Provide exceptional customer engagement through data driven insights

Your digital assets such as websites, blogs, social media channels and mobile appsare today the best means to engage your customers in the most meaningful ways.Technology provides innovative options to marketers to reach out and keepcustomers engaged that were not possible previously. You have various tools at your disposal to analyse customer behaviour, their buying patterns, their likes and dislikes and also what they are likely to spend on, in order to offer them the best deal.Therefore, an effective data analytics strategy forms an integral part of everybusiness today.

Information is gathered from all digital sources, through various technology toolsfrom the time the customer logs onto your website, for example, up to seeking their feedback on the product or service a few weeks later. Observing specific customer searches and enquiries, providing customer care and support with quick/relevant responses, engaging with customers in their questions and feedback to blogs/articles, and harvesting information on customers from their subscription to online support/ magazines/ loyalty programmes generate a wealth of information that technology platforms can analyse on a real-time basis and provide crucial insights into the customers’ intent, choices and behaviour.

Let's look at some of the ways to keep customers engaged on your platform.

• Personalise offers: Analyse customers' likes and dislikes thoroughly and keep a record of what sections of a website they are visiting, what products they select for purchase or show an intent to purchase, and which geographical region they come from. This would give you a fair idea about their lifestyles and allow you to target them through customized advertising. This is more likely to incite interest in them about your products and thus increase traffic to the website. Create sustained marketing campaigns for your prospects to keep them engaged with your brand regularly and also to enablea higher recall as compared to the competition.
• Set triggers based on customer activity: A key part of any digital marketing and analytics campaign is to follow a customer’s activities on the website and set alerts based on their interests. You should be able to scientifically predict their needs and offer products and services accordingly. For instance, a customer who shows interest in buying products around festive seasons should be sent regular communication around that time to arouse interest in your products. Any particular action by a customer should send alerts to your analytics team who will analyse this behaviour and help formulate the right marketing campaign. Moreover, during days of inactivity customers can be kept engaged through exciting offers and innovative bits of information. Thiswill attract them to return to your platform.
• Diligently monitor customer conversations: Whether you like it or not customers are talking about your brand and products on social media platforms. These are bound to have an impact on the future prospects of your brand. Therefore, do monitor such conversations and develop an effective strategy to respond positively. This would reassure your customers that you value their feedback and are serious about providing them with the best services. Most conversations on social media would be complaining about a faulty product or service. Take prompt action assuring customers of your best support always.
• Build communities to spread awareness: Selling today is all about reaching out to the right customers at the right time. It is important to build close connections with people who are active on social media and have the potential to spread awareness about your products in the most reassuring manner. Such people could be evangelists or product reviewers in your domain and have a long list of followers listening to their advice. It is crucial to follow conversations about your brand on social media and build communities around such conversations. This would keep people enthused and engaged about your products and services over longer periods of time.

Conclusion
Keeping customers continuously engaged requires proactive monitoring of their behaviour and buying patterns online and also the ability to analyse this data to come up with offers that satiate their need in future as well.