Customer engagement: Creative new strategies for 2021

It’s easy to recall a time where we felt connected with a brand. Things like good customer service might have resolved our issues or made us happy, but they likely didn’t give us a memorable experience that makes us loyal to a brand.

In order to make real and lasting connections, marketers need customer engagement that goes beyond the norm. And fortunately, it’s easy to move past mediocrity and give customers a reason to continue using your service. This guide helps you look beyond what everyone else is doing and gives you actionable advice that is easy to implement and unique. Let’s get started.

What is customer engagement?

Customer engagement is the method of captivating customers and building a unique relationship with them. It is best accomplished through multiple platforms and access points, such as email, videos and social media. Customer engagement gives brands a concrete measurement of how a customer is interacting with them.

True customer engagement happens through genuine interactions and experiences that go beyond making a sale or completing a mundane process. In order to provide a unique customer experience, it helps to know the benefits that will come as a result.

Why is customer engagement important?

Studies have shown that strong customer engagement has a measurable benefit. In fact, some studies found that companies who prioritize customer engagement improve revenue roughly 20%.

“Companies who prioritize customer engagement improve revenue roughly 20%“

If that alone isn’t enough to motivate your drive for better customer engagement, here are three key benefits from it that sometimes go overlooked.

1. Increased brand advocacy

The only thing better than a happy customer is a happy customer who tells their friends and family about the company who made them so happy. It goes without saying that having a customer speak positively about your brand is immensely important. However, it’s not always easy to put your business in such a position.

What makes it simple is a continued, creative focus on customer engagement. When a customer goes away from an interaction feeling happy, and feeling like they’ve got an ally in your company, they’ll more than likely want to share this with their peers. This type of advocacy is worth its weight in gold.

2. Easier avenues to upselling

It’s not always easy to upsell products or services, but an engaged customer is likely to commit to more. Furthermore, if you’re building projects and campaigns that effectively connect with customers, you’ll learn more about them and get more detailed information on their habits, ideals, etc.

This information can be leveraged into creating more accurate upselling offers, since you’ll understand what exactly a customer will need.

3. Bolstered brand loyalty

Even though it has become easier than ever for a customer to switch from one brand to another, it’s also easier to keep customers happy, thanks to ever-changing technology and numerous platforms to connect on.

People have grown to expect more from companies beyond the sale or transaction, and true customer engagement gives them what they want, making them in turn into loyal customers over a long period of time.

Bold, easy-to-use strategies for customer engagement in 2021

Strategies that worked in the past might not work as well now. Therefore, we’ve come up some strategies that are specific for 2021.

Build beneficial loyalty programs

It’s not enough to put out a standard loyalty program anymore. Almost everywhere people go, both online and offline, they have a chance to be part of a loyalty program. Therefore, if your loyalty program seems more beneficial to your business than to the customer, they’re not going to be impressed.

Here are some tips to create an effective loyalty program:

• Keep it nonrestrictive. Countdowns and restrictions might create a sense of urgency, but they aren’t the most friendly of strategies. Give everyone a chance to join the loyalty program without jumping through a bunch of different hoops.
• Offer practical rewards (and plenty of options). Nothing turns a customer off more than a loyalty program with mediocre rewards. Offer a wide variety of reward options, as well as things that make customers feel they are valued. This is a perfect chance to get creative and show that you really care.
• Keep it simple. Remember that your customer doesn’t want to work hard to get loyalty reward points, no matter how enticing the benefits might be. If it’s easy to earn points, you’ll make customers happier.

Prioritize Personalization

Think about the different ways you can tailor different marketing efforts for customers. The more you’re able to do things the way they would want them, the more they’ll be engaged. For example, would it bother a particular customer if you called them on the phone instead of texting them? Would they be frustrated if the call came in on a Thursday?

If it seems difficult to keep track of all of this, consider marketing software capable of analyzing and interpreting specific customer dispositions. Some systems even provide real-time personalization to ensure the timing of the messaging and communication is delivered precisely.

Optimize social media profiles and strategies

When it comes to social media, marketers are only certain of one thing: they need to have some sort of presence on it. Beyond that, marketer efforts to optimize social media strategy is often underwhelming or without direction. Here are some key tips to put you on the right path:

• Be active on whichever platforms your company uses. Keep up with all types of interactions and developments. Also remember that if you give a different response on one social media page than another, customers will be confused and your brand will lack true identity.
• Periodically evaluate your social media accounts, profiles and platforms. Be sure to occasionally update your profiles, account settings and which social media sites you’re using. Sometimes trendy applications go underlooked by marketers.
• Don’t neglect the negative comments. It’s easier to respond to positive comments on social media, but responding to certain negative comments is just as, if not more, important.

