Digital Customer Engagement: Guide with Examples

Digital customer engagement is the key to online business success. The "see, buy, forget" formula is in the distant past. Today, most companies try to build long-term relationships with consumers. Why do they want to do this, and what methods do they use to achieve this goal? Keep reading to find out.

What is Digital Customer Engagement

The meaning of digital customer engagement is creating a strong connection between a business and its target audience. It aims to build the foundations for a long-term customer relationship starting from the first contact. This is the first step to retaining a customer who may become a regular customer or even a brand advocate in the future.

Digital customer engagement involves using various online communication channels, starting with search engine optimization (SEO) and contextual advertising (PPC). But you can also use social media, messengers, push notifications in mobile apps, email, and even video conferencing. 

Even those who have yet to delve into this topic know what digital customer engagement is, as they have seen examples of it. They include:

• birthday greetings from the business;
• incentive discounts and bonuses for the first purchase;
• personal offers;
• email newsletters;
• surveys on the quality of services, etc.

Digital Customer Engagement: 4 Benefits

In today's business environment, with its high competition, wide range of products, and fast-moving trends, building strong connections with consumers becomes almost the only way to survive. Let's see how the success of any company depends on digital customer engagement.

1. Increasing the lifetime value

The product-choosing process is often based on emotions. Embryo's statistics show that positive emotions increase conversion rates by 23%, the amount of the first purchase by 40%, and the likelihood of recommending a brand to friends by 71%. Thus, a higher level of engagement means more frequent purchases for a larger amount, as well as an increase in the customer base due to experience marketing.

2. Increase loyalty

The best marketer is a satisfied customer. They will not only return for more purchases. They will bring their friends, relatives, and acquaintances. If you make enough effort and find the right approach, a customer will defend the brand's name online, leaving positive comments and refuting negative ones.

3. Close acquaintance with the audience

To understand what digital customer engagement is, you first need to identify your customers’ key characteristics, needs, and preferences. This will provide invaluable information for launching highly efficient targeted marketing campaigns. Improving customer relationships will also make it easier to obtain this data in the future.

4. Business sustainability

Most crises come when least expected - they are difficult to predict in advance. The best protection against them is to have a loyal audience of regular customers. It will allow you to survive hard times without significantly increasing marketing costs and expanding your customer base.

Digital Customer Engagement Strategy with Examples

Let us explain how to build strong relationships with consumers. We will provide examples to help you choose a digital customer engagement strategy for attracting customers.

1. Personalized offers

Let's imagine a person who wants to vacation in Bora Bora. They have probably dreamed about a long-awaited vacation in a tropical paradise for a while during their everyday routine activities. And what happens if, at this very moment, a customer receives an interesting offer with a personal appeal, a personal discount for a tour, and pleasant bonuses? Most likely, their hand will reach for the order button. At the very least, they will want to contact the travel agency to clarify the terms and conditions of the trip. 

How do companies know about such desires? It's very simple - they have many tools at their disposal:

• cookies on websites;
• search history;
• information from registration forms;
• history of products viewed online;
• mobile application data.

Not to mention predictive artificial intelligence that can identify key customer characteristics based on their behavior. 

Personalized offers based on such data can be sent via email or SMS. Thanks to Claspo, pop-ups will take over the baton of personalization on your website. With our smart targeting, you can show pop-ups to visitors who came from a specific campaign. For example, if you send two email campaigns to two different audience segments, these segments will see pop-ups with different personalized offers. It will increase the likelihood of purchase and customer loyalty to your brand.

A vivid example of this engagement strategy is personalized push notifications in the Uber Eats app. The company creates individual offers for its customers based on their tastes, habits, and traditions. It takes into account many factors, including current location, nearby restaurants, and recent orders. According to Food on Demand, this personalization marketing campaign got feedback from 57% of Uber Eats users.

2. Multichannel presence

Companies should not impose strict restrictions on their customers. Customers should choose the best way to communicate: online chat on the website, accounts in popular social networks and messengers, phone numbers for voice communication, or contact details for video conferencing. With a little effort, you can show genuine concern for your customers, who can get all the information they need right now without any additional effort. 

However, the multichannel approach requires modern technological solutions, including CRM, that support all the necessary communication methods. It is very important that company employees can pick up a dialog that started in another channel. Saving time and effort for customers will mean higher satisfaction and greater engagement. 

