Improving Engagement Report Smart Insights

Improving Engagement
2018
Lifecycle Marketing Automation and Email marketing strategies to
increase audience engagement
Authors: Dr Dave Chaffey and Robert Jones, SmartInsights.com

Part of the Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Toolkit
Content
Executive summary .........................................................................3
Introduction: Increasing sales through lifecycle engagement ....5
Why is engagement one of the most important

marketing challenges?.................................................................. 10
How does your engagement planning compare?

Benchmarking your capability...................................................... 15
Engagement techniques used...................................................... 17
Keeping audiences engaged through time .................................22
Managing and improving engagement ........................................25
Appendix: Methodology and demographics of respondents ....32
Improving Engagement 2018

© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other 2
Executive
Keeping our audiences engaged to meet our conversion and retention goals is one of
the biggest challenges for marketers today. To help review the state of audience
engagement for prospects and customers, Smart Insights teamed up with Adestra to
create this report giving practical recommendations of how you can increase
engagement in 2018.
The aim of the research is to investigate how marketers are using online platforms
and automation tools, evaluate the techniques they are using and provide you with a
benchmark to compare your own marketing against. The main findings and recommen-
dations are:
1. Engagement benefits and challenges

The two biggest commercial benefits of having a focus on a planned approach to
audience engagement are rated as creating more personalised communications
through automation and improving integration of communication (each selected by over
a quarter of respondents).
The two biggest barriers to meeting these challenges are gaining a single data view
(31% of respondents agreed) and lack of an integrated customer lifecycle engagement
plan (according to 25% of respondents).
Recommendations: Create conversion models to prove the business case; select and
design data attribution and reporting solutions which give a single customer view and
use content mapping to map customer journeys for different personas clearly.
2. Engagement capabilities
When rating their capabilities for engaging audiences according to our five-point
capability engagement scale, nearly two thirds (62%) are at the initial or managed
capability level.
27% of businesses rate themselves as 3 which is ‘Defined’ and just 11% rated
themselves higher.
Recommendation: Benchmark your online engagement capabilities across the

customer lifecycle to compare your approach to best-in-class and take actions to
improve.

Executive summary
3. Engagement techniques used

Use of different types of automated emails was lower than expected. The most popular
was a single welcome email which is used by just over 4 in 10 (41%), followed by re-
engagement of inactive subscribers (34%), behaviour-based triggers (such as
abandoned cart). Multiple welcome emails (a sequence) is used by 3 in 10 (30%). Using
un-targeted, un personalised communications was surprisingly common with 22% not
using any segmentation. 63% used only 2 to 5 segments. However, dynamic content
insertion is used by 4 in 10 marketers
Recommendation: Map potential customer lifecycle interactions to utilise the

automation and targeting features available to you.
4. Keeping audiences engaged through time

Retargeting using ads or email reminders is a popular technique for ongoing audience
engagement. We found that many are either planning or already using ad network
retargeting, Google AdWords Remarketing and retargeting using social networks where
applicable. For email communications, on average, the most popular frequency for
broadcast is once or 2- 3 times per month, accounting for nearly two-thirds (64%) of
respondents. Does this mean that businesses are missing out by not sending at least
weekly communications?
Recommendation: Don’t miss the opportunities of ad retargeting on different

platforms. Ensure you get the balance of email frequency right by defining a contact
policy for acceptable minimum and maximum frequencies per week or month including
campaign, newsletter and automated emails.
5. Managing and improving engagement

Who is responsible for audience engagement? Almost half (48%) said it was a shared
responsibility; just over a quarter (27%) had an individual with a defined responsibility
and a quarter (25%) said there is no defined person or no clear responsibility for
engagement at all. Adoption of management techniques such as persona-based
customer journeys and content mapping, AB testing of emails and last click
measurement is widely used (these techniques are used by more than half of all
businesses). More advanced techniques such as attribution models, multivariate testing
and RFM are seldom used.
Recommendations: Ensure there is defined responsibility for measuring and

improving audience engagement. Build in testing to all communication activities. Create
a testing plan for a continuous testing programme.

