The late 1990s brought the advent of customer relationship management (CRM). CRM offered the promise of huge increases in loyalty and customer profitability based on the delivery of continuous value to customers. Like real-world relationships, these technology driven conversations were truly two-way dialogues, replacing the one-way messaging that was delivering diminished success.

While CRM advanced the state of marketing from a monolog to a dialogue, it was still a conversation that was driven by the company, not the customer. Increasingly, customers have come to take control of this situation and not only participate in conversations with brands, but control that interaction as well. Marketing in 2008 and beyond must evolve an approach from one of executing on a relationship plan to creating and maintaining engagement with our customers. This change is every bit as fundamental as the move from mass marketing to CRM during the 1990s.

What has Changed?

Much has changed in our customers. As we look at the marketing landscape in 2008, we see a world that is radically different than even ten years ago:

· Customer attention continues to become an increasingly scarce resource. The fundamental premise of CRM—that customers have some interest in our idea of relationships—has come under fundamental attack. We may choose to deliver upon our notion of a dialogue only to find that our customer base has chosen to disregard our invitation.

· Customers are now in control of our relationships and are even in control the content that is delivered back and forth between us and our customers. The world that gave birth to CRM 10 years ago—one where marketing called the shots—no longer exists.

· As customers begin to express their new found powers for content creation and buyer influence, we in marketing (we always seem to be just a step behind our customers) need to find better ways to respond to customer needs, and in the end, give them what they want.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is a comprehensive strategy for inviting customers to become involved with our products, services, and marketing. It represents an opportunity for us to respond to customer attention deficits and use a variety of technology and processes to influence individuals as traditional resources decline in effectiveness.

Brian Haven, a research analyst at Forrester Research, interviewed a variety of leading brands such as Nike and Procter & Gamble to identify the basic elements of customer engagement. He defined four key elements to be present for customer engagement to work: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence.* Traditional CRM strategies have largely focused on the first two elements. We use a variety of acquisition techniques to get prospects to come to our website or call our sales personnel, but in order to tackle the last two elements, we need to shift the model. While leading companies such as Nike are in a position to spend millions of dollars to embrace this new paradigm, the promise of customer engagement is too great for any of us to ignore.

Here are some thoughts on how to benefit from this paradigm:

1. Begin to utilize Web 2.0 technologies to create spaces where customers can be a part of the experience. Blogs, communities, and customer generated content have moved from the early adopter to the mainstream. If you haven’t already done so, you need to blend these technologies with your other marketing tactics.

2. Utilize a role-based marketing approach. By designing marketing programs that appeal to individuals in specific roles, we dramatically increase engagement with your audience. Like real human relationships, engagement grows out of a close understanding of our audience.

3. Measure multi-channel customer behavior for “quantifiable listening.” Define a marketing performance management (MPM) strategy drives your ability to understand how customers are engaging with your brand and delivery channels in order to respond and react accordingly.

4. Foster customer satisfaction and loyalty. Engagement can only happen in an environment where expectations are being met by your company. Customers will only engage with you when you have fulfilled your obligations from your last transaction.

More than anything else, customer engagement requires a new way of thinking about our customer relationships. The technology and best practices already exist for you to attract customer attention and communicate your key messages. We in marketing have a tremendous opportunity to lead efforts to leverage customer engagement.

* Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement; Marketers Must Measure Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, and Influence, by Brian Haven-with Josh Bernoff and Sarah Glass August 8, 2007

Company: Aprimo