Reading the Cues: Three Steps for Better Customer Engagement

Do you have the right data strategy in place to create customer engagement and  trust? Here’s three crucial things to remember:

1. Read the cues.
Marketers today have more data than ever before. But, if they don’t transform it into something meaningful, they run the risk of taking action on signals that don’t necessarily matter

“There’s a difference between a quick trigger and a decision—taking action on a single event can provide a negative outcome,” James McDermott, CEO of Lytics told Chief Marketer in a recent special report. “For example, you might see a customer action and want to provide an offer. But, if you understand the context over time, you might know they won’t be likely to respond and can save ad spend by explicitly not targeting them.”

2. Timing is everything.
Don’t just positive customer experiences to the marketing mix—remove the negative ones too.

The data backs this idea up. Within the next two years, 81 percent of respondents to Gartner’s 2017 Customer Experience in Marketing Survey said they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of customer experience. In a survey from the Mobile Ecosystem Forum, over 50 percent of respondents cited bad user experiences as the number one reason they lose trust in an app or service. And, in Forrester’s 2018 US Consumer Experience Index, “elite” brands came through with an average of 22 emotionally positive experiences for each negative one, while the lowest-performing five percent of brands offered only two emotionally positive experiences for each negative interaction.

“Nothing destroys trust more than a bad experience, or a mistimed communication,” says McDermott.

3. Create cross department—and crosschannel—alignment.
Customer trust and a positive customer experience isn’t just about marketing, it’s about customer support, products, services and everything in between. For example, if a customer has an open support ticket, it isn’t the best time to send them a coupon or offer.

A new marketing organization is emerging around the needs of the customer and it looks pretty different from the one that existed even two years ago, McDermott says.

“You need a central strategy around the entire lifecycle,” he notes. “Have they purchased? Are they opening emails? Are they coming to the website? There is a lot of engagement and signals to understand in a relationship with a brand, and that requires cross functional collaboration.”

To learn more about using data to engage prospects and create a more relevant communication strategy, download our new special report, Creating Customer Confidence.