You Probably Have Known Customer Engagement

Nowadays, the life pace in our society is becoming faster and faster while the term “customer engagement” is seemingly ubiquitous in today’s marketing world. Media publications are talking about it, bloggers are writing about it, and indeed, entire agencies have set up shop claiming to specialize in it. But for many industry professionals, the exact definition of the term remains fuzzy. So what is it exactly: a new buzzword, a periodic trend, or an industry breakthrough?

The correct answer would be both, all, or none of the above. Come again? The Advertising Research Foundation came up with this as the first real “definition” of the term customer engagement: 'Engagement in mining machinery like raymond mill is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.' Perplexingly broad, this offers little.

So let me start by offering a new definition: “Customer engagement is the science of optimizing the relationship between consumer behavior and a company’s objectives to produce the most profitable outcome.” To really understand this definition though, we need a few clarifications. First, keep in mind that consumer behavior is a complex equation, factoring in the customers’ needs, lifestyle, use of technology and exposure to other marketing messages. The company’s objectives are not necessarily a sale; they can be brand awareness, establishing a community, or fan retention. And “profitable” doesn’t mean tallying up sales at the end of the quarter—customer engagement involves complex customer analytics that are generally applied to maximize long term customer value.

Customer engagement isn’t limited to a particular channel, and contrary to popular belief, it really isn’t just a marketing concept. While it’s true that engagement should be part of the planning process for every marketing channel, whether online or offline, leaders in customer engagement see it as an organization-wide initiative, feeding customer intelligence into every...