Engagement marketing is the use of strategic, and resourceful content to engage people, companies, or brands in order to create meaningful interactions over time.
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The old school methods of marketing are dying. I think about how I get shouted at when TV commercials come on and all I do is change the channel or mute the TV.
It’s no different with online ads, print ads, billboards, etc. I admit, occasionally something makes an impression on me, like this Budweiser commercial or this Hot Wheels billboard. For the most part, however, nothing catches my attention unless marketers are speaking directly to me as an individual, based on my behaviors (think amazon.com), over time, across multiple channels (web, email, mobile, direct mail) and are pointing me in a clear direction. So if that last sentence is a long winded definition of engagement marketing then a shorter one may be: Engagement marketing is about connecting with people.
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With that said, here’s a great example of engagement marketing. At Marketo, they ran a campaign where sales reps could go into their CRM, select from a filtered list of potential customers who had attended a webinar and add them to a “fortune cookie campaign.” The key takeaway here is that they were listening for interest (people who attended webinars on a specific subject matter.) Marketing and sales aligned by engaging these interested parties through a specific campaign, that was relevant to them, with a specific call to action. Once the reps added these potential customers to the campaign, the potential customers received a direct mail package thanking them for the webinar attendance, some fortune cookies with marketing related fortunes, and a call to action to reach out to us to and see Marketo in action.
Another key piece to this is that when they received the package, the system notified them so they were able to automate a workflow that sent them an email that was personalized, and looked like it came from a sales rep, while finally creating a task in the CRM to have a sales rep follow up in a week by phone. Okay, if a demo wan not scheduled or the potential customer did not buy Marketo, they got drooped into a general top of the funnel nurture track.
The results were much better than the industry average:
- 21% Connect Rate
- 9% Opp Conversion Rate
So what are your thoughts on engagement marketing? Any ideas, questions?
One thing is for sure, the shift is being made and connecting with individuals based on their behaviors, over time, wherever they are, and leading them towards a goal called engagement marketing. This thought/theory is going to be crucial to being a successful marketer in the years to come.