Translating Customer Engagement From Strategy To Action

… from strategy to action

By Marcus R. Tewksbury
Analyst
TheMarketingMojo.com

… from strategy to action
… cycle, goals, stages, and revenue 3
… initiate a conversation 8
… solve a problem 9
… marketing through delivery 10
… extend the relationship 11
… enliven engagement in your daily exchanges 13
… drive incremental improvement through consistent measurement 19
… 3 keys to successfully engaging your customers 21
… who is Marcus Tewksbury? 22

Translating Customer Engagement : : from Strategy to Action Marcus R. Tewksbury 2

… is driven by the changing form and manner of communication quot;Today, the customer is in charge, and
whoever is best at putting the customer
in charge makes all the money.quot; And:
For the last couple of years pundits and thought leaders have quot;Allow consumers to help you shape the
brand experience. . . . Content is no
been trumpeting the demise of traditional marketing longer something you push out. Content
techniques. It’s been pretty universal, spanning numerous is an invitation to engage.quot;
verticals that prospects and customers are no longer as … Belmont
receptive to broadcast messaging…

… and while most everyone agrees at a strategic level and can Today we need to make more material,
offer metaphors and platitudes as to what to do about it, very make it more quickly and in more rapidly
changing formats. We need to distribute it
few have offered actionable direction. in more channels, measure infinitely
greater and more timely data streams,
negotiate with more partners for different
Enter Customer Engagement Marketing (CEM). CEM offers kinds of inventory, and support all that
with an ever growing arsenal of
marketers and integrated approach for employing strategic, technology and talent. A failure in any part
engagement best practices and translating those into specific of the ecosystem will crash the entire
process
executable and measurable campaigns and activities. …Gotlieb

In order to better understand consumer
behavior, researchers must look at both digital
and non-digital social networks. Agencies must Many of the clients that I'm talking
continue to innovate track a single consumer's right now to are struggling with the
behavior across channels or a holistic solution realization that marketing is now a
that displays all marketing in one place, along dialogue.
with actionable insights.
…Friedman …Talbot …Godin

… establish a framework of understanding and a platform for dialog

While many have advanced
definitions of a customer lifecycle,
from highly regarded pundits like
Jim Sterne to lesser known's like
Claudia Imhoff (to whom I owe a a

Churn
tip of the cap), at the core they Discovery
need to convey two fundamental
points: Extension

1. The customer, or lead needs to be Education
central to everything you do. Value
most be constantly framed in terms Maintenance
and dialogs relative to the customer.
Evaluation
2. All customers will mature

Competition
(hopefully!) through a number of
stages during their engagement. Verification
And messages appropriate at one
Purchase
stage may not be for another.


… there are no short cuts to systematically growing relationships
A well articulated engagement
strategy will address moving
customers clockwise around
the cycle…

Churn Discovery

Extension

Education

… where a Maintenance
traditional one will
Evaluation
frequently seek to

Competition
convert with every
Verification
interaction
regardless of stage Purchase


… develop strategies that mature relationships through their life stages

Churn
Discovery
Retention Awareness
Extension

Education

Maintenance

Evaluation

Competition
Verification
Performance Acquisition
Purchase

Operationalize this process by breaking the cycle into distinct quadrants where by each
quadrant is symbolic of a higher order marketing program. The intent is to break the
relationship down into its component parts that enable focus on actionable goals as
opposed to dependent down stream outcomes – like revenue or sales meetings.


… engagement is directly correlated to revenue performance

Each program plays a fundamental
role in generating revenue and its
thus possible to attribute revenue
Awareness to all levels of the funnel.

Acquisition

Performance Awareness

Retention Acquisition

Overtime as retention (and the customer Performance
pool) grows so does the cross, up, and
renewal revenues. Retention over time is key
for compounding returns.
Retention

Time N N+1 ….


… attract attention, make a connection, and initiate dialog
The main goal of the Awareness phase is
to leverage both brand and interactive
advertising to initiate a dialog with a Awareness

customer.
Acquisition
… and a few general rules of thumb:
Performance Awareness

• Branding is critical. As you seek to engage
with someone it is critical they understand Retention Acquisition
with whom they are speaking.
Performance
• Conversation starters. While building
Awareness It can’t be iterated enough how
key it is to be speaking in terms relative to Retention
the customer. The goal is simply to get
them listening.
Sample Activities:
• Set content free. Your customers are going
to spend a majority of their time at
properties you don’t own. You can either
pay (advertising) to reach them, or find
ways to engage with the community by
becoming a contributing member.


