Customer Engagement

Definition

Customer engagement occurs when a customer interacts with a particular brand. That can include opening an app, visiting a website, commenting on a social media post, reading an email, tapping on a push notification, or stopping by a brick and mortar store. Many brands use customer outreach—via email, push notifications, in-app messages, social postings, and other channels—to encourage more consistent engagement among members of their audience. Customer engagement is often tracked by brands in order to help them understand whether their campaigns and brand message are resonating and to give them insight into whether a given customer or audience segment is in danger of churning.

Usage

While “customer engagement” is a pretty clear, straightforward way to refer to interactions with a given brand, the term can still feel somewhat jargon-y. That’s because the term can refer to a wide variety of different actions and behaviors across different platforms, verticals, and companies, making it hard to be sure what someone is referring to when they use it. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a valuable term—it is—but when you use it, make sure you’re clear about what you mean by engagement (for instance, are you talking about website visits, or email opens, or...?); otherwise, you may end up confusing people.