The Future of Customer Engagement

Mark GalvinProduct Marketing Manager

The Future of Customer Engagement

• Focus of today’s session:

– What does customer engagement really mean?

– Identification of the challenges in delivering customer engagement

– How these challenges can be addressed?

– Are you ready to engage?

What does Customer Engagement really mean?

Quick Questions

• Raise your hand if you use a Social Network, e.g. Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?

• Raise your hand if you have both a business and personal email account?

• Raise your hand if you access the internet via a mobile device, e.g. iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.

What does customer engagement really mean?Marketers cannot ignore the influence of social media

• Online user reviews have a huge influence on consumer electronics purchases, with 43.7% of purchases affected by word of mouth.SOURCE: BIGresearch as cited by Bazaarvoice.com, December 2009

• According to Forrester, nearly 45% of European Internet users say that in the past three months they have researched a product online and then bought it in a shop.SOURCE: Forrester, March 2009

• 84% of consumers said they were more likely to check online for reviews prior to making a purchase compared to twelve months ago, SOURCE: Brand Reputation (Retail Bulletin, October 2009)

As of July 2010, 500 million people worldwide were actively using Facebook, up from 400 million in February 2010. Half of Facebook users log onto it everyday. More than 35 million update their statuses at least once a day. The average user spends 55 minutes per day on Facebook and has 130 friends.

SOURCE: The Facebook Blog, July 2010

What does customer engagement really mean?Social media is everyday activity for millions of people

In August, 10.4m individuals visited the YouTube HomepageSOURCE: UKOM, August 2010

Three years ago, only 9% of all UK internet time was spent on social networks & blogs (this equates to 1 minute in every 11). Since 2007, this sector has grown and now accounts for nearly 23% of UKInternet time – the equivalent of 1 in every 4.5 minutes.SOURCE: UKOM, May 2010

Social networking now accounts for nearly a quarter (23%) of all time spent onlineSOURCE: Ofcom, August 2010

What does customer engagement really mean?For every active participant there are more watching…

What does customer engagement really mean?

Consumers are evolving…e‐Dialog global consumer attitudes survey of 13,000  consumers  worldwide ‐ June 2010 

When asked which account types they owned...

Social Media: 49% (UK)56% (US)

Work Email: 26% (UK)34% (US)

Personal Email: 97% (UK)98% (US)

What does customer engagement really mean?

“Today’s empowered consumers hold a deep rooted cynicism towards companies: 60% of 

respondents felts that ‘companies are only interested in selling 

products and services to me, not      necessarily the product or service 

that is right for me’”

“Consumers have changed.  We are in the midst of a major social change in the way consumers listen and engage with brands.  The landscape has changed from campaign management to customer engagement.”

Source: Alterian Brands at Risk Study

“Individuals are becoming increasingly used to interacting with content, rather than passively receiving messages.  Businesses now must listen, learn, understand and speak with their customers on an individual level.”

Consumers are evolving…

What does customer engagement really mean?

Consumers are evolving…• Social Changes & customer demands and driving 

marketing• Digital channels are used to research products / services before making a 

purchasing decision• How a company or its products and services are perceived are highly 

influenced by social media sites and the web• If a brands messages are inconsistent across channels, it causes confusion• Relevance of messages is key to ensure consumers do not “switch off” or 

“tune out”• Consumers control when they want information, and how they 

wish it to be delivered• Consumers require brands to understand their needs and 

engage, not broadcast their messages

What does customer engagement really mean?

Consumers are evolving……So Marketing in turn needs to change

Customer Engagement means marketers can Listen, Learn, Understand and Speak across multiple channels in a relevant and engaging way with individual customers.

It means that marketers can communicate with the right audience at the right time with the right messages via the right channels and in the right tone of voice.

Identification of the challenges in delivering customer engagement

Quick Questions

• Raise your hand if you use Web Analytics against your businesses website?

• Raise your hand if you are working with Social Media as a channel?

• Raise your hand if you are able to leverage the data captured via these channels in your core customer communications?

• Raise your hand if Web Analytics, Social Media, Email and Traditional Channel campaign management is managed by more than one department?