… put out the fires while differentiating your offering
Once you’ve begun a dialog, you then
need to accomplish two things with your
Acquisition program: Awareness

1. Offer Solutions. If you’d correctly Acquisition
identified points of pain, customers
are going to be very interested in how Performance Awareness

you propose to solve them. Provide
detailed explanations, but remember Retention Acquisition
the goal is to sell, not educate. Of
course, also make sure to document Performance

your offering’s role in the solution.
Retention
2. Differentiate. At some point during
Acquisition the informed customer is
going to become knowledgeable Sample Activities:
about the competition.


… empower customers to be internal champions
The role of marketing does not end with
the sale. One of the best ways to
promote growth over time is to retain Awareness

and expand the customer base. One way
to accomplish this is to ensure your Acquisition
customers aren’t just satisfied with their
purchase, but that they are raving, Performance Awareness

passionate fans.
Some contemporary business strategies,
namely Net Promoter Score (NPS), even Performance

suggest you can run your entire business on a
single metric driven from within a Performance
Retention
program.

Sample Activities:


… extend the value proposition while identifying new pains
Retention programs are all about finding
ways to extend the relationship. Not just
to makes additional touches, but to find Awareness

ways to continue adding value with small,
incremental messages. The goal is to do Acquisition
just enough to be front of mind when the
customer is ready to begin engaging with Performance Awareness

their next burning issue.

Performance

Retention

Sample Activities:


… by redefining your traditional marketing processes

Audience
Awareness
Churn

Retention Awareness
Discovery
Activity
Extension

Education

Maintenance
Acquisition
Evaluation Competition

Verification
Performance Acquisition
Purchase Performance Decision
Points

Retention

Activity Activity Activity

The culmination of laying out your engagement
cycle and funnel is a customer focused End Decision
understanding that will enable you to build effective State Points
nurturing campaigns.

Nurturing campaigns are the working end of Activity Activity
engagement marketing.
End
State


… simple steps for creating and optimizing your new campaigns

Audience
4 Steps to Nurturing Campaigns

Activity 1. Chose an Audience

2. Select a Theme
Decision
Points
3. Visualize Outcomes

4. Layout Plan

It can’t be iterated enough that you shouldn’t dive straight into
End the campaigns themselves. Engagement marketing
Decision
State Points
represents a philosophical change in approach and laying
out effective nurturing campaigns is tied to the precursor
strategic vision.

Activity Activity

End
State


… with whom you’d like to speak
Identifying and selecting the right audience is
critical to the success of any campaign. In so
Audience
doing there are three primary things to keep in
mind:
Activity

1. Strategic Fit. You need to understand the
needs of specific vertical and horizontal
Decision
Points groups and the depth of industry experience
to know where your products are a good fit.

2. Robust Data. At the very core of customer
understanding is a complete, multi-channel
data set. You can’t possibly understand
End Decision your customers if you don’t know them.
State Points

3. Analytic Tools. One of the biggest
Activity Activity
problems today is breaking down all the
available data into actionable insights.
Strong tools are the key to making the data
End useful.
State


… to use as a theme throughout the campaign
The opening activity of the campaign is pivotal
for establishing the central theme. It all needs
Audience
to be broad enough to capture interest while
routing customers to their optimal end state.
Activity

Two possible ways to achieve this are to focus
on a horizontal group…
Decision
Points


End Decision
State Points
Or a vertical one.

Activity Activity

End
State


… know where the campaign can take the relationship
Given your audience, theme, and program life
stage map out as many possible outcomes from
Audience
the engagement as you can. Question your
assumptions and work through different
Activity scenarios. What you want to do is understand a
behavior before it happens. In the end, some
responses will be positive, some negative, and
Decision
Points others neutral. Regardless, they should all give
you valuable insight to the customer.


End Decision
State Points

Activity Activity

End
State


… with a sequence of steps aimed at a specific end state
The key to laying out any campaign, nurturing or
otherwise, is to be flexible and open minded.
Audience
However, you need to do so in a very specific,
scientific manner.
Activity

At each step in your campaign flow you need to
be able to measure how each activity is
Decision
Points performing. The goal is always to add relative
value to the customer with each step and if a
specific activity is underperforming it needs to
be swapped out. In this way, the campaign
should be very organic.

