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October 26, 2006

Online Marketing
Customer Engagement: Is It In Your Marketing Mix?

by Julie Clark

I read an interesting column by Tom Hespos yesterday. Tom is a columnist for the MediaPost Online Spin e-newsletter and is also the president of Underscore Marketing. His point: all consumers have different levels of engagement. We, as marketers, have an obligation to both acknowledge and do our best to accommodate those levels.

In other words: “what do we do when people have interest in our (insert product, brand, or technology here), but not so much interest that they want to be bombarded by constant on-line communication?”

We’ve all been there. For example, last summer I bought one measly set of four tickets to a Chicago White Sox baseball game, making the purchase via the official White Sox website, and I (unwittingly) checked a box on the order form stating, “notify me of other deals I might be interested in”. Soon after, my e-mail inbox was being bombarded at least three times a week with mundane White Sox team information.

I’m a fan… but not that big of a fan. I like to go to the occasional White Sox game, as much as a family outing with my husband and kids than any great love of baseball. Particularly because going to a major league ballgame can be an expensive proposition for a family, I like to be notified via e-mail about discount deals on tickets. But that’s about it.

My level of engagement with this product on a scale of 10 is probably about a 3. A “rabid” fan of the team/game, rating at 9 or 10 on the same scale, in all likelihood wants to receive those thrice-weekly team e-mail messages. I don’t. (Because a message would very occasionally offer news of ticket discounts, I didn’t hit the unsubscribe button. But I was pretty darn close to doing so.)

The key question: how do you reach your level 3 engagement folks (and not lose them to the delete button) while also keeping the level 10 people on board?

The answer is surprisingly simple: allow for multiple levels of engagement. Provide options to those filling out your online forms for newsletters or product information. And honor those options.

Yet while the answer is simple, the execution of it is not necessarily easy. The key tools are databases AND management. In other words, work to understand the levels of engagement of customers, and then set up and manage your databases accordingly.

Otherwise, soon will come the day when the less engaged in your audience (ironically, a group often offering excellent prospects for growth with proper care) begin en masse to click the “unsubscribe” button because they’ve had it with the online bombardment. Their inboxes are stuffed and they just can’t take it any more!

Key starter points: 1) Think about levels of engagement; 2) Think about how you can accommodate those levels of engagement; 3) Think about database management that is truly user-oriented yet delivers the data you need.

Address these points, and then think about your e-mail communications, which not only reach inboxes but will be read and appreciated while others are quickly pushed to the “deleted items” folder. Or worse yet - not requested at all.

Questions or comments? E-mail me at jclark@insight-media-group.com.