Every business, whether big or small, runs several campaigns to bring more people to their brand. In a world full of information, customer acquisition has become a significant challenge, and businesses worldwide are now diverting their focus towards incorporating customer engagement in their marketing strategy.
It is a fact that a well-planned customer engagement strategy brings in more repeat purchases, boosts customer retention rates, and helps you generate more revenue at a faster pace.
And when something improves the bottom line, it should matter and be included in your operations.
What do we know so far? According to research, increasing customer engagement increases cross-selling by 22%, allows you to up-sell to customers by 51%, and leads up to 85% increases in overall order sizes.
If you are new to the concept of customer engagement, then here is a quick recap.
What is Customer Engagement?
Every business has its definition of the concept, but broadly, it refers to ongoing interaction between customers and a brand to deliver an outstanding customer experience with the brand.
When you like your favorite brand’s page on Facebook, you are not just hitting “like” but, in a way, becoming a part of customer engagement. You receive regular updates about new products, special coupon codes, and more, with just simple like.
Now, you must be wondering that you can get likes and keep your users interested, right? It doesn’t work that way. Every business will have a different criterion for engagement.
Different Metrics for Customer Engagement
There are different metrics you can use to measure the impact of customer engagement on your business. Some of them include:
The number of Sign-Ups:
This one is a vital metric for eCommerce stores. The total number of users who sign up for an account on your website or app provides more data and opportunities to engage your customers effectively.Repeat Purchases:
When users sign up, you can easily track the number of purchases they make from your brand. Higher repeat purchases mean better customer engagement.Order Value:
Engaged customers are likely to spend much more than new ones, and they often place high-value orders on your website. The average order value shows how well connected you are with your customers.CLV- Customer Lifetime Value:
CLV of your regular customers is a great way to predict net profit for the future. It also works as an indicator to build a strong connection with the most loyal customers over time.Churn Rate:
Your focus should always be on stopping customers from walking away. Retention rates are of primary concern, but you should keep a close eye on churn rate and keep it as low as possible.Correlation between Customer Engagement and Business Growth
Customers today have multiple options to choose from today, and the concept of customer loyalty has faded away over the past few years.
The only way to ensure that a customer sticks around is to keep them interested in your brand and give them the most desired deals.
Customer engagement demonstrates your commitment to your clients and helps you convert them into brand advocates with an excellent experience.
There are a few fundamental tenets that can help you in improving your business with customer engagement. These include:
- Proactive communication
- Personalized deals for different customers
- Sharing customer data with teams for better engagement
- Constant growth and improvement of revenue stream
Why Customer Engagement is on the Rise?
Now that we have a clear idea about how customer engagement is vital to business growth, it is time to delve deeper into understanding why it is continuously rising.
Increases purchase frequency:
When you understand your customer well, you get a clear idea of their preferences. This information allows you to engage them with activities that will motivate them to increase their purchase frequency with the brand.
Brings in more revenue:
Engaged users take advantage of maximum offers you share and trust you with the product recommendations. They visit you more frequently and increase your brand’s revenue throughout their CLV.
Reduces returns:
When customers get a relevant and personalized recommendation, the chances of returning products decrease several times.
Even impulse purchases can be informed, and only 5% of them are sent back based on a bad experience.
Improves Brand Loyalty:
More purchases depict more trust in your brand and are a clear indicator of customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer comes back to the brand and recommends their friends to give it a try.
A band of loyal customers by your side can easily give you around 70% of the total business.
Informs the customers:
Engagement is one of the top ways to keep your customer informed about new product releases, ongoing offers, and benefits of buying premium memberships.
It attracts more attention to your brand and increases their willingness to make repeat purchases from your brand.
Improves brand awareness:
One of the best ways to improve your brand’s awareness is to encourage users to talk about your brand. When you start engaging with potential customers on social media, there is a higher chance of them coming on board than clicking on your advertisement on a random website.
More engagement leads to higher awareness, and customers will always remember a personal interaction over an advertisement.
Tells what customers want:
Assessing what customers want is a challenge. Engagement gives you clues about what they wish to get via surveys, polls, and more. Constant interaction reveals their needs and helps you make recommendations that generate more value.
Provides opportunities for bigger orders:
Engaged customers are likely to place larger orders once they start trusting your brand. A fully engaged customer can spend up to 23% more money on a brand they trust. Improve the trust factor to get bulk orders.
Creates brand advocates:
Customer engagement is the best way to create new brand advocates. Happy individuals always refer your brand to their friends, and the positive word of mouth works far better than any ad-word campaign.
Enables user-generated content:
Like allowing reviews on your product listings, a small initiative enables users to openly share their experiences and concerns.
You can then take the user-generated content to improve on the products and deliver better deals to your customers in the future.
Humanizes your brand:
Customers like it when a brand interacts with them as a person and not as a sale point.
The quality of your brand’s interaction with customers reflects your company’s personality and vision. Use every touchpoint possible to interact with your customers for improved business opportunities.
Creates a positive image for the brand:
When customers talk about your brand, it can be for the better or, the worse. Engagement ensures that it is for the better and projects a positive image for your brand.
What would you like to be known for? For answering and being there for your customers every step of the way or being apathetic to them?
Generates new business ideas:
Every product was once an idea, and healthy interaction with your patrons means you will get suggestions from the left, right, and center.
You can filter out the most appealing ideas and find viable ways to include them in your product line.
Builds healthy communities on social media:
With regular interaction on social media, you can create a growing customer community that adores your brand.
Use memes to encourage users to tag their friends or make a trending hashtag by including your customers in the experience.
Execute Customer Engagement Plans Effectively
Talking about ideas is indeed much more straightforward than executing them effectively. But we have a way out of this dilemma as well.
Much like several other organization functions, customer engagement can also be automated and integrated into your technology stack.
You can use NextBee’s AI-based customer engagement platform to start engaging your customers instantly. In addition to the ease of operation, it has multiple integration options with different software used by businesses today.
Benefits of Using a Customer Engagement Software
With NextBee’s platform, you can get the following benefits:
- Generate 5X more invites using referrals
- Triple the sales revenue for your organization
- Improve social media engagement by 150%
- Increase conversion through references by 25%
- Get new suggestions from your customers
- Create better ROI projections with strong analytics
- Get robust solutions out of the box
- Allows marketing teams to focus on critical activities
Learn more about NextBee’s customer engagement solution HERE.
To Wrap Up
NextBee’s customer engagement solution can be the perfect solution for your business’ growth and set you on the right track.
Achieve more with accurate data and robust software capabilities. To learn more about engaging your customers effectively, get in touch with our team over a free consultation today.
