Your business processes haven’t changed, but you’re experiencing a mass exodus of customers.
Do you have any idea why?
Sure, they’re engaging with you and your brand, but is their experience as good as it should be?
How do you rectify this issue and ensure your consumers keep returning for more?
The answer: Customer engagement technology!
Wondering which software tool will help take your brand to the next level?
Here we explain why these various platforms are so important in the modern age and the different types available.
Let’s get started.
Customer engagement technologies allow businesses to anticipate the needs of their consumers and improve their overall experience.
There are many different software tools, each with a unique purpose, designed to improve customer engagement.
You can also offer clients a personalized experience at scale, ensuring you interact with your audience in the same trusting tone.
These tools test, measure and hypothesize the entire customer experience.
Finding the best platform depends on how and why clients buy your products or services and improving the selling process.
What Is Customer Engagement Technology?
Customer engagement technology refers to digital tools that facilitate a positive relationship between you and your clients.
They are intended to improve and add value to every interaction with your customer, increasing their loyalty to your brand.
In the past, business owners relied on building a physical rapport with clients, ultimately leading to more sales.
Today, most buying and selling happens online, making it challenging to connect with customers on a personal level.
It’s also difficult to decide what aspect of the buyer’s process matters most to your consumers.
Your website is one of the first interactions between your brand and a potential client.
While startups can allocate time to engaging with their audience, this approach won’t work as you scale your customer base.
By utilising customer engagement tools, you can implement strategies that improve your brand’s relationship with its consumers.
These platforms offer innovative ways to attract leads and retain customer loyalty over a long period.
Not only do they save you time, but they also ensure that your clients feel like they are valued.
Customers are more likely to spend their hard-earned money with a company that puts them first.
Customer engagement software should improve how consumers interact with your brand through the five phases of the buyer’s journey.
These individual stages are:
- Awareness: The first phase of the buyer’s journey involves them searching for a solution to a problem. It’s during this stage that a consumer discovers your business and the products or services you offer.
- Consideration: The second part of the presales process is when a customer compares multiple businesses. It’s at this point that a consumer decides which available offer best suits their needs.
- Decision: At this stage of the buyer’s journey, a customer chooses a product or service and purchases it from your organisation.
- Retention: The fourth phase of this process is where customer engagement tools shine. It’s when you keep a consumer’s attention by offering training, loyalty rewards, and marketing emails.
- Advocacy: The final stage of the buyer’s journey involves customers recommending your business to others. This phase is incredibly important as a bad experience can ruin your brand’s reputation.
Improve Experience, Not Engagement
Before we investigate the various customer engagement technology platforms; it’s worth understanding the difference between customer engagement and customer experience.
Many brands confuse these two terms, believing they are the same thing.
While they are interlinked, it’s crucial that you approach them separately.
Customer experience is based on a consumer’s point of view and gets shaped by their interactions with a brand.
In comparison, engagement refers to the company’s communication with its clients, driving sales and increasing loyalty.
Therefore, engagement is from the business’s perspective.
Having more “engagement” doesn’t offer any benefits if you’re not making the consumer’s experience better.
It’s a belief that causes many companies to fall short as they associate high engagement with satisfaction.
Here’s an example of how over-engaging can lead to a poor experience:
Recently, Starbucks wanted to engage with their customers by introducing a campaign called #racetogether.
In response to the increase in race-related social media movements and the protests about police treatment of minority communities, CEO Howard Schultz declared:
“We at Starbucks should be willing to talk about these issues in America, not to point fingers or to place blame, and not because we have answers, but because staying silent is not who we are.”
Unfortunately for Starbucks, this was an epic fail of social media proportions. For starters, all the visual promotion of the campaign featured white-skinned people only.
Next, many customers weren’t comfortable having this conversation with a stranger they just met to purchase coffee from.
Finally, in what was the biggest blow, social media accounts hijacked the hashtag, with many customers using it to ridicule Starbucks’ products and services.
Things got so out of hand that Corey duBrowa, the communications vice-president, deleted his Twitter account.
Customer engagement software may have pre-empted the company that this initiative was destined to fail, preventing this unexpected scenario from ever eventuating.
Top Customer Engagement Technologies
There are various customer engagement technology options that companies can use to attain their marketing goals.
These various tools improve a client’s experience across multiple digital channels, such as:
- Content management
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Lead capture
- Graphic creation
- Event marketing
- Conversion optimisation
Every buyer’s journey is different, which means no technology does it all.
Instead, it’s best to use these tools in conjunction with others to generate the results you’re after.
Below we look at some of the best platforms that allow businesses to promote themselves effectively according to their strategy.
1. Content Management & SEO Technologies
Content is king because, without it, you wouldn’t be able to engage with your customers.
Poor quality copy won’t just confuse potential consumers, it’ll damage your image as an authoritative brand.
Content needs to be current, relevant, understandable and engaging.
