
To Contents ↑Why customer engagement marketing works
Ideally, you want your brand to be seen and heard everywhere to help your customers quickly, but that can be exhausting for even large organizations. Customer engagement marketing aims to reduce the burden of producing an excellent customer experience from just one team.
How to implement a customer engagement marketing strategy
Customers expect brands to meet their needs, engage and support them throughout their journey. To implement an effective customer engagement marketing strategy, you’ll need the following tactics:
1.Plan your customer engagement strategy.
Every great strategy starts with SMART goals. Consider why your company needs more customer engagement before setting goals. Engagement is good, but what does that mean for your organization? Better yet, why should a customer interact with you? It will keep everyone on task, on budget, and producing work that matters.
2. Determine where and how long-term customers should engage.
You’ll learn more customer engagement strategies later in this article, and not all of them will work at all times. This helps you focus on the right deliverables at the right time. After all, your clients will want to interact with you on multiple occasions and platforms. Get input from internal and external stakeholders, including clients.
To Contents ↑How to measure customer engagement
It is essential to track and measure user engagements like any other marketing activity. Brands can achieve better results by measuring and optimizing customer engagement over time using metrics that provide a strong indication of user interest.
A spike in social interactions
Getting more likes and comments on your social media pages is one measurable way to identify your customers take notes of your content. Facebook Pages, Twitter, and Instagram all have a simple insight section where you can track your engagement over time.
More positive reviews
Customers engaging in your content are more likely to be happy and recommend you (whether it’s because your content is super responsive or simply because you have a great brand). You can find great customer reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, and even social media mentions.
Happier customers
Surveys are a good indicator of how your customers are engaging with your content and their level of satisfaction. While creating a survey, make sure that it’s easy to understand, short, and easily accessible.
Try to ask similar questions each time, especially about their level of satisfaction and the possibility of recommending you.
Your biggest fans bring you new business
Customer engagement strategies can increase brand recognition and generate more referrals. Ask new customers how they heard about you and thank existing customers for bringing new customers.
How to build a powerful digital customer engagement strategy (ideas & examples)
1. Deliver consistent user engagement with an Omnichannel approach
Customers nowadays begin conversations with a brand on one channel but continue on others. As a result, the goal of the customer engagement model is to maintain consistency in customer experience across all platforms.
Omnichannel engagement is the process of gathering all customer interactions across multiple channels under one platform to engage them and provide an excellent experience.
How Omnichannel approach can help your brand
- Build long-term customer relationships: Engaging customers in personal interactions across all platforms proves more effective and ensures a positive overall brand experience across all channels. It also increases customer loyalty;
- Improve the brand’s reputation: Multi-channel customer engagement increases brand awareness. Customers recognize your brand name when you introduce new products or services;
- Increase your profit margins: Customers will become more loyal and support as you expand your presence and engagement with them.
2. Provide real-time engagement with live chat
Live chat is one of the most popular platforms you should use as part of your customer engagement strategy. It allows you to help customers by answering their questions in real-time, making every interaction feel natural, and building solid relationships.
Key areas where live chat is a great customer service engagement tool
- Increase in sales conversion: meeting your customers and consistently sending the right message at the right time can boost conversation rates and sales;
- Quick decisions: Live engagement allows you to resolve customer issues quickly. Using live interaction for support takes less time to resolve questions;
- Increase in productivity: Chat support enables you/your team to handle multiple conversations simultaneously, increasing productivity while lowering support costs.
3. Collect customer feedback for continuous improvement
Asking customers for their opinion is essential for a successful customer engagement marketing strategy. Customer feedback is a direct response from customers about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your product or service.
How you can increase customer engagement with customer feedback
- Know your audience: real-time feedback helps develop effective marketing strategies for customer needs. It creates opportunities for better client engagement and influences leads;
- Increase customer loyalty: Being constantly available and regularly measuring customer satisfaction helps to build brand loyalty;
- Boost company performance: Constant, timely, and accurate feedback helps create a customer-friendly business strategy, hence closing the gaps.
4. Regular communication is the key
Maintaining a constant connection and conversation with your customers and prospects is the best way to make your brand unique. Even if a website visitor does not buy on the first visit, they are still a potential buyer.
Here are some communication ways to boost customer engagement:
- Distribute newsletters: Businesses can share target information with existing customers while attracting new ones through regular newsletters;
- Host workshops: Organize free or paid seminars or events for your customers;
- Reward your clients: When you’re launching a new product or service, offer a discount to your loyal customers.
5. Nurture your leads with free trials and get them to upgrade
Businesses that offer free trials give potential customers the chance to try their product or service in their environment. This doesn’t have to be software free trials, you can also offer freebies, promo codes, bonuses, account bumps, and more. Focus on providing tangible benefits to your users before the trial period ends by offering free trials.
Pro tips for effective customer engagement strategies
- Personalize your communications with free trial users, express care towards them, and make it easy to contact you if they have any questions;
- The trial period is important, so use it well by making an excellent first impression that demonstrates how you treat your customers and conversational customer service;
- Monitor your users’ actions within your product to see what they want and why they find it useful.
6. Build customer loyalty programs
Customers are loyal to companies that meet their set of objectives. Building a robust loyalty program can result in significant revenue growth. Loyalty programs should include a component that rewards loyal customers and frequent buyers. Early access, sending invitations for special events, and surprising customers with discounts are some ideas for rewards.
How loyalty programs can be your customer engagement plan
- Encourage emotional connections: 59.5 percent of loyal customers will like to join the brand’s customer loyalty program because they don’t just want to get discounts but rather deeply engage with your brand;
- Request feedback from your premium customers: Loyal customers deserve respect and personalization. Ask for their opinions in surveys, reward them for positive reviews and grant their requests;
- Use referrals to motivate loyal customers to become brand ambassadors: Discover which customers are already promoting you using social listening tools. One of the primary rewards in your loyalty program should be points for referrals.
How to increase customer engagement
Make your brand relatable and meaningful
Successfully engaging customers isn’t only about having a smooth experience (though that’s a big part of it); it’s also about establishing a brand personality that customers enjoy.
For some, this may involve obtaining materials from vendors who share your values and ethics. Others may get it from the brand’s story and the inspiring passion. Look for ways to let your company’s authentic character shine through, so customers can recognize, relate and engage with it.
Use push notifications
Push notifications are short messages that appear outside the browser on a user’s mobile or desktop screen. It’s necessary to remind customers what you have to offer when engaging with them. You can achieve this by using push notifications.
Customers can engage with the brand by receiving push notifications about special offers, events, or news. Therefore, try creating convincing push notifications that attract customers to click and engage further. Also, don’t overburden your customers with push notifications.
Take advantage of AI in marketing
Customers’ expectations are rising with the advancement of digital marketing. Customers expect to communicate with brands and businesses at their convenience. For example, if a customer purchases an item online at midnight and has a problem with the payment process, they’ll need support to resolve it immediately.
Marketing tools such as chatbots are helpful, especially for businesses that cannot provide day-and-night live engagement. These chatbots imitate human conversational patterns and create realistic engagement experiences.
To Contents ↑Why customer engagement matters
Brands must be proactive to connect and engage with customers whenever possible to increase engagement. Create a positive customer experience from the very first meeting. Give them a constant (and exceptional) experience, and they will reward you with their trust, loyalty, and money, and when you need to engage a maximum number of users using display formats to get all the clicks and conversions, you can always contact Adsterra Ad Network.