Identification of the challenges of delivering customer engagement

• Organisational Challenges– Point solutions are often purchased and managed in

departmental silos– Messages on Website, Social Media, Email Communications

and traditional direct channels (Direct Mail, Outbound Telemarketing) are often inconsistent

– Marketing and IT often source their own solutions rather than working collaboratively for a “joined-up end goal”

– Lack of skills internally to make best use of technology investment; both in terms of function and strategic vision

Identification of the challenges of delivering customer engagement

• Operational Challenges– Marketing often have no campaign view of activities across all

channels• Downside of using “point solutions” vs. integrated solutions• No single campaign flow view of phased communications• Difficulties implementing contact lifecycles

– Digital Channel data often requires integrating with core marketing data and is not easily leveraged by users

– Difficult often to compare the effectiveness of customer engagement across channels

– Difficult to measure the impact of one channel vs. Another– Difficult to understand the requirements of emerging channels to

understand how it can be incorporated into core marketing processes

How these challenges can be addressed?

How can these challenges be addressed?

• Answering Organisational Challenges– Establish a collaborative approach to running through Marketing

Plans inc. relevant departments such as Marketing, IT and Sales• This will support technology investment which will meet long

term goals of sales and marketing and involve IT expertise– Not all perceived technical functions are solely reliant on IT to

manage, solutions can make complex tasks simpler to undertake• Technology is your friend – there are many solutions that enable

more control by marketing– Regularly share planned campaigns and key messaging between

relevant departments• Inconsistent messaging confuses customers and this can lead to

lack of trust– Working collaboratively enables stronger business cases to be built

for procurement of software and services that meet your needs• Operational and Technical needs drive home the messages to

your senior stakeholders of what value investments will bring

Identification of the challenges of delivering customer engagement

• Answering Operational Challenges– Move away from traditional purchase cycles of standalone

campaign management tools • look for new age tools that focus on delivering customer

engagement leveraging all channels, not just traditional• Avoid costly integration costs and data that is not optimal for

use in campaign targeting and measurement– If you have already invested but need to incorporate data from

other channels:• Work collaboratively with IT to understand what data is

captured; how it can be integrated with core marketing data• Identify how to link online data with offline data, URN’s, email

addresses, ip addresses and social media handles– If you don’t have these – identify campaigns to capture missing

information to build out your customer blueprint

• Define realistic metrics that you can incorporate into your cross-channel campaign performance reporting

The Proof is in the Pudding...

‘....marketing directors are being dazed by data….’

‘….If other departments take control of customer insight then marketing is in danger of losing its power tool…’

Survey of 600 CMOs and CIOs

60% of the CIOs claimed to own the companies digital marketing70% of the CMOs making exactly the same claim.

‘’…unless marketers learn to disseminate technical information their jobs may become redundant…’’

‘’ …it’s about how you use the data, not taking 3 months to learn something from it…’’

Are you ready to engage?

Are you ready to engage?

• Before embarking on a journey to achieve full customer engagement, work out where you are in achieving this?

• Customer Engagement is achievable in many ways that can be addressed in “bite size” chunks– There are solutions that can support a “start small, think big

approach”– Invest wisely in technology that can grow with you to avoid costly

integrations in terms of data and software

Look at this marketing maturity model to see assess your current level of customer

engagement... and more importantly, where you want to be...

Customer Engagement Maturity Model

Business Strategy

Valueto the

Business

$

Time

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Mass Marketing

Segmentation

Personalization

Engagement

Product Market Consumer Individual

Summarisation

• What does customer engagement really mean?– Management of inbound and outbound

communications– Leveraging all available channels– Consistent of messaging, across channels– Individualising communications

Summarisation

• Identification of the challenges in delivering customer engagement – Departmental Silos– Lack of alignment in business processes and

“joined up goals”– Inconsistent channel messaging– Internal skills / channel strategy vs.

Communication strategy

Summarisation

• How these challenges can be addressed?– Working collaboratively on technology

investment, eliminate silos– Working collaboratively on messages across

all channels, web vs. direct comms– Establish who is the “owner”– Empower users both in terms of data /

technology– Establish value of data to the business before

embarking on costly integrations / invest wisely

Thank you for your time.

I will be on Stand E18 if anyone would like to discuss this further.

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