What is Engagement Marketing?

Yes, another catchphrase, just after most of us who have been in the database marketing game for more than five years have finally gotten over what happened to “Customer Relationship Management.” I contend it was the sales management vendors who took the term hostage, and those of us on the database marketing side never got the term back after that.

Only this time it’s our turn to do the taking. It’s been our friends on the web side of analytics who coined the term “engagement metrics” to help test and measure the effectiveness of online advertising. That disciplined approach to tracking literally each customer’s behaviour and adjusting marketing activities accordingly is now the key to connecting more strongly consumers with brands by “engaging” them in a dialogue and two-way, cooperative interaction, both online and offline.

If that all sounds a bit like CRM re-constituted, I’ll admit that there are some similarities. Both concepts are based on turning customer data into insights that drive how and when we communicate with customers. But let’s all admit now (with the benefit of hindsight) that there weren’t a lot of customers who wanted or needed a “relationship” with our brands. True, our marketing in many cases became smarter and more targeted, but we were still the ones doing most (or all) of the talking in the “relationship.”

So that’s what I’m suggesting is the difference this time with “engagement marketing” – that we have now truly both the technologies and the marketing smarts to allow customers to participate themselves in a meaningful way in the conversation. This blog is my attempt to talk about what I see as examples of engagement marketing – good, bad and indifferent – from the perspective of both a marketing practitioner and (somewhat) educated consumer.

I invite you to share in your own experiences as we all try to figure out the best way to engage with our customers and prospects while still meeting our business objectives. After all, that last part hasn’t changed…

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