Brand engagement is so much more than simply capturing email addresses in exchange for discount codes or encouraging customers to follow your social media pages. Well-crafted strategies dive deep into the customer experience and create fun, interactive, and meaningful exchanges of value, including the willing provision of ‘earned’ data.
Want to know more? Read on for our tips to building powerful brand engagement strategies designed to drive business growth, customer retention, and bottom line profits.
The Value of ‘Earned Data’
One of the most valuable assets your business can acquire, Earned Data can be used to build genuine, trust-based relationships between brands and consumers. It’s information that is freely put forward by customers in exchange for value from the brand and is the most powerful type of data a marketer can work with. For more insight, check out our free webinar on Earned Data, why it’s so important, how you can get it, and how to make it work for your business.
Now we know the value of Earned Data, let’s take a look at the role brand engagement strategies play in acquiring this valuable information.
Understand Your Customers
The first step to building a powerful brand engagement strategy is to understand your customers. Surveys can be a great way to source customer feedback and get a better idea of what makes your audience tick. The more detailed the better, so don’t shy away from offering an incentive or two in exchange for 10 minutes of a customer’s time. As well as gaining valuable information about your customers, sourcing feedback helps to humanize your business and position it as an organization that genuinely cares about their customers.
Incorporate Non-Promotional Tactics
The idea that all customers are intrinsically price motivated is a myth. Our in-house research suggests 29% of consumers engage with their favorite brands to feel connected with the product and experience. This demographic outperforms the 23% of customers who engage with brands exclusively for discounts and incentives. The bottom line? While engagement should always offer value, this doesn’t have to be in the form of discounts or promos.
For example, a clothing company may send newsletter subscribers a special edition offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a recent photoshoot in the Maldives. This offers customers a chance to live and breathe the new collection and feel like they’re getting an exclusive sneak-peek, while ‘traveling’ to an exotic destination. In this example, value has been offered in the form of an immersive brand experience.
Personalize the Experience
No two customers experience your brand the same way, and your brand engagement strategy should reflect this. Our research shows 25% of customers are willing to share data in exchange for a more personalized shopping experience. With this in mind, don’t be afraid to ask for information that can be used to enhance a customer’s experience.
The language learning app Duolingo is a good example of a personalized brand experience – asking users questions like why they want to learn a new language and tailoring content accordingly. Netflix is another incredible example of personalization – using data to learn about user preferences and tailor viewing suggestions. This improves the customer experience and, as a result, helps retain subscribers.
Embrace Omnichannel Engagement
Your brand engagement strategy should span across multiple platforms, including email, social media, digital ads, as well as your website. This multi-tiered approach ensures you’re catering to the individual preferences of every customer and making their purchasing decisions as easy and streamlined as possible.
Incorporate gamification
What do Starbucks, Heineken, Nike, Nissan, and the US Army have in common? They all leverage the power of gamification to boost brand engagement. Gamification is founded in behavioral psychology and plays on the idea that humans are intrinsically driven by rewards and positive reinforcement. Fun, interactive, and engaging, gamification uses game-design elements and principles to transform brand interactions into reward-driven experiences.
At 3radical we specialize in helping brands leverage the power of gamification using our purpose-built Voco Platform. The customized gamification strategy we developed for online gaming site Foxy Bingo is a great example of how effective tapping into game-design principles can be.
“Daily active wagering player volumes increased by 30% as players repeatedly engaged with not only the game but Foxy Bingo’s other offerings, and more than 60% of customers engaged with the Voco generated content on five or more days.”
Thousands of customers completed the ‘How Foxy Are You?’ survey, allowing the company to capture valuable data, directly from the individual. This was then used to personalize player experiences, build stronger brand-player relationships, analyze and predict patterns, and reconnect with lapsed VIPs.
Reward Engaged Customers
Loyalty programs are one of the easiest and most enticing ways to reward engaged customers. They incentivize interactions and encourage the willing provision of Earned Data, while adhering to the two-way value exchange principle. The best loyalty programs incorporate game-design elements and make earning points just as fun as spending them.
Our DBS Credit Cards case study demonstrated just how powerful a gamification-driven loyalty program can be, helping the multinational banking and financial services corporation increase user interest and activity, improve mobile coupon retention rates, and boost engagement across the board. A staggering 31% increase year-on-year in user base proves that this type of brand engagement strategy works.
Building Your Brand Engagement Strategy
Ready to build a brand engagement strategy that generates results? At 3radical our team of brand engagement experts are here to help you create a tailored strategy that fits the needs of your business. To find out more, don’t hesitate to contact our team or request a demo of our unique Voco platform.