Introduction
Increasing sales through lifecycle
engagement
We believe that for businesses to fully embrace the potential of digital marketing,
audience engagement planning needs more focus since many businesses are failing
to exploit the range of personalised marketing communications options available
today. This isn’t surprising if we consider the number of channels and techniques
available to improve communications across the customer lifecycle.
This visual, structured around the Smart Insights RACE planning framework1, shows
some of the many ways available today to communicate with prospects and
customers. These include paid, owned and earned media across a desktop website,
mobile, email or physical experience.
You can see that the challenge of engagement is to exploit all relevant potential
touchpoints when they are delivered across different platforms using different
marketing technologies such as email marketing and marketing platforms, paid media
advertising platforms, and content and commerce management systems across mobile
and desktop platforms.
1
[Smar t Insights ar ticle: An introduction to the R ACE Planning framewor k]

Introductio
In this research report we will review communications techniques and marketing

technologies that brands are using to get commercial benefits from engagement. Our
survey findings and report recommendations will enable you to review how your
business uses engagement as well as give you practical ideas to improve it.
What is engagement and why is it important?

We can see from the diagram that many potential online and offline interactions
happen through the customer lifecycle from prospect to customer to repeat customer.
We need to be careful to precisely define engagement since the term is often used
loosely to describe short-term audience engagement with a single communication,
such as when a prospect engages with a single landing page or email. While this
short-term interaction is important to boost response from these communications,
what is more important to business success today, and far more challenging is
long-term engagement through time with our prospects, customers and subscribers.
There are so many competing paid, owned and earned communications today across
media sites, blogs, social media and email, that to get initial cut-through and then
maintain ongoing interactions as suggested by the lifecycle is the real challenge and
opportunity we will address in this report.
To help explain audience engagement, this definition shows the long-term

perspective
and what it is aimed at achieving.
Improving Audience Engagement involves:
“Repeated interactions through the customer lifecycle prompted by online and

offline communications aimed at strengthening the long-term emotional,
psychological and physical investment a customer has with a brand”.
This is the broad scope, when we refer to engagement in this report. The definition
does not include personalisation since many communications are not personalised, but
given the opportunity that personalised communications present and their impact on
response, we will review the impact of personalisation on engagement.
This definition is based on an original definition created by Richard Sedley, now partner
at EY – Seren, it was developed when working alongside Dave Chaffey through
consulting with clients on how to improve engagement as explained in this article2.
The goal is to
2
Smart Insights article: Customer engagement Interview with Richard Sedley

Introductio
initially gain cut-through to encourage initial interaction with repeated interactions

leading to the commercial goals of lead generation, sales and repeated sales. A related
5Is Engagement framework3 of involvement, interaction, intimacy, influence on the
individual has also been developed by analysts at Forrester.
Research aim and methodology

This research is aimed at providing a benchmark for how marketing communications can
be improved to increase customer engagement. The research will help marketers to
benchmark and adopt the best strategies for their marketing communications. In this
report we focus on engagement, to evaluate how marketers are engaging customers
across the lifecycle.
The research sample is 600 worldwide respondents, mainly from a senior marketing
background. Further details on the demographics of the respondents are available in
the appendix.
About Smart Insights

Smart Insights is a publisher and learning platform with an audience of more than ½
million unique visitors each month. We provide our members with actionable marketing
resources to help them develop their personal marketing skills and help their
businesses improve their commercial results from integrated digital marketing. More
than 150,000 12 month active freemium members use our blog, sample marketing
templates and twice weekly Digital Marketing Essentials newsletter to follow best
practices and keep up-to-date with the developments that matter in digital marketing.
Thousands of Individual and Business members from over 100 countries use our
premium planning and management toolkits, templates, guides, interactive graders and
video courses to Plan, Manage and Optimize their marketing using the Smart Insights
RACE Planning framework.
About the report authors

Dr Dave Chaffey is co-CEO and co-founder of digital marketing
management advice site Smart Insights. He is author of 5
bestselling books on Ecommerce including Digital Marketing:
Strategy, Implementation and Practice and was recognised by
the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing
‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of
marketing.
3
Smart Insights free member guide: Digital Mar keting M odels

Introductio
Robert Jones Is Senior Research Analyst and Member Content

Co-ordinator at Smart Insights, responsible for the content strategy
of all guides and resources and also responsible for producing
Smart Insights digital marketing research reports. He works on
member research, improving user experience of the Smart Insights
site, our partner research reports and helps produce our member
content. He is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS)
and has over 5 years’ experience in Insight, UX and Marketing.