It’s your one chance to make a great impression on current, and future clients, so you must do this right the first time.
The right tools will help you improve content quality and streamline your creation process.
They also reveal ways to encourage site visitors to interact and engage more with the topic.
One of the pillars of online success is the website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Companies need to develop content that’s not only helpful but also appears on the first page to improve the click-through rate.
There are a host of customer engagement tools that make this marketing process a breeze.
These platforms help you identify the best keywords for a particular topic and track your site’s performance.
SEO software also lets you see how your pages rank compared to competitors.
They even allow you to test new keyword phrases, helping to improve and develop your content strategy.
If you’re looking for a reliable SEO tool, consider using one of these five popular options:
- SEMrush
- Google Search Console
- Ahrefs
- Moz Pro
- HubSpot
2. Social Media Marketing Technologies
Social media has become one of the most powerful customer engagement tools in a marketer’s arsenal.
These platforms allow companies to build awareness around their brand, advertise new products, and interact with consumers.
There are many different software options to make social media marketing simple and understandable.
These tools help you create exciting posts and research the best tags for your content.
They also give you the ability to publish and manage campaigns for multiple platforms on one dashboard.
You can schedule an efficient content calendar and produce reports that track engagement over a particular period.
Here are five customer engagement technology platforms built for social media marketing:
- Brandwatch
- Buzzsumo
- Hootsuite
- Social Champ
- SocialPilot
3. Email Marketing Technologies
Email marketing is one of the best ways to inform existing clients about any new products or services you offer.
It’s also a reliable option for incentivising customer loyalty and letting them know about upcoming promotions.
It’s also a brilliant way to educate your consumers and keep them engaged with your brand.
Several customer engagement platforms make it easy to maintain a quality list of subscribers and organise campaigns.
These software tools also allow you to schedule emails and track consumer replies.
Overall, they let you optimise your marketing strategy, improve client communication, and prevent your messages from becoming spam.
Below are five of the best customer engagement software for email marketing:
- Aweber
- GetResponse
- Active Campaign
- MailChimp
- InfusionSoft
4. Lead Capture & Enrichment Technologies
Lead capture refers to the process of converting a website visitor into a potential client.
This type of conversion is achieved by adding a short form to your landing page.
You can learn more about a visitor, including their name and email address.
Setting up these forms can be tricky, which is why customer engagement platforms for lead generation are so helpful.
These programs provide customisable questionnaires that are concise and aesthetically pleasing.
Not only do these software solutions improve client conversions, but they also make it easier to identify your target audience.
Here are five popular marketing tools pioneering the lead capture industry:
- Convertflow
- Gravity Forms
- ClickFunnels
- Typeform
- Turnstile
5. Graphic Creation Technologies
Graphic creation describes producing and combining visual elements that pair with promotional content.
Images such as memes, banners, and infographics fall under this category and make your content more exciting and appealing.
Many customer engagement technology options are designed to assist marketers with graphic designs.
These platforms allow you to create aesthetically pleasing content that matches your brand and let you store designs for future projects.
Many of these software options also make it possible to share visual elements with colleagues, making them perfect for teams.
Below are the five most popular customer engagement tools for graphic creation:
- Adobe Spark
- Blender
- Canva
- Design Pickle
- Venngage
6. Event Marketing Technologies
Event marketing is a powerful tool for companies to build brand awareness and improve customer engagement.
These promotional functions can take place online, offline, or as a hybrid in the form of workshops, award shows, and seminars.
Planning an event can become incredibly stressful without a specialised customer engagement platform to help you.
These tools make planning your function a breeze, ensuring nothing is left to chance.
This type of software can design registration forms, track attendance figures, and market events on various platforms.
If you plan to host trade shows or online presentations, consider using one of these options:
- Cvent
- Glue Up
- Bizzabo
- Attendease
- Webex Events
7. Analytics & Conversion Optimisation Technologies
Conversion optimisation marketing involves collecting data on how clients and visitors interact with your website.
These customer engagement tools are incredibly handy for determining why leads aren’t converting into consumers.
You can identify potential issues along the buyer’s journey and test out ways to improve conversions.
Here are five fantastic conversion optimisation technologies purpose-built for marketing:
- Google Analytics
- FullStory
- Heap
- Crazy Egg
- Adobe Analytics
Is There One Customer Engagement Platform to Rule Them All?
Absolutely not!
Any customer engagement technology that claims its platform offers everything you need is lying.
Choosing the right tools to improve your client’s experience comes down to the type of interactions during the buyer’s journey.
Picking the best software also depends on the specific goals you set during these five stages.
Are you ready to engage with your consumers and provide them with the best experience?
Choose LeadsHook as your digital partner and discover how our various features can improve your customers’ experience throughout the buyer’s journey.
From natively integrating with your email service provider to creating monetisation pathways that deliver value before asking for anything.
Our software won’t just save you time and money, it’ll give your clients a reason to say wow!