End Decision
State Points
Measure all of your activities. Deliverability,
Opens, Clicks, etc. All of the cross channel
interactions then need to be mapped back to the
Activity Activity customer. There is a difference between
knowledge and understanding.

End
State


… delivering many of the same messages, just taking a different path

Same
How: The channels of execution, and
the tools used to activate a message will
remain largely unchanged. Email SFA

Change
Who: At the core your target audience Website Webinars
will most likely stay the same, but you
will begin grouping them in new ways.

What: Data driven content can optimize … Events
message delivery as well as spur the
development of a new wave of
customer centric content.
Search Ads
When: Sequencing of messages
represents the most dramatic changes.
No message is delivered in isolation and
delivered value can hinge on timing.


… objectives should be actionable and specific to stage

Buzz, impressions,
opens, clicks, link
backs, referrals, Awareness
digg, tweets,
registrations, etc.
Meetings, deals, duration,
Acquisition cost per X, revenue, etc.
Surveys,
benchmarks, NPS,
ROI, deployment Performance
days, etc.

Retention Actives, cross-sell
penetration, referrals, etc.


… what marketing can learn from operations

Another import aspect of the frameworks is that they provide a stable basis for
measuring and evaluating the performance of your activities. A key element to
engagement marketing is the ability to measure the impact of virtually everything you
do and the ability to make multiple micro adjustments to messages, sequence, and
cadence.
Audience

Activity

Awareness
Churn

Retention Awareness
Discovery Decis ion
Points

Extension

Education

Maintenance Acquisition
Evaluation Activity Activity Activity
Competition

Performance Verification

Acquisition
Purchase
Performance
End State
Decis ion
Points

Retention Activity Activity

End State

Successful engagement marketing is driven by the ability to continually
improve.


… will accelerate your demand generation and optimize your return on marketing investment (ROMI)
Customer Engagement Marketing represents an evolution of traditional marketing
processes engendered by the ascent of bi-directional digital channels and the greater
depth and breadth of addressable customer data. Where traditional campaigns have
failed to deliver meaningful exchanges, engagement marketing supports two-way
dyadic communication flow needed to cultivate meaningful relationships.

At the times the strategy can certainly sound like mumbo-jumbo, but when you start
breaking it down you can make significant impact on the performance of your
marketing dollar by:

1. Customer Engagement Cycle. You have to start thinking in terms of the target
audience. What is relevant and valuable to your audience and how can you
advance them through their needs stages? These questions should guide you in
crafting every message and laying out your campaigns.

2. Measurement Framework. To improve something you need to be able to
measure it. This is critical to building engagement as you constantly need to be
evaluating your actions at the message, campaign, and program level.

3. Nurturing Campaigns. Enliven the strategy with sequenced messages. Employ
scientific rigor to an organic, creative process to guide rapid, micro adjustments to
your overall course.

… who is Marcus Tewksbury?
He is a respected author, speaker, and thought leader on optimizing marketing organizations to most efficiently,
and effectively create value added experiences for high worth customers; a process that he has termed Customer
Relationship Marketing, or CRM(arketing).

This approach to CRM, is not new, but rather a throwback to its roots when it was about strategically structuring
the marketing organization to maximize the likelihood of a positive customer experience and analyzing their life
cycle to determine the lowest friction, and highest return activities as opposed to the call centers and data
aggregation, research efforts it is now commonly associated with.

Largely, the credit for his thoughts and approaches are owed to the numerous clients whose problems Marcus has
helped solve over the years. Some of whom, include: Coach, Baxter Healthcare, JP Morgan, Hot Topic, Hallmark,
Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Tower Records, and KAO Campgrounds.

Tewk’s highly referenced, and often visited blog, serves the dual purpose of providing a comprehensive, unbiased
listing of firms and services relevant to the marketing organization, and also as a forum for interacting with senior
marketers about game changing strategic innovations. You can visit the blog at www.themarketingmojo.com.

Over the years, a number of Marcus’ thought leadership pieces have been cited or presented in mainstream or
industry events and articles, specifically with the likes of DWI Review, NCDM, CRM World, DMA Monthly, and The
Economist. Marcus has also lectured at the Purdue’s Krannert Graduate School of Management, Georgetown’s
McDonough School of Business, and at Loyola University.

With roots in the DC and Boston areas, he currently resides with his wife in Chicago, IL.


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