Let’s think of a scenario. You’re a marketing lead responsible for driving digital sales at a top e-commerce brand, targeting Gen Z with Instagram as your go-to channel.
So, let’s see what a typical customer acquisition journey would look like.
A user spots your ad on Instagram, resonates with the message, and clicks through your website—only to drop off within 15 seconds!
Suppose you spent $5 on the Instagram ad to get that user to your website – but they leave almost as soon as they arrive.
Now to bring him back, you can either retarget the user or hope they stumble across you again. That’s again going to cost you money.
Now consider this.
The same user clicks your ad, lands on your site, and answers five quick questions before sharing their contact details.
What happens next?
- You email tailored product recommendations based on their responses
- They receive a personalized discount coupon on WhatsApp
- They use this coupon to make a purchase
Congratulations! You’ve successfully turned a random visitor into a customer—both economically and efficiently.
How did you do it?
The answer: Seamless Customer Engagement!
What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is the art of communicating with your customers over online and offline channels. Today, where competition is rising and attention spans are shrinking more than ever, mastering the art of engagement is no longer optional. It is essential for building loyalty and top-of-mind recall.
In fact, Gallup reports that companies excelling in customer engagement outperform competitors by a staggering 202%.
But here’s the challenge: how do you engage customers at scale while keeping every interaction contextual and personalized?
Introducing Customer Engagement Platform (CEP)
Customer Engagement Platform is a software solution that helps businesses streamline communication with customers and deliver seamless customer experiences at scale. It consolidates customer data from all touchpoints—website, apps, emails, social media, and more—to provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and intent. This data can be further leveraged to build personalized customer journeys.
Benefits of a Customer Engagement Platform
1. Automated Customer Journeys
Building trust doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for customers to discover, explore and develop trust in your brand before they make any purchase. “The 7 touchpoint rule” states that it takes an average of 7 brand interactions before a user is ready to make a purchase.
This translates to the following scenario: To engage 100,000 users, you’ll have to make 700,000 interactions across different stages of their journey. Doing this manually could be a disaster.
Imagine what would happen if a person who just signed up on your website gets a message: “Thank you for making a purchase!”
That’d be a mess!
The solution?
Automating interactions based on lifecycle stages. A Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) makes this possible, creating personalized, context-driven experiences for every user at every stage.
(A view of how customer journey orchestration looks like in a CEP)
2. Boost Conversions
Take this example: a customer walks into an apparel store and browses the collection, but hesitates to buy. A friendly sales executive steps in, shows the customer items that match your taste, explains their quality, and helps you make a purchase decision.
The same hesitation can happen while buying online—and if unaddressed, leads to drop-offs.
That’s where a CEP plays a crucial role. It helps you understand customer intent and perform strategic and timely interventions to take them toward the next step.
A Mckinsey study found that personalizing shopping experiences can increase conversion rates by 10-15%.
Recall the earlier example I mentioned about asking questions to users who land on your website and then personalizing recommendations aligned with the users’ needs. That’s a perfect example of how a CEP actively engages with your customers and effectively guides them through the conversion funnel.
3. Increased Customer Retention, Loyalty, and CLTV
The benefit of engaging customers is that it gives them a reason to stick around. A Gallup study reveals that engaged customers are 23% more likely to stay with a brand and spend more on future purchases.
If you’re in the e-commerce or D2C space, you’re likely aware of how expensive customer acquisition can be. That’s where a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) becomes essential. A CEP designs and executes campaigns that truly resonate with your audience, encouraging them to shop with you repeatedly, boosting loyalty and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
Take a simple feedback campaign as an example. When you ask customers for feedback after their order is delivered, it not only builds trust but makes them feel valuable. Offer a discount coupon for their next purchase, and you’ve just set the stage for retention-driven growth.
Things you should consider while choosing a Customer Engagement Platform
Selecting the ideal customer engagement platform requires careful assessment of features that enhance your ability to connect with customers effectively. Given the vast array of options available, it’s crucial to identify the functionalities that will deliver the greatest value to your business.
