CRM-guru Don Pepper beskriver i denne artikkelen Haven sin modell, og forteller samtidig hvordan 1-to-1.com har satt den ut i praksis:

- Engagement, Haven says, involves four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence, each built from data collected online and offline.

"Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers' actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others", he writes. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.

Traditionally, marketers have modeled consumers' decisions as they progressed from awareness through consideration, preference, action, and loyalty. But, Haven says, "marketers no longer dictate the path people take, nor do they lead the dialogue." Consequently, traditional metrics fail to capture the whole story.

"Online metrics like unique visitors to a Web site, number of pages viewed, and time spent per page mimic offline media metrics of reach and frequency," he adds. "But these measurements don't indicate the engagement of an individual; they fail to capture the sentiment, opinion, and affinity a person has toward a brand."

In Forrester's model, "involvement" looks at Web site visits, time spent, pages viewed, etc. "Interaction" measures contributed comments to blogs, quantity/frequency of written reviews, and online comments. "Intimacy" is sentiment tracking on third-party sites including blogs and reviews, as well as opinions expressed in customer service calls, and "Influence" looks at things like likelihood to recommend, brand affinity, content forwarded to friends, etc.

As easy as an equation
John Strabley, senior consultant, Peppers & Rogers Group, agrees that it's important to measure a variety of customer interactions and emotions, but it can be a challenge to find the right mix for each individual's level of engagement.

"There are different types of engagement," he says. "Some are more relevant than others. What you need to do is develop an engagement index, which shows some of the how's and why's. Since many times 'engagement' is not transactional, you need to capture data, understand how someone is engaging with a brand, and that will in turn drive what types of engagement make someone more likely to engage or even purchase later."

In an effort to practice what we preach, Strabley has been involved with developing such an index with 1to1 Media, to help understand what drives CE among 1to1 Media's various on- and offline properties. 1to1 Media's engagement index calculates the level of interaction of each contact with our properties, with weighted points earned for such actions as subscribing to 1to1 Magazine, downloading/listening to podcasts, attending webinars, and clicking on online ads.

Measuring some components remains difficult, says Thomas Schmalzl, director, integrated communications. Just because someone subscribes to a magazine doesn't mean that he reads it. And if a person logged on to the Web site 20 times last year, what is that person's engagement level now? The system is not a silver bullet, but a guidepost, Schmalzl admits.

Now what?
Even with all that information, using customer data to accurately predict customer behavior remains difficult. "Look at all of the satisfaction models [that] have been developed over the past two decades and how little they have helped in understanding why customers still switch away," says Dr. Mark Arnold, associate professor of marketing at St. Louis University.

But Forrester's Haven believes the mere fact that customer engagement is gaining traction within executive suites is important.

"Companies are starting to think about interactive involvement," he says. "Once they've understood that a customer can motivate others to buy, the result will be that companies will be increasingly forced to maintain a level of transparency. We're coming to an age of meritocracy for brands and products where you can no longer just spin something any way you want."

.: Flere saker om samme tema finner du på Forrester Marketing Blog

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