Blog: customer engagement
-
Cool or Critical? A Reflection on the Forrester ML & CI Forums
4/25/12Continue ReadingI loved the theme of the Forrester Marketing Leadership & Customer Intelligence Forums last week in LA and believe the Forrester team delivered. With a packed agenda of case studies to help marketers put all the parts together to deliver a single, personal brand experience to each customer, the sessions were tailored to a variety of marketing perspectives.
It’s not an easy job for Forrester, and more importantly not an easy job for a marketer given the competing demands within an organization, the lack of unlimited funds, and the ever changing landscape of channels and technology.
-
Forrester Forum + CI Readiness = Comfortable Shoes?
4/12/12Continue ReadingAs I prepare for the Forrester Forum in Los Angles next week – deciding on what sessions I’ll
attend; what customers and prospects I hope to connect with; how to drive curiosity and engagement at our booth, and a host of other details, I can’t help but think about what shoes I’ll pack since I’ll be on my feet for two full days at the JW Marriott. As you know, it’s hard to be engaging and enthusiastic when your feet hurt. Some believe the origin of the term “benchmark” was from cobblers marking a customer’s foot size on a bench. They would place someone's foot on a "bench" and mark it out to make the pattern for the shoes. Benchmarking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others. So in the spirit of the Forrester conference theme, how do you know how you compare to other marketers to create engagement in the age of the customer? -
When it Comes to Customer Experience, the Little Things are the Big Thing
3/27/12Continue ReadingA keen attention to detail is the hallmark of great service companies. It takes a great deal of
effort - having the processes in place, hiring the people with the right attitude and training them as well as equipping them with the appropriate customer intelligence at the right time - in order to execute well and provide great customer experiences. We are all familiar with stories of great service upscale brands such as Nordstrom and Ritz Carlton. I would like to share an unexpectedly positive experience within an industry (airline) and a carrier (US Airways) that do not normally come to mind when talking about good customer experiences. I am on the top tier of US Airways' frequent flier program. Usually this means I board early and get upgraded to first class. On those occasions when I have to fly coach, I am reconciled to the airline treating me like everyone else, which is with the level of indifference that has, unfortunately, become the norm for most US airlines on domestic and many international routes. -
2012 Super Bowl Ads that Nailed Customer Engagement
2/16/12Continue Reading
The Super Bowl may be the one time of year viewers are as eager to watch the commercials as they are the show...well, at least the halftime show. As always, we marketers tuned in to weigh in on how this year's pack of advertisers managed the most expensive real estate on television. During the 2012 Super Bowl, advertisers delighted with many of its usual ploys (celebrities, endorsements and sex appeal), as with H&M's provocative ad featuring David Beckham. There were also rave-winning new concepts, such as the Honda's rendition of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". But while campaigns may win applause for recruiting the biggest celebrities or most daring scripts, which brands merely flashed their cash, and which truly engaged customers? -
Using the Survey to Build Customer Engagement in Neolane
1/25/12Continue ReadingA core value of customer engagement is to market based on thorough understanding of customer segments and how they differ from one another. In theory, this makes sense, but in actual marketing practice, carrying on communication with customers is always a challenge. In our daily lives, we have many different channels to communicate with a friend when we want to find out his/her opinion about something. But, how can we reach out to half a million people and get to know how they think about a 'bigger' concept - a company product, an innovative service, a marketing promotion plan, or a company recruiting tactic?
-
Engagement [en-geyj-muhnt]
8/5/11Continue ReadingEveryone's talking about customer engagement. And for good reason. The notion goes beyond the last decade of CRM-focused tactics and demands that marketers not only engage their customers, but understand how to measure that engagement. And, translate it into real value. Customer engagement is only one variable that contributes to the overall value equation, but it is without a doubt, the most vital attribute from which marketers can build on existing value.
-
Using Customer Insights to Drive Customer Value
7/29/11Continue ReadingIn our latest Customer Engagement video on customer value, John Strabley - Quaero's Director of Professional Services Consulting - discusses how you can obtain customer insight and in turn drive additional customer value and increased revenue.
What is customer value? We can derive customer value by looking at several factors: historical value that the customer represents, expected value over time (what we can expect from this customer going forward) and the unrecognized value (difference between expected and total potential value). We can see what percent of spend we are capturing vs. potential share of wallet and look at which sources drive high value customers.
-
Customer Engagement Video: Data & Data Services
6/1/11Continue ReadingIn this installment of the Customer Engagement (CEA) Video Series, Quaero experts Matt Austin and Lisa Sousa discuss the impact of customer engagement on one of Quaero's core capabilities: Data & Data Services.
They touch on a number of important topics, including: the importance of having a strong data strategy, the process of collecting accurate and relevant data, and some of the challenges that they have seen in the marketplace. Watch the full video below and let us know what you think!
-
Reporting from Forrester's Marketing Forum
5/27/11Continue ReadingQuaero recently sponsored Forrester's Marketing Forum 2011. (And if any of you were able to attend our reception or visit our booth, you'll agree that the event was a particularly sweet success; Quaero treated attendees to more than 2,000 pieces of gourmet chocolate!)
As always, the Forum provided marketers with a great deal of food for thought. This year’s theme was Innovating for the Next Digital Decade. Forrester warned that rapid innovation is creating radical shifts in the methods and media that people use to engage with your company, brand, and products, and promised to demonstrate how emerging tools can combine the targeting, customization, and measurement of online platforms with the rich, emotional brand experiences often associated with traditional ‘offline’ media.
-
iPad Applications: So Many Opportunities
11/8/10Continue ReadingHaving just completed our first development iteration of a web-based iPad application, I have seen the potential for new opportunities that involve a greater level of prospect and customer engagement. As marketers, we devote a significant portion of our budgets to event marketing. But we also need to ask ourselves the age-old question: what is the ROI of these events? We develop pre-show campaigns, including email and telemarketing activities. We develop booths, creative for sponsored events during the shows, send books/collateral - the list goes on.
-
Customer Engagement: Making It Happen
9/8/10Continue ReadingAn excerpt from my guest post on the 1:1 Blog:
This summer, our family vacationed in Italy and Austria. Travel, as am sure you will agree, is a very high involvement experience - exhilarating when things go well and pretty awful when things go wrong, particularly when you are traveling with family. In preparing for the trip, we relied on traditional guidebooks as well as customer feedback from a variety of travel sites. In doing so,it struck me that the guidebook companies have diversified and leveraged multiple media types to truly engage with their customers in order to inform and enhance their travel experience.
-
Customer Engagement Agency - the Video
7/22/10Continue ReadingThere has been a lot of buzz about customer engagement agencies (CEAs) and the role they'll play helping companies address marketing challenges. But what is a customer engagement agency and what capabilities does a firm need to have to call itself one? We've put together this short flash video to share our thoughts on the topic.
-
"Marketing" versus "Engagement"
7/1/10Continue ReadingOne of the things that struck me most at the recent Unica MIS conference was how far some of the participating organizations have gone to create a progressive and expansive approach to marketing. They have consciously and deliberately invested in strategies, analytics, processes and technology that move them away from broad-based outbound marketing to a more real-time and interactive mode of customer engagement. That contrast between “marketing” and “engagement” came across very clearly to me and I believe is something that all organizations should be thinking about.