Introductio
Introduction by Adestra CEO, Henry Hyder-

Smith
Email consistently tops the charts in terms of marketing
return on investment, and remains an invaluable channel to
engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. The
development over the past few years of increasingly
sophisticated tools and techniques to intelligently segment,
personalize and automate email communications has
brought with it enormous potential. Brands can now target
and engage their entire customer base with truly relevant
content on an individual basis, an approach we term ‘First-
Person Marketing’.
Guided by the principle of ‘bringing clarity to complexity’ Adestra equips marketers with
the tools, the knowledge and the support to guide them along the path to First-Person
Marketing. In line with this, we are pleased to share this Smart Insights report with you,
providing some understanding of the challenges marketers face and giving practical
recommendations for how to drive your customer engagement in 2018.
About Adestra
Adestra is a trusted provider of First-Person Marketing solutions for global and growing
brands.
The company’s industry-leading email platform provides a powerful

infrastructure for one-to-one, contextual messaging and marketing automation, helping
marketers communicate more effectively with their customers and subscribers. Robust
reporting features allow marketers to efficiently evaluate and optimize their campaign
results. The flexible structure and open integration architecture allow businesses to
connect disparate technology platforms to create a seamless customer journey.
Adestra was founded on the principle that marketing success takes more than
technology, which is why customer service is at the heart of its business. Adestra
continues to maintain one of the highest customer retention rates in the industry and is a
trusted partner for leading companies across the Globe. Adestra was proud winner of the
2014 and 2017 Customer Focus Award from the Customer Service Institute. It also won
Bronze for Customer Service Department of the Year at the 2017 Stevie Awards for
Customer Service, as well as being presented with the
2017 Supplier of the Year Award from one of its longest-standing clients,
UBM.
Established in 2004, Adestra has offices throughout the UK, USA, Canada and
Australia.

Introductio
For more information, please visit adestra.com

1 Why is engagement one of the most
important marketing challenges?
As we explained in the introduction, improved engagement across the customer

lifecycle gives an opportunity for more relevant, more contextual personalised
communications powered by marketing technology to improve commercial
outcomes like increase leads and sales. Yet engagement is a broad concept, so it’s
important to success to define engagement and be clear on the goals of engagement
and how to overcome implementation challenges.
The benefits and challenges of engagement

Which benefits should encourage increased focus on engagement? To gain buy-in from
senior management for an audience engagement programme, the commercial benefits
need to be clear, since the link to ROI may not be obvious in the way that it may be for
paid media advertising investments, for example.
In this research, we found that most marketers believe that engagement does have
commercial benefits, with using automation for personalisation and integrated
customer experiences highlighted as the biggest benefits. The need to improve
content quality and advocacy were also rated highly. It’s clear that a focus on
engagement helps deliver on the promise of marketing automation and content
marketing which have been important trends in marketing over the last few years.
We’re also reminded of the importance of delivering seamless customer experiences,
relationship-building and consistent messaging across different communications
channels and mobile to desktop platforms.

1
5 Why is engagement
Managing one of
and improving the most important marketing
engagement
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION

1:
Create conversion models to prove the business
case
To prove forecast business benefits of engagement we recommend you

create spreadsheet-based models to show incremental response, revenue
and lifetime value from an engagement programme based on the size of
your website audience and email subscribers.
Access:
http://bit.ly/smartbudgets
What are the barriers to improving engagement that marketers and businesses must
overcome so that we can deliver on its promise? There are two main barriers or
challenges which, perhaps surprisingly, aren’t directly related to the martech (as you
can see from the chart below, martech is mentioned as a challenge by just 13% of
respondents).

1
5 Why is engagement
Managing one of
engagement
Data issues, specifically the lack of an integrated customer data view mentioned here
by 3 in 10 marketers (31%) are not easy to resolve. This means that many businesses
don’t have visibility of how customers are responding to different communications
channels such as search, email and social media marketing. It may also not be clear
how communications can drive sales and ROI. After all, to encourage sales, multiple
touchpoints will often be needed across different touchpoints.
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 2:

Select and design data attribution and reporting solutions which give
a single customer view
To solve the single customer view problem, companies need to choose

solutions that report customer behaviour and sales response across multiple
channels.

