With companies turning their sights to customer centricity, lots of work is going into defining the concept of engagement. Let's look at how the thinking has evolved in the past eighteen months, or so.
In an attempt to move "engagement" from buzzword to industry standard, ARF’s Research Officer, Joe Plummer defined engagement as “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.” [March 2006]
On the Marketing Whims blog, engagement is: “Repeated, satisfied interactions that strengthen the emotional connection a customer has with the brand.” [April 2006]
Eric Peterson's Analytics Weblog defines engagement as: "Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly defined set of goals." [December, 2006]
Now, Forrester Research has come out with a definition for engagement: "Engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence an individual has with a brand over time." [August, 2007]
Notice that the definitions started from broad versions and have successively narrowed until the focus is on measurement. In fact, Forrester states that, "companies need to start tying these metrics together to make sense of
how engaged their customers actually are—and then make product and
marketing decisions based on that knowledge."
Let's look at the four components Forrester has defined:
Involvement: For Forrester, this is using web analytics to gauge "if a person is present." I think they need to look beyond just being preset to what they are choosing to involve themselves with. Which content? Which products? Involvement should also show companies what drives engagement so they can expand the available insights, dialogue, etc. Lack of involvement can also reflect on making choices about what's not working.
Interaction: According to Forrester, this is a measurement of "the more robust actions people take..." like purchase, subscription, posting comments, etc. Which begs for a definition of "robust, " which for me would be to know what drove the interactions? Is there a nurturing pattern emerging from involvement that creates interactions?
Intimacy: This one is really hard to capture with Forrester defining it as the "sentiment or affinity that a person exhibits in the things they say, or the actions they take..." I'm sure there can be different nuances here, for example, who did they say it to? Did they post it on their blog or submit a company feedback form? How is the company assigning their interpretation to "sentiment?" And, it seems to me that this one is a part of Interactions, above. But I do think that "Intimacy" as a category is important. From a B2B perspective, would every customer you have make a good case study? Would they give you a testimonial? And, what does your company do to restore "intimacy" if it's challenged?
Influence: This one appears to be another word for referrals. And it goes hand-in-hand with Intimacy.
In fact, all of these components are related. If you don't have all of them, your level of engagement is limited. Which takes me to thinking about degrees of engagement. It's an interesting topic and I look forward to hearing more about it as more and more stakes are put in the ground.
I agree that it needs to be measurable, but I also think people need to start looking at engagement with contextual content strategies as a component. Without the words, messaging and communication that serve to "engage" people, by enrolling them in taking action, you won't get far...
Definitely more to think about...