When we talk about customer engagement we talk about an emotional connection between brand and consumer that develops as a result of their experience. When you create high levels of engagement you create loyal brand advocates - customers who buy more often, spend more when they do, and actively promote you through public word of mouth.
To achieve this kind of connection you first need the right tools at your disposal. Or to put it another way, you need a MarTech stack optimized for customer engagement. But before we get ahead of ourselves let's look at what we actually mean by MarTech.
A marketing technology stack is a collection of digital tools used to plan, execute and track various marketing activities. These tools are divided into six main categories, though many of them have cross category functionality:
Advertising and promotion - these are the tools you use at the awareness stage of a marketing strategy, like those built for search engine marketing and social media ads.
Content and experience - here we’re talking about connecting with your audience, improving your visibility and adding value. Think content management systems, SEO and marketing automation tools.
Social and relationships - these are tools like review and loyalty platforms, influencer solutions and customer service software. They help you understand your customers, strengthen relationships and grow your community.
Commerce and sales - not much of a definition needed here. As you’d expect these are the tools that facilitate eCommerce activity.
Data - again, this one’s pretty straightforward, referring to tools for things like marketing analytics, attribution data and data visualization.
Management - finally you have the management tools that help with collaboration, organizing workflow and boosting productivity among your marketing team.
For eCommerce brands, there are a countless number of solutions available in every category. An overwhelming amount in fact, which makes it a challenge to find the right tech solutions for your business.
The best way to go about building an effective MarTech stack is to work backwards - document your objectives and then research the tools that are best placed to help you achieve them.
Those objectives will be different for every brand, so no two MarTech stacks will look exactly the same. However, every brand should concentrate on some key areas - one of which is customer engagement.
You can have all the eCommerce engagement tools available in your MarTech stack, but you won’t see results if you haven’t thought about their application. Tools are just tools after all - they’re only as good as the strategy they facilitate.
So before you invest in new technology, think about engagement itself. What do customers want from you, and what does your marketing team need to deliver it?
What your customers want:
Personalization - customers want to be treated as individuals. This goes way beyond just seeing their name in an email. They want experiences tailored specifically to them - their purchase behavior, characteristics, likes - and they want it all whilst maintaining control of their personal data.
Authenticity - today’s shoppers engage far more with authentic user generated content than they do polished ads and fancy photography. They want to see a real brand experience had by real people they can relate to.
Brand community - they also want a sense of belonging. They want to buy from brands that share their values and bring like minded people together through shared stories.
What your marketing team needs:
User friendly tools - first up your marketing team needs tools that are simple to use and allow for easy customization so you can keep everything on brand and in line with your strategy. Most importantly, these tools need to integrate seamlessly with each other.
Customer data - you can’t achieve personalization without segmenting your customers, and for that you need to know more about them. Privacy rights make this harder to achieve, so your team needs MarTech tools that allow for the collection of zero-party data.
Automation - you also can’t have personalization without automation. The ability to send the right message to the right person at the right time is key to engagement, so your team needs tools for building custom user flows.
To optimize your MarTech stack for customer engagement you need to tick all these boxes. And our integration with ActiveCampaign does just that.
With REVIEWS.io and ActiveCampaign in your MarTech stack you have the controls to create more customer touchpoints that drive engagement on a deeper level. Here’s what you can do:
Create better customer segments - use data collected through REVIEWS.io to segment your audience in ActiveCampaign. For example, those that repeatedly leave 5* reviews can be classed as brand advocates and given the VIP experience, whilst those that leave a 1* review can be placed in a group that needs careful nurturing to win back.
You can take this even further by using our Attributes feature. Additional questions added to review invites let you gather zero-party data from customers for granular segmentation.
Build unique user flows - use events to trigger custom emails at the perfect time for maximum engagement. Send a refer a friend campaign in response to a glowing review, or a relevant support email to an unhappy customer.
Send personalized content - with better customer segments and unique user flows you can really drive personalization (and so engagement). Send product recommendations based on attribute data, or special offers triggered by past purchase behavior. - there’s so many options for what you can do.
Support campaigns with UGC - here we’re ticking the authenticity box. Automatically drop product specific reviews and customer photos into your email campaigns. Delivering social proof straight to their inbox in a great way to encourage customer engagement.
Connect with influencers - the REVIEWS.io Discover feature lists your reviewers and anyone that’s tagged or mentioned you on Instagram by their follower count. Use this to identify existing fans with social influence, and then grow your relationship through ActiveCampaign.
With influencers on your team, you can spur engagement with their audience, attract new customers and create that all important brand community.
Using REVIEWS.io and ActiveCampaign together lets you create better marketing campaigns through segmentation, personalization and authenticity. It’s a powerful combination for customer engagement, and one you should definitely think about integrating into your MarTech stack.
Head to our integrations page to get started or contact customer support for help with your set-up. If you're not a REVIEWS.io customer, you can try our platform for free for 14-days!