Customer engagement. It’s one of our industry’s most popular buzz words right now, and, any marketer worth their salt will agree that customer engagement is critical. But no one seems to have figured out how to measure it, or – more importantly – how to act upon the insight derived from it. Unless marketers commit to measurement and execution, customer engagement will be nothing more than a good concept.

Let’s face it. Customer engagement doesn’t matter unless it makes an impact on the bottom line. So where do you start? You need to focus on win-win engagements, programs that provide value to your organization and your customers.

Here’s an example of the benefits of re-thinking customer engagement. We recently worked with one of the largest media companies and helped them gain insight and achieve real results – a 10% increase in ad revenue.

Our client’s Web site model was profitable, but far from optimized. It was primarily advertising-supported through a combination of content sponsorship, run-of-site and use of a third party ad network.

Until now, customer engagement has always been measured by the number of pages each Web visitor views. This limited definition deterred both marketing and ad sales efforts. Our client had little visibility into whether or not marketing efforts were driving bottom-line benefits to the company. In addition, the number of pages a user viewed had no correlation to the actual ad revenue. Their model was based on branded sponsorship with excess ad inventory being sold as remnant space or by a third party at a significant discount.

We developed a new customer value model, which redefined measurement to better account for the value derived from each engagement. For example, we were able to better understand the correlation between engagement and value by tying dollars to pages viewed and other revenue generating customer activities. We were also able to develop detailed profiles of the most valuable customers – as well as those that offered the greatest opportunity for value growth – through a combination of online behavioral data and offline demographic data.

In order to better track web user engagement and value, we implemented a proprietary customer value heat map reporting tool. This multi-dimensional tool allows our client to continually monitor key drivers and changes in web user engagement and customer value. The marketing team now has the insights it needs to redesign the navigational structure of the Web site in order to best suit high value customer segments. In addition, they have greater insights into how to engage other segments that have relatively lower value now but high potential value for the future.

Of critical importance to the bottom line, this increased insight also uncovered an opportunity for ad sales. It enabled them to offer advertising clients valuable access to a more targeted group of web users. Advertisers can select user segments that are of greater value to them for more targeted advertising thanks to a better understanding of user profiles, content interests and past click behavior and response. This new strategy allows the media company to sell access to subsets of their user base at premium rates.

Today, this media company is able to provide better targeted niche content their users find engaging … at a much more profitable level. And, by offering a more targeted advertising solution, they are providing greater value to their advertisers. Talk about “engaging!”

So, what’s the bottom line?  If your approach is grounded in achieving real financial gain, customer engagement can be tracked and measured. And, with bottom line accountability, your organization is far more likely to allocate resources against it. With a focus on win-win mutual value, your customer engagement strategy can deliver significant rewards for your company.

For more information and insight about this topic, please visit the Quaero online resources center. www.quaero.com/knowledge.htm