The Four Levels of Customer Engagement
Aug 15th, 2008 by Paul Miser
As I’ve mentioned many times before, many marketers are missing the boat when it comes to customer engagement. Traditional forms of marketing and advertising are declining at an exponential rate, but marketers keep holding steady with the status quo. The reason? Comfort. The new realm of customer engagement, social media, and consumer power brings with it a lot of uncertainty and fear for many marketers. Instead of creating one message to send out to everyone, we now have to create and hold a conversation with every individual consumer. This is the true essence of customer engagement.
Brain Haven of Forrester mentioned in his recent article, “Customer Engagement Transcends Channels,” that “Engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence a person has with a brand over time.” Mr. Haven calls these the 4I’s. I think this is a great definition and outline of how marketers can break down how to get from mass marketing to personalized, engaged marketing. Let’s break the “4I’s” down in more detail.
Involvement: This is the beginning stages of the relationship where the consumer becomes involved with the brand whether online, through word of mouth, through advertising, etc. During this stage, the consumer opens a conversation.
Interaction: Here is where many marketers fail. This is the stage where the brand needs to respond and interact with the consumer conversation that was created during the involvement stage. This might include a transaction, email, video, etc. A company needs to keep the conversation going with the consumer on an individualized level.
Intimacy: As with any relationship in our lives, if we interact with an individual enough we gain a certain level of intimacy with that person. In the changing times of marketing, this is becoming more and more apparent with the relationship between the consumer and a brand.
Influence: By creating a high level of intimacy through involvement and interaction, consumers will become a cheerleader or advocate of a brand, almost becoming an individual marketing channel. These advocates have a locus of influence over a certain group of people and will communicate their loyalty to the brand within that group.
In conclusion, if we, as marketers, model our relationships and interaction with consumers after our own personal relationships, we will be able to identify how to successfully engage our customers to the level of complete brand advocacy.