1
5 Why is engagement
Managing one of
engagement
Our respondents also mentioned the challenge of planning, i.e. developing an

integrated communications plan. This suggests the need for customer journeys and
corresponding triggered messaging to be clearly defined.
At Smart Insights, we exist to help marketers deliver better strategies through better,
integrated planning and we commonly hear this is a problem. A quarter (25%) of
respondents to this survey highlighted that a lack of integrated customer lifecycle
engagement plan was a challenge.
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 3:

Use content mapping to map customer journeys for different personas clearly
Detailed touchpoint mapping to define which messages are delivered at

different points in the customer lifecycle is required.
http://bit.ly/smartpersonas
Which martech limitations need to be managed?

In today’s digital world of communications, selecting the right types of marketing
technology and customising them for a business is important to successful audience
engagement. Yet, with so many different categories and vendors of digital technology
as shown in our Martech wheel1, it can be difficult to select the most capable solution.
We asked about some of the common limitations marketers are finding with technology.
Responses suggest that there are some common problems ‘across the board’.
Although usability is naturally often given strong emphasis by vendors, other less
‘visual’ limitations are more common with data integration (43%); data, analytics and
reporting (39%) and personalisation capabilities (35%) mentioned most often.
1
Essential Digital Mar keting Tools

1
5 Why is engagement
Managing one of
engagement
Although there is much hype currently about Artificial Intelligence and Machine
Learning, it seems that this is a relatively minor limitation (rated as significant by 25%),
although it’s likely to become more important through time.

How does your engagement
2 planning compare?
Benchmarking your capability.
Given the challenges this research has identified and the importance of audience
engagement, we recommend that businesses assess their engagement capabilities in a
structured way as part of planning a better approach to engagement.
Where do marketers feel they are when it comes to their engagement capabilities? We
showed survey respondents this engagement capability assessment (one of a series
available free to all members on our website1) to respondents and ask them to rate
themselves.
ONLINE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT Improve your online customer engagement by using

our visual checklist to review your capabilities for
EXCELLENCE REVIEW management, evaluation and personalisation.
#DIGITALBENCHMARKING
5. Optimised
4. Quantified
3. Defined
2. Managed
Full lifecycle touchpoint to
1. Initial content mapping
Full, optimised lifecycle
Contact strategies touchpoint mapping
mapped to content and (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU)
Plans for engaging with
A. Strategy and No audience lifecycle promos for some email Not optimised
content marketing in parts
Planning engagement plan of lifecycle and paid activity
B. Data and Path analysis in analytics Detailed customer journey Basic attribution. RF(M) Attribution models. Cross-
Limited understanding and content mapping for
audience Simple funnels and analysis. True 360o view of channel analysis
of profile and journeys personas
analysis personas customer. e.g. panels
C. Targeting via 3-5 segments, e.g. basic Nurture and abandon Reactivation. Content
None Predictive analytics and
Email automation demographics, prospects Multi-step welcome automation for
Broadcast newsletter and machine learning (AI)
and messaging Simple autoresponse Next best product upsell Enewsletters.
Content for some Basic personalisation. Cross site-journey

D. Targeting via No personalisation or Optimising
personas. Mobile Email ‘Mobile adaptive. personalisation on mobile
web experiences segmented content personalisation
responsive. and desktop
E. Integration: Simple cross-channel Sense-respond emails Programmatic

Website not integrated with triggered by web visits Multichannel interactions
Paid-Owned- signposts and offers. prospecting.
other channels Retargeting (paid media) analysed and optimised
Earned Social media integration. Social sign-in.
No defined responsibility Defined individual and Dedicated optimisation Clear responsibilities and
Ad hoc - cross-functional
F. Responsibility for engagement and team responsibilities and BI team (larger workflow to enable agile,
responsibility
customer experience. organisations) ‘real-time’ updates
Quality of interactions Value of interactions. Engagement dashboards