British Airways is an example of this digital customer engagement strategy. The airline was one of the first in the market to establish a presence on all possible platforms and allow its customers to contact it in any convenient way. Its specialists worked with a centralized CRM that downloaded complete information from the database within seconds. This allowed the business to generate £322 million in revenue, fully recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you choose a multichannel approach, Claspo will help you implement it. With the help of our pop-ups, you can promote available communication channels on your site and offer visitors to contact you in any convenient way. Claspo also integrates seamlessly with many CRMs. Thus, all customer data collected with the help of our pop-ups is transferred to your CRM to build consistent and personalized communication.

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3. Analysis of the level of satisfaction

It's very simple: just ask customers how satisfied they are with the service. Many marketing techniques are based on this principle, including the famous NPS probability of product recommendation. This data will be enough to understand whether to change the business promotion strategy, update the product line, or improve customer support. 

But there is one problem. Not all consumers want to participate in surveys, and not everyone gives honest answers—some just choose an answer at random to avoid wasting time. Therefore, top companies implement modern AI-based solutions to assess customer satisfaction based on behavioral factors.

In this case, one of the best examples of digital customer engagement is the corporate messenger Slack. If a user encounters difficulties, the program offers them a tip to solve the problem. If this situation repeats or cannot be resolved, the app offers to send feedback or contact technical support. At this point, a user's negative emotions are beneficial - they ensure that the response is as honest as possible.

4. Interactive loyalty program

Information from the Exploding Topics portal shows that the average American is registered in 16-17 loyalty programs of different brands. This is an excellent indicator from a marketer's point of view. It means that loyalty programs continue to be effective—they help to retain customers without requiring very high costs. 

At the same time, to stand out against numerous competitors, you need to create a truly unique marketing campaign. To do this, you can use the following tips:

• reward users for interacting with the company's product;
• motivate sharing positive reviews by organizing contests for the best reviews;
• create interactive quests - simple tasks designed to familiarize consumers with the brand or form an emotional bond;
• add gamification elements such as sweepstakes, level-ups, experience points, etc.

Nike is the best at this task. NikePlus Membership premium subscription holders get access to personalized workouts with expert advice and music selections. When exercising, they receive additional points in the loyalty program that can be spent on physical or digital products of the brand. According to Spike, this solution increased business revenue by 5% during the year.

Digital Customer Engagement Trends in 2024

For the second year in a row, generative artificial intelligence remains the No. 1 topic in digital marketing. It can be used in many ways for customer acquisition:

• creating chatbots for automated customer support;
• generating personalized offers;
• creating useful content for blogs and newsletters;
• translating and localizing websites;
• analyzing customer behavior, etc. 

However, the best application of AI is hyper-personalization. It allows websites and mobile applications to be rebuilt on the go. Their texts, images, and sometimes even video and structure are customized for each visitor, taking into account their needs and preferences. This allows for maximum conversion and engagement.

A relatively new trend is the use of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). Businesses use these technologies to provide their customers with the best possible experience. They allow customers to "try on" products, see the entire assortment with their own eyes in a three-dimensional demo, or get tips on how to use a particular product.

Another significant trend in digital customer engagement in 2024 is the emphasis on a high level of cybersecurity. The world's largest technology corporations and small companies gradually refuse third-party cookies and other centralized means of exchanging commercial information. They are replaced by the collection of zero-party data (data that customers share personally and voluntarily). According to the survey, 90% of marketers will prioritize collecting zero-party data for the coming year. You can easily follow their example with Claspo.

Add custom data input fields to subscription forms. For example, you can clarify preferences, favorite products from your assortment, wishes, or factors influencing the purchase to adapt your offers to customers' interests and needs. Your email and phone collection pop-ups can appear only for new site visitors and disappear for those who have already joined your mailing list.

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Another way to collect zero-party data is to conduct short surveys directly on the website. Place closed or open questions on Claspo pop-ups and display them at the correct times. For example:

• If visitors want to leave the site, ask them what went wrong,
• If the buyer has just placed an order, clarify whether they are satisfied with everything and have any wishes for the future,
• If your software user clicks the "Unsubscribe" button, invite them to share reasons for this solution or ask how you can motivate them to stay.

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In this way, you get first-hand insights for further improvements, fill customer profiles with new valuable information, and, most importantly, build honest and transparent communication with your audience, which definitely contributes to increased engagement.