As a marketer, you tirelessly explore ways to engage customers across all touchpoints. Measuring the impact of these strategies presents a significant challenge, necessitating the use of defined customer engagement metrics to gauge campaign success and effectively refine approaches for maximum effectiveness.
These customer engagement metrics offer data-backed information and insights into your campaign performance. Since customer engagement marketing looks different for different industries, the metrics to measure the impact will also vary.
In this blog, we have compiled the top 10 customer engagement metrics you need to gauge as a B2C brand. These metrics give you a top-level view and performance of your campaigns. This way, you will be able to understand which metrics are the most impactful for your brand.
What are Customer Engagement Metrics?
In marketing parlance, customer engagement metrics are a set of measurements that help quantify and give insights into how your brand is engaging with your customers.
These metrics include KPIs that tell you how well customers are interacting, communicating and connecting with your brand.
Customer engagement analytics is then used to understand KPIs in more depth. Brands harness this data to refine, adjust, and strategize their campaigns, aiming to enhance the overall customer experience.
Top 10 Customer Engagement Metrics to Measure
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of customer engagement strategies. Some of the top metrics are listed below
1. Conversion Rate
A conversion occurs when a user completes a specific action that is linked to an outcome. For example, you set up an abandoned cart campaign that prompts users to complete the purchase and make the payment. Similarly, a conversion can also mean downloading an app, subscribing to a mailing list, or registering for an event.
The conversion rate measures the percentage of users who complete these actions compared to the total number of users targeted. This metric is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and strategies.
2. Churn Rate
Churn rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of customers who stop using a company’s services during a specific time period. To calculate the churn rate, subtract the number of customers at the end of the period from the number at the start, divide the result by the initial number of customers, and multiply by 100. This figure helps businesses understand customer retention and attrition rates.
Knowing the churn rate is a critical customer engagement metric as it helps identify areas where you are losing customers the most. This helps in strategizing campaigns to retain and reduce customer churn.
There are various reasons why customers churn such as poor onboarding experience, bad customer service, poor user experience, complex navigation and lot more.
3. Retention Rate
On the other side of the churn rate lies retention rate. It is the total number of customers at the end of a time period as a percentage of total number of customers.
This customer engagement metric indicates how well your campaigns are performing. It indicates the level of engagement and connection your brand has with customers. These are also early indicators of brand loyalty and customer lifetime value.
While churn rate indicates lost customers, it is more of a reactive metric that provokes you to strategize retention strategies. On the other hand, retention rate can be considered a proactive metric since it indicates customers’ interest in your brand. While it shows a more positive outlook, campaigns for loyal customers to boost repeat purchases must be done to maintain consistent engagement with your brand.
4. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC, is crucial for evaluating customer engagement. It reveals the cost involved in acquiring new customers, helping businesses gauge the effectiveness of their marketing and sales strategies.
A lower CAC indicates more efficient engagement, as it means acquiring and retaining customers at a lower cost. By analyzing CAC in relation to customer engagement, companies can refine their strategies, optimize expenditures, and foster enduring customer relationships, boosting profitability and supporting sustainable growth.
5. Monthly Active Users (MAU)
MAU or monthly active users, one of the key customer engagement metrics, tracks the unique number of users engaging with your app each month, focusing on individual users rather than the total number of sessions.
MAUs indicate how actively users engage with your app. Compared to app downloads, MAUs are considered a better growth indicator of your app’s stickiness.
Cohort retention analysis, offered by customer engagement platforms, is another great way of measuring monthly active users and how actively users engage with your app. It helps clearly distinguish engagement metrics from growth metrics.
Learn the Secrets to TopKarir’s Daily Active Users Skyrocketing by 43% in Just 90 Days Using Netcore’s Customer Engagement Platform
6. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS quantifies the customer satisfaction level at any given point.
Net promoter score is done through surveys at any point in the customer journey, where customers are asked to rate their experience on a predefined scale. The scale range can vary anywhere between 1-5, 1-10, or even through graphics like emojis.
The formula to calculate NPS is dividing the number of positive responses by the total number of responses and multiplying that number by 100 to obtain the percentage.
While the NPS score primarily assesses satisfaction and brand perception, it can also serve as a metric to measure customer engagement.
NPS can be leveraged to measure the effectiveness of specific campaigns and communication channels by assessing the relevance of the messages received by customers. As a marketer, you can analyze these responses to refine and optimize your campaigns for better engagement and results.
7. Click-through Rate (CTR)
CTRs refer to the percentage of customers that clicked an email, SMS, push notification, or WhatsApp message after they opened and viewed the message.
It is a pivotal customer engagement metric, effectively showcasing the resonance of your campaigns with your audience.
CTRs measure the impact of your messaging in marketing campaigns. A high CTR rate means that customers resonate with your message and click on the messages they receive.
While delivery rates and views indicate the reach of your message, CTRs show the high-intent action customers undertake with your product or service.
8. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
One of the most popular customer engagement metrics is the CLTV or Customer Lifetime Value. It tells us the value a customer provides for your brand over the course of their lifetime as a customer.
There is no pre-defined number for your brand’s customer lifetime. The longer the customer stays with your brand, the more they will spend on your product or service. They will also go one step further and advocate for your brand.
When evaluating Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), it’s crucial not only to understand its value but also to identify the factors contributing to increases in CLTV.
See how The Body Shop transformed engagement and increased revenue by leveraging personalization to maximize CLTV
9. Feature Adoption Rate
This customer engagement metric measures the percentage of users who have used a specific feature of a product atleast once. This shows how many users have engaged with the new features that are launched.
This metric empowers product marketers and managers to discern which features their customers value and which may be redundant. Such insights are crucial for effectively managing product development, engineering support, and budget allocations, ensuring resources are optimized for maximum impact.
Marketers often use this metric when A/B testing new features. They can gauge adoption rates by exposing selected cohorts or segments to new features. This data informs rollout strategies and aids in crafting marketing campaigns to promote these new features effectively, ensuring resources are allocated where they have the greatest impact.
Find out how MPL improved user adoption of new home page features with the game-changing capabilities of Netcore’s No-code platform
10. Delivery Rate
One of the most common customer engagement metrics, this KPI tells us the percentage of messages successfully delivered.
While commonly associated with email marketing, it also applies equally to SMS, WhatsApp, mobile, and web push notifications.
Though deliverability has limited standalone value, when combined with open rates and click-through rates, it offers valuable insights. These combined metrics help you assess early-stage customer engagement and monitor the initial phases of the customer journey, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Recognizing the right metrics and using them to track customer engagement metrics is pivotal in your journey to better customer engagement for your B2C brand. By understanding and acting on these metrics, you position your brand to enhance interactions, deepen customer relationships, and boost retention, driving immediate gains and long-term loyalty.
Each metric provides unique insights, from understanding purchasing behavior to gauging the effectiveness of communication channels, ensuring your marketing efforts resonate deeply and effectively with your target audience.