Volume of interactions. Detailed cross-channel
G. Evaluation through analytics. Ad Segmented analytics.
No proactive use of with hurdle rates for attribution analysis.
and KPIs hoc surveys. Regular surveys.
analytics different segments
“Un-targeted.” “Group targeting” “Personalised communications” “Dynamic experiences“ “State-of-the-art”
Improve your ROI from Online marketing with

Smart Insights member resources. Check out our hub page http://bit.ly/smartengagement Join our Expert members to download best practice advice
for our free blog articles and member reports. and templates on improving Ecommerce Marketing.
1
Free download: Digital Mar keting Benchmar king templates

2 How does your engagement planning compare? Benchmarking your capability.
The research shows that most survey respondents (nearly two thirds or 62%) are at the
initial or managed capability level. Kudos to the 27% of businesses that rate
themselves as “3. Defined” (or higher, just 11%). This is a good target level of
competence which means that you are deploying most of the best practices and
technology options available, but the approach is not fully optimised.
But more advanced businesses rate themselves as quantified or optimised.
As expected, over half of respondents fall into levels 1 and 2, but we also see almost 3
in 10 (28%) who rate themselves as level 3 – defined. And more than 1 in 10 are also in
levels 4 or 5. It’s great to see 4 in 10 (39%) feel they are at least at the managed stage.

4:
Use content mapping to map customer journeys for different personas
clearly
Use our free visual benchmark templates for online engagement and all
key digital channels to compare your approach to best-in-classs and take
actions to improve.

3 Engagement techniques used
As we saw in the first section, the benefits of engagement include using Marketing
Automation technologies to deliver more relevant, more contextual communications
which should boost response and ROI.
Delivering multi-channel communications is complex due to the number of options

needed, as Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights shows in his book Digital Marketing:
Strategy, Implementation and Practice where he shows that what we’re trying to
achieve through engagement is:
A Multi-channel Communications Strategy

Customised for Individual Prospects and Customers forming different segments
across a defined customer lifecycle
which...
delivers the Right Message
featuring the Right Value Proposition (product, service or experience)
across different devices (desktop, mobile and tablet)
with the Right Tone
at the Right Time
with the Right Frequency and Interval
using the Right Media / Communications channels
to achieve...
Right balance of value between consumer and brand
To achieve this nirvana, the marketing automation systems need to be set up with the
right types of automated message combined with the right targeting techniques.
In this section of the research, we’ll review how businesses are using different types of
automation and targeting.
Email engagement sequences

Before we dive into segmentation and targeting used, let’s look at what email marketing
sequences are used from those available within marketing automation.
The most popular was a single welcome email which is used by just over 4 in 10 (41%),
followed by re-engagement of inactive subscribers (34%), behaviour based triggers
(such as abandoned cart). Multiple welcome emails (a sequence) is also used by 3 in
10 (30%).

3 Engagement techniques
This shows the popularity of welcome sequences and initial welcome emails.Yet
although these techniques are the most popular, it’s surprising that an even higher
proportion of businesses aren’t using them. Related techniques like progressive
profiling, although gaining popularity, are still only used by just under a quarter (23%).
Reactivation and behaviour based triggers are used by many marketers too, it’s great
to see the popularity of such techniques and to see marketers using the technology
available to them. This is thanks to the rise of marketing automation platforms.
Marketers are using such techniques which they believe help to convert and build
relationships with customers, but customers are demanding more personalisation than
ever. This means techniques such as date-based campaigns, purchase prompts and
progressive profiling will be needed to meet customer expectations. Customers accept
we want to advertise to them, but they want it to be as personalised as possible.


5:
Map lifecycle interaction to use automation and targeting features
To make the most of the automation features possible, map out at a plan for
the different types of welcome, nurture, upsell and reactivation techniques
you can use.
Members can use our Email sequence contact strategy template to map
out the messaging for the sequence
Increasing relevance using segmentation and targeting

We’ve looked at the email sequences marketers use, now let’s look at how well they
are targeting to personalise their content. These answers are quite surprising, since we
might expect that demographic targeting; varying email message copy and offer for
different audiences would be used by more than one third of businesses. This
suggests that two thirds of businesses don’t use this classic method of segmentation
and instead, are sending unsegmented, un-targeted ‘e-blasts’instead.
Taken together, behavioural and demographic targeting are used the most – by over
half over respondents in total. Customer value is also important to 2 in 10 (20%)
marketers.

