eMarketer’s new report tackles the complex world of customer engagement. With “increasing customer engagement” as the top priority for marketing professionals, the report also explores the inherent challenge of improving engagement. Just as no two customers have the same path to purchase, no two brands have the same blueprint for success. But even if we can’t replicate another brand’s strategy, we can learn from their successes and failures. The report highlights an underlying framework that many of the world’s top engagement-oriented brands are using to help marketers navigate the complicated customer engagement journey.
At a high level, the report reveals that companies successfully improving customer engagement often begin by building a measurement framework that maps overall business objectives to the customer journey. They do so by establishing core objectives at the business and channel level that are matched against the typical customer journey. Performance is continually evaluated with metrics at each level that pertain to the journey.
But according to data in the report, establishing a measurement framework is—and will continue to be—a struggle if marketers don’t get access to measurement tools and skills. Of the companies surveyed, 40% blame lack of ability to measure ROI as the biggest obstacle to understanding and improving customer engagement.
Beckon’s co-founder Jennifer Zeszut weighed in on how leading brands are addressing this challenge by using technology and measurement methodologies to predict business outcomes downstream. Here’s an excerpt from her contribution to the report:
“Beckon uses predictive scoring to measure customer engagement. Jennifer Zeszut, co-founder and chief customer officer, said this practice is critical to validate that not all metrics are equal and that not all metrics are predictive of customer engagement for a company-level KPI, such as LTV. “We’ll actually run the statistics to understand, ‘Is this an important metric for a client?’ she said. ‘It probably is, but does it actually predict revenue?’
Zeszut went on to emphasize that marketers looking to these types of predictive analytics must keep in mind that although it’s useful for identifying metrics that may correlate with a specific outcome, these are not necessarily metrics that will directly drive that outcome.
‘You’re looking for predictors of sales and revenue, which is different from attribution or causation or ROI,” she said. “You’re looking for a bellwether for the brand, for something that will move reliably with revenue.’”
If you’re developing a framework focused on customer engagement, this is a must-read. eMarketer subscribers can check out the full report here.