Create a unique brand persona

It’s easier for customers to engage with a brand if they feel connected to that brand’s specific persona. To make a strong persona, consider your brand ideals and then aim to interact in a way which personifies these ideals.

And remember that it takes a team effort to uphold this persona throughout each customer interaction. Once an effective, idealized persona is established, do your best to maintain it.

Record and interpret customer behavioral data when possible

One of the best ways to engage with users and customers is to find out more about them. This includes how they behave when visiting a website, using email and social media programs. There are numerous software tools capable of recording specific customer behavior. Once you have a solid set of examples and understandings, you can start interpreting the information.

Interpreting these behavioral data gives marketers the best insight into customer behavior, which in turn allows them to create projects and campaigns with the highest chance to engage with customers.

Now that you’re armed with helpful strategies, let’s make sure you’re able to find and review the effectiveness of your customer engagement processes.

Analyzing your own customer engagement efforts

Sometimes the best way to improve something is to evaluate how you’re doing it. With customer engagement, there are a wide variety of methods available. Here are some we’ve found the most helpful.

Video watch time

If you’ve ever created a topical business-related YouTube (or other platform) video, you’ve also wondered how well that video is connecting with users who watch it. Fortunately, there’s no reason this has to be so in-the-dark.

How to measure it: YouTube offers all sorts of data for creators to find how well their videos are performing. Here’s how to check if users are fully engaged with the videos you’re uploading.

1. Navigate to YouTube and click your business icon in the upper right corner.
2. Select ‘YouTube Studio’ from the dropdown list.

3. Select the ‘Analytics’ tab from the menu on the left.

4. The ‘Analytics’ tab shows you video views, but more importantly, it shows you the average video view duration.

Analysis: If your customers are only watching 10% of your videos, it’s clear that your engagement efforts are falling short. Find the content with the best watch rate and take note of what things you did right. Attempt to emulate that in the future for better success.

Social media

Social media is a dynamic pathway to connecting with customers on multiple platforms and in a more relaxed, friendly environment. Many users now expect brands to take on unique personas when interacting on social media.

How to measure it: This is platform-dependent, but most social media sites have similar ways to measure how often customers are interacting. Things such as ‘shares’, ‘likes’, ‘replies’ and ‘comments’ are the common indicators.

Analysis: Sometimes, statistics don’t tell the whole story. A firestorm of ‘shares’ and ‘comments’, for example, could be a bad thing if they’re in response to a negative about your brand. Be proactive with whichever social media platform you interact with customers on.

Customer feedback

Getting information straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say, tends to be best. As such, you’ll want to look for all sorts of ways to get genuine feedback from users and customers you interact with.

How to measure it: This will depend on in what way you obtain feedback. There are surveys, reviews, rating systems and more. Figure out which one of these will allow people to give the most blunt, honest feedback.

Analysis: The information you gather should always be taken with a grain of salt. On the one hand, we want to give users the chance to voice their opinion about a transaction or interaction. On the other hand, their answer may vary based on our approach. They might give more positive reviews than wanted, for example, if they were incentivized to do so by some sort of reward for filling out a survey. Find the method you feel best cuts through the flimsy feedback.

Site session duration

This one almost explains itself – if a user sticks around on your site longer, they’re interested in the content, navigation and accessibility your site offers. If they leave quickly, one of these needs improving.

How to measure it: Fortunately, tools exist to handle all the mathematical heavy lifting for us. Google Analytics, for instance, not only offers the time spent on a page for each user, but it calculates the session duration for you.

Analysis: Make sure that you’ve got a large enough sample size before looking too deep into site session duration. A few short sessions could be indicative of all sorts of things, so wait to take action when you have many recorded sessions to consider.

Repeat Purchase Rate

The Repeat Purchase Rate measures how often customers make a purchase after their initial purchase. Note that this rate is a measurement of your company’s performance, and not a tracker of a specific customer’s purchasing habits.

How to measure it: A measurement of 50% would indicate that half of your customers make a second purchase from your company. (Divide repeat customers by total customers).

Analysis: Obviously, Repeat Purchase Rates don’t apply to all companies. If they apply to yours, aim for roughly 30%, as that’s the general consensus on a quality rate.

Closing thoughts

The best customer engagement methods put building relationships on deeper emotional levels first and foremost. Take a unique and creative approach to your customer engagement efforts in order to boost customer advocacy and loyalty.