To review degree of targeting in another way, we asked respondents for the number of
segments used within their email marketing across all campaigns and newsletter. It’s
a surprise that 22% send the same message to everyone as personalisation has been
shown to increase conversions and loyalty.
Generally, the number of segments used will be growing, as technology allows us to

collect more data to use for personalisation. We can use automation to deliver
dynamic content targeting of copy and offers for each segment.
The chart shows that many marketers are using just 2-5 segments when targeting with
email, with over 6 in 10 (63%) respondents indicating this. However, this is at least
better than the 2 in 10 (22%) of marketers who are sending the same message to
everyone.
14% of marketers are more advanced, using between 5 and 25
segments.
Personalisation types used to engage with email?

Now let’s look at the types of personalisation being used. The least surprising finding
is that email personalisation based on dynamic content is used the most, by 4 in 10
marketers.

But then comes a surprise: just over 3 in 10 (31%) of those who use direct mail are
ensuring it is personalised. More people are using personalised direct mail and email
over on-site personalisation – though these have had many, many years to flourish.
Marketers clearly still value direct mail and the personalisation must be providing return
on investment. Few use real time data in emails (8%) while on-site personalisation,
such as product recommendations (26%) and personalised on-site content (20%) is still
being used by more than 2 in 10 marketers, but it’s used less than might be expected
given that it’s not a new technique. Email personalisation is common and fairly
inexpensive.
The question affecting adoption of website personalisation is whether this is due to the
value not being clear to marketers, or whether it’s perhaps too complicated or
expensive to implement. There is a wide range of personalisation vendors, offering the
technology and know-how.

3 Engagement techniques used
4
Keeping audiences engaged
through time
In most cases, conversion to sale doesn’t happen on the first visit to a website.
Audiences need to be wooed and enticed through multiple persuasive communications.
Likewise, for existing customers, reminders to cross-sell or up-sell are effective, but
when is too much, too much? Yet, we don’t want our communications to be
overbearing. So, what is the right frequency to use for different communications, both
within a single channel and across multiple channels. We’ll explore these challenges in
this section.
Techniques used to achieve integrated

engagement?
Marketers are always looking for the best techniques to use for re-engagement. Let’s
look now at which automated techniques they are using.
Retargeting is a popular technique for encouraging ongoing engagement. We found

that many are either planning or already doing ad network retargeting, Google AdWords
retargeting and retargeting using social networks where applicable. We also found that
many are also sending follow-up emails based on interaction with products or content
and previous emails. It’s great to see marketers taking advantage of the automated
techniques available to them. The key finding is that website personalisation, based on
previous purchases, is relatively under-used. Many are planning to do it, which means
they are thinking about it, but are not yet doing it.

4 Keeping audiences engaged through
What email frequency is best?

Let’s start by reviewing how often brands are emailing their subscriber list. Email
marketers will always have the challenge of over-mailing and risking annoying their
subscribers or under-mailing and risking limiting their responses.
On average, the most popular categories of response are once or 2 to 3 times per
month, accounting for nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents. Does this mean that
businesses are missing out by not sending at least weekly communications? The
quarter of respondents who mail just once per month do seem to be missing out.
Automation can help here, by sending more relevant ‘pre-prepared’ contextual nurture
messages depending on type of content, products or offers used on site.

4 Keeping audiences engaged through

6:
Define a Contact Policy and test optimal frequencies
Ensure you get the balance of email frequency right by defining a contact
policy for acceptable minimum and maximum frequencies per week or month
including campaign, newsletter and automated emails. Plan tests and research
which help define the right frequency.