1. Robust Data Models and Integrations
A Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) is only as effective as the data powering it. While most of the CEPs have an in-built CDP (Customer Data Platform), you need to make sure that data flowing into the CDP is also organized. Without structured and accurate data, your campaign precision will take a hit! (remember the example of a newly landed user getting a “thanks for your purchase” notification?)
To ensure this, the CEP partner should have a robust data model. This ensures that data coming into the CDP is neatly formatted, stored, and linked to the right user, profiling a unified user view.
With this, you can personalize the campaigns, achieve higher conversions, and improve Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
The second key factor here is Integration. According to Hubspot, marketers on average use more than 12 different tools, and some more than 31 tools to manage campaigns and data.
Your CEP should offer seamless, plug-and-play integrations to ensure smooth data flow. Without easy integrations, you risk data loss or adding manual effort that slows your progress.
2. Omnichannel Orchestration
Today’s customers demand choices—not just in products but also in how they engage with your brand. According to a study by Harvard Business Review on 46,000 shoppers, 73% of shoppers use multiple channels to engage and purchase with a brand.
This makes it critical for brands to be omnipresent, delivering seamless experiences across all channels.
While evaluating a CEP, you need to check how many channels are available for you to use. Channels like push notifications (Web & App), Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS are must-have.
Along with the number of channels, it’s also crucial to evaluate if the platform supports advanced channel capabilities. For example, if a CEP has email integrations but does not support AMP emails, it’s not good enough. AMP emails are engagement magnets and make a lot of difference while extracting ROI. And not being able to send or track those is a big miss.
3. Advanced Analytics
When you engage with your users, you can expect to generate a lot of data. A CEP’s role here is to make sure that it extracts valuable details and patterns from that data and transforms them into actionable insights. That’s where analytics come into the picture.
Analytics helps you visualize how your customers are engaging with your campaigns, allowing you to identify campaigns that are driving more engagement, what touchpoints are enablers, and which ones are disablers. With these insights at hand, you can double down your efforts on things that drive growth.
Features like Funnel Analysis, Path Analysis, and Cohort Analysis are instrumental in determining the customer engagement dynamics and help you curate needle-moving campaigns that are backed by actual data.
4. AI and ML Capabilities
If you find a CEP with the right data models, omnichannel capabilities, and decent analytics, it’s a great starting point to run basic campaigns. But, if you’re a mature organization seeking fast-track growth, you should opt for a CEP powered with advanced AI and ML capabilities.
AI and ML offer many features, but let’s focus on the two most powerful ones.
- Predictive segmentation: This feature predicts the likelihood of future events and segments customers accordingly. For example, it can identify customers likely to purchase in the next 7 days or those at risk of churning, allowing you to take proactive action.
- Generative AI: With the rise of ChatGPT, generative AI has revolutionized customer engagement. Imagine having a ChatGPT-like tool in your CEP—it can help you craft compelling email copy, refine content, and even create on-demand customer journeys.
Check Netcore’s Co-marketer. It’s one of the most powerful AI applications any CEP could offer, designed to elevate your customer engagement experience with precision and measurable impact.
5. Scalability
Your CEP should be able to scale with you. If you’re engaging with 100,000 users today, aiming to grow to 500,000 users in a year, a capable CEP should be able to handle the increased volume of customer data without compromising performance.
A scalable customer engagement software typically includes modular and adaptable features that can evolve with your changing business needs. This includes options to integrate with new tools, incorporate advanced capabilities, or extend support to additional communication channels as your company grows and diversifies.
That’s a wrap
In this blog, we took a deep dive into what makes a great CEP and shared a handy checklist to help you evaluate and choose the right one for your business.
Before we wrap up, here’s one final tip to improve your decision-making: Once you’re confident in a CEP’s technical capabilities, take a closer look at the ROI it delivers. While detailed reports are hard to get, an ROI of 5-10X is considered the gold standard. Prioritize platforms that consistently achieve this benchmark for top organizations.
Netcore CEP is one such tool that, apart from its time-tested technical superiority, has been able to deliver excellent ROI for industry leaders.Want to know more? Check out how Netcore helped Air India Express deliver 70X ROI with its CEP!
