How to Ace Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is more important than ever. Brands that excel in an engagement strategy outperform those that don’t. Following up on my recent article that covered three trends highlighted in the Braze 2021 Global Customer Engagement Review, I wanted to share more ideas and information about how to better engage with your customers.

As part of the survey, Braze assessed brands against twelve customer engagement competencies across two key axes – tech and teams, then bucketed them into three levels of maturity:

1. Activate: These organizations are just beginning to recognize the importance of customer engagement. They are just getting started and are trying different tactics to see what works best for their audience/customers. Much of what they are doing is reaching out through email and text message campaigns.
2. Accelerate: While campaigns are still a big part of their efforts, these companies are starting to accumulate, study and act on the data and metrics they are getting. They are still falling short in understanding their customers across different platforms and channels, but as they learn more and experiment with different communication channels, they will head into the third level.
3. Ace: These are top-performing brands and companies that recognize and take advantage of the power of a good customer engagement strategy.

The first step is to self-assess. Which level is your organization in? If you aren’t yet messaging and engaging your customers, it’s not too late to start. Just move into the “Activate” level and your journey will begin.

So, how does one become an Ace? The two areas these top companies excel in are experimentation and channels. Of the more than 1,300 marketing executives that Braze surveyed, 59% experiment on a continuous basis. What is working today will change tomorrow. Eighty percent of them execute their engagement campaigns across multiple channels, such as email, text, social media, apps, etc.

The Ace-level organizations recognize that their customers use more than one channel. As a result, they communicate with their customers on more than one channel. The study found that messaging customers on two channels has excellent results. Seventy-three percent are more likely to make a purchase, and they get a 42x increase in lifetime value.

It takes more than automated email and text campaigns. The best brands are engaging their customers with interesting product information, special promotions and non-promotional information that connects with the customer’s interests. The messaging feels personal because the company understands how to properly segment their customers and manage the right amount of messaging for these different segments.

You can see the power of customer engagement. It doesn’t just drive your connection with customers. It drives revenue. Engaged customers have a higher likelihood of making a purchase. They purchase more often, they spend more when they do buy, and they have a much higher lifetime value. And, who doesn’t want that?

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and the host of the Amazing Business Radio podcast. Learn about Shep's virtual customer service training at shepardvirtualtraining.com.

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