5
Managing and improving
engagement
In the final section of the report we consider how management of engagement can be
best be improved. We cover responsibilities, measurement and testing, all important for
using people, process and martech tools to improve results.
Who is responsible for audience engagement and customer

experience?
Although all businesses would agree ‘engagement’ is positive and necessary, it seems
it’s not clear where responsibilities for managing this activity and the closely related
‘customer experience’ should lie.
We asked respondents if they have a defined person responsible for the quality of
audience engagement or customer experience. Almost half (48%) said it was a shared
responsibility which is logical given it cuts across branding, communications,
experience and technology. Just over a quarter (27%) said they did have an individual
with a defined responsibility which may be preferable for a focus to prioritise and
implement the recommendations covered earlier in this report. Finally, a quarter
(25%) said there is no defined person or no clear responsibility for engagement at all!
The potential implications here are clear: lack of a strategy, insufficient people
resources; inadequate martech and, at a practical level’ missed opportunities to send
relevant communications which impact sales at the best points in the customer
lifecycle.

5 Managing and improving
Techniques for planning and managing audience

engagement
Where there are sufficient resources to manage engagement, many different
techniques have become popular to improve engagement and sales. We asked about
the most commonly used. The most popular, used by over half (55%) is customer
journey mapping and content mapping. Marketers are using research and customer
journey mapping to their advantage, enjoying the benefits research and mapping have
on ROI. Almost half (46%) also use customer personas as a technique which can be
effectively combined with journey mapping as explained in our persona toolkit1.
1
Smar t Insights member ’s resource: Customer Per sona toolkit

As expected techniqus to improve customer focus areimportant to marketers, with

around half using personas and journey mapping and almost 4 in 10 (38%) using
segmentation in analytics and almost 3 in 10 (28%) using path analysis in analytics.
Many are also using surveys, such as customer satisfaction (22%) and customer intent
surveys (21%). Usability studies are also used by just under 2 in 10 (18%). However,
any business serious about gaining value from their analytics should be using these
techniques.
How should engagement be evaluated?

Now let’s look at how marketers assess engagement with their brand and the impact on
commercial performance. Most (62%) are using the basic “last click” method of
attribution which is the standard in services like Google and Adobe Analytics. Just 10%
are using more sophisticated attribution available in these services. Over half (56%)
also check email subscriber rates and website activity levels over time. More complex
analysis such as RFM recency-frequency-monetary value are used by just 13%.

Almost 3 in 10 (28%) are also using qualitative scores such as Net Promoter Score or
surveys. Again it’s good to see marketers embracing customer insights, but we would
expect more to be working on these types of customer research.
Data management
We asked also respondents to rank their data management challenges on a scale of
1 to 5 for low to high. We found that reviewing multiple touch points for engagement
(attribution) was the biggest challenge, with lack of 360-degree customer view being
their smallest challenge out of the choices we gave them. Targeting was also a big
challenge alongside the lack of analysis skills.

Which techniques are tested to improve relevance and

response of email marketing?
Measuring, testing and improving is the backbone of good marketing. It doesn’t stop
when a communication is sent or served, businesses should immediately review how
best to improve it next time. The research shows that email marketers use AB testing
across subject lines, creative and body copy. Over half (51%) do AB tests of subject
lines and 4 in 10 (40%) test the time of sending. Most embrace AB testing but not
multivariate testing, which involves more than 2 versions of a creative or layout. Almost
3 in 10 (27%) do AB testing of layouts, formats or creative. A quarter (25%) test body
copy and a quarter (25%) test frequency of sending.

AB testing is widely used and accepted in email marketing, it’s easy, it doesn’t take
much time and usually can be done within the email service providers’ platform.
Conclusion – A summary of recommendations to improve

customer engagement
Across the report we have seen that businesses have put many best practices in place
to assess and improve how engagement is managed. Yet, we have also seen that
many aren’t deploying the best practices. As a final takeaway, here is our list of top
practices which we recommend you review to see where you improve your approach.
1. Create a culture of focus on engagement in your business. Ensure there is a

defined person or team responsible for it.
2. Plan. Create a plan to review and improve engagement across the customer
lifecycle targeted to specific personas.

3. Personalise. Review your use of segmentation, targeting and personalisation using

marketing technology. Define tactics to improve the relevance of communications
through the customer lifecycle for different types of audience.
4. Measure. Evaluate the quality of audience engagement with your communications

by putting in place a measurement programme. Ensure this includes short-term
campaign activities and longer-term engagement across months and years.
5. Test. Build in testing to all communication activities. Create a testing plan for a
continuous testing programme.

Appendix
Methodology and demographics
of respondents
The survey was completed online during July 2017. There were precisely 600
respondents from all over the world. The majority of respondents came from the UK
and Europe and the United States.
Types of business
Those who took the survey came from a range of business sectors reflecting the broad
audience of Smart Insights members and Adestra customers who were asked to
complete the survey.
Marketing Services Provider

Mobile
Media /Entertainment / Publishing
Retail
Public sector / Government / Education
Agency
Tech Startup
Construction / Engineering / Automotive / Manufacturing
FMCG / Consumer
Finance / Banking / Insurance
Travel, Venues and Leisure
Pharmaceutical / Chemical
Transport / Logistics / Distribution
Utilities
Automotive
Electrical
IT and Telecoms
Charities
Most 7 in 10 (67%) of the respondents came from Small or medium businesses,

reflecting the importance of these businesses, by volume. Almost 2 in 10 (18%) came
from large international businesses.

7 Appendix
Roles
Most respondents came from either a marketing background, such as marketing
manager or digital marketing manager, with many owners and heads of department
too.
Owner / Proprietor
Board Director / CEO
Non Board director
Head of Department
Marketing Manager
Ecommerce Manager
Digital Marketing Manager
Digital Marketing Specialist (Executive)
Student
Consultant
Marketing Executive
Other
Thank you to everyone who took part in our survey, without you this research would not
be possible! And thanks also to you as a reader of the report. We hope you found this
report interesting and most of all useful for improving your engagement. We’d be happy
to accept feedback, please send an email addressed to our research team: support@
smartinsights.com.


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Improving Engagement

Authors: Dr Dave Chaffey and Robert Jones, SmartInsights.com

Executive summary .........................................................................3

Introduction: Increasing sales through lifecycle engagement ....5

Why is engagement one of the most important

How does your engagement planning compare?

Engagement techniques used...................................................... 17

Keeping audiences engaged through time .................................22

Managing and improving engagement ........................................25

Appendix: Methodology and demographics of respondents ....32

Improving Engagement 2018

1. Engagement benefits and challenges

Recommendation: Benchmark your online engagement capabilities across the

Improving Engagement 2018

3. Engagement techniques used

Recommendation: Map potential customer lifecycle interactions to utilise the

4. Keeping audiences engaged through time

Recommendation: Don’t miss the opportunities of ad retargeting on different

5. Managing and improving engagement

Recommendations: Ensure there is defined responsibility for measuring and

Improving Engagement 2018

Improving Engagement 2018

In this research report we will review communications techniques and marketing

What is engagement and why is it important?

To help explain audience engagement, this definition shows the long-term

Improving Audience Engagement involves:

“Repeated interactions through the customer lifecycle prompted by online and

Improving Engagement 2018

initially gain cut-through to encourage initial interaction with repeated interactions

Research aim and methodology

About Smart Insights

About the report authors

Improving Engagement 2018

Robert Jones Is Senior Research Analyst and Member Content

Improving Engagement 2018

Introduction by Adestra CEO, Henry Hyder-

The company’s industry-leading email platform provides a powerful

Improving Engagement 2018

For more information, please visit adestra.com

Improving Engagement 2018

As we explained in the introduction, improved engagement across the customer

The benefits and challenges of engagement

Improving Engagement 2018

KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION

To prove forecast business benefits of engagement we recommend you

Improving Engagement 2018

KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 2:

To solve the single customer view problem, companies need to choose

Improving Engagement 2018

Our respondents also mentioned the challenge of planning, i.e. developing an

KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 3:

Detailed touchpoint mapping to define which messages are delivered at

Which martech limitations need to be managed?

Improving Engagement 2018

Improving Engagement 2018

ONLINE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT Improve your online customer engagement by using

EXCELLENCE REVIEW management, evaluation and personalisation.

Content for some Basic personalisation. Cross site-journey

E. Integration: Simple cross-channel Sense-respond emails Programmatic

Quality of interactions Value of interactions. Engagement dashboards

“Un-targeted.” “Group targeting” “Personalised communications” “Dynamic experiences“ “State-of-the-art”

Improve your ROI from Online marketing with

Improving Engagement 2018