What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement strategy refers to the ongoing interactions between a brand and its customers, driven by the customer’s choice and preferences. It’s about building a relationship that goes beyond a one-time transaction, encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy over time.
Key aspects of customer engagement strategy
- Emotional connection. Engaged customers feel a personal connection with the brand.
- Two-way interaction. Meaningful dialogue through different channels such as social media, email, chat, in-person, or digital promotions.
- Value creation. Including delivering consistent value, whether through content, service, product updates, experiences, or rewards.
- Customer experience. Engagement is closely tied to the overall experience customers have with the brand across all touchpoints.
- Engagement metrics. Common metrics include customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), repeat purchase rate, social media interaction, and time spent with the brand.
Real-life customer engagement examples
Digital promotions are a great way for users to spend time with your brand. Don’t just ask them to register; offer gamification, entertainment, and challenges, with the incentive of winning a prize. Let’s see how some brands do it.
Celebrating a big anniversary with customers
To commemorate its 50th anniversary, Village Green Shopping Centre launched an integrated digital promotion designed to engage customers called ‘Memory Bank’. This initiative transported users through time with a variety of interactive games, quizzes, and contests. Examples include a ‘Share your memory’ photo contest, a ‘Finish the lyric contest,’ a movie match-up contest, and a voting opportunity to select the film for the centre’s upcoming movie night. All this with an All-in-one promotion.
The shopping centre successfully fostered long-term customer engagement through the campaign that ran from June to October, introducing new participation mechanics throughout the period. Participants could earn virtual tokens for each engagement, which could then be redeemed for rewards or donated to a local food bank. The available rewards ranged from gift cards and merchandise to nostalgic pins and toys.
Golden ticket promotion to reward customers
Flying Tiger Copenhagen, a variety chain store, incentivized sales of their ‘surprise bag’ by including a Golden Ticket sticker on the bags and a flyer inside. The flyer contained a QR code leading to the promotion website and a unique code. Customers would enter this code upon participating to instantly reveal if they had won a prize. The prizes ranged from 3 to 300€ in vouchers, and over 3000 prizes were given out during the promotion.
Participation was exclusive to loyalty club members. Non-members were directed to the ‘Bestie Club’ registration page, and upon registration and returning to the promotion, their Bestie Club member ID was automatically populated, so they could continue to participate.
Club Days Scratch & Win
Sports chain Sprinter implemented a Scratch & Win promotion exclusively for its loyalty club members to incentivize purchases during their “Club Days.” After making a purchase, members could access the promotion to instantly discover if they had won prizes such as sports packs, trainers for a year, or gift vouchers, distributed as instant-win prizes.
The store promoted this initiative across social media, newsletters, and its website during the Club Days. A banner displayed after purchase also allowed direct access to the promotion, encouraging participation.
Back-to-School campaign with cash prizes
Cereal brand El Molino Criollo launched a nationwide campaign across 10 supermarket chains, encompassing over 100 product references. The campaign was a Back-to-school campaign targeted at families, offering an incentivizing cash prize to help offset the expenses of the new school year. Consumers were eligible to participate by spending more than $5 on El Molino Criollo products and uploading their purchase receipt. Upon validation, participants could proceed to a quiz and receive their cash prize for answering all questions correctly.
The brand achieved increased engagement and participation due to the instant rewards enabled by automatic AI receipt validation. This also lowered costs by eliminating the need for printing on packaging. The AI tool accurately recognizes products on receipts, regardless of the store, and can be trained to recognize products even if their names vary.
Buy & Win product launch promotion
To launch its new portion-sized Edam cheese, the Kroon cheese brand ran a nationwide Spin the Wheel buy-and-win promotion. Each product featured a sticker with a unique code and the promotion website. Participants entered the code on the landing page to spin the wheel and discover if they had won a prize.
Prizes consisted of telecom recharge codes, which effectively lowered costs and enabled automated, direct distribution within the promotion. Users selected their telecom company in the registration form, and the prizes were given based on their selection. The campaign achieved remarkable results, including 77 million impressions, 42 million video views, 1.2 million website visits, and 114,000 participations within two months.
Restaurant rewards customers with direct prizes
TIPSY Hammock, a cocktail bar and restaurant, implemented a successful Scratch & Win promotion, allowing customers to win drinks or merchandise on-site. Participants simply entered their email address to play the digital scratch card.
Active for over a year, this promotion has attracted nearly 10,000 participants, with over 8,000 winning a prize. This straightforward engagement strategy has resulted in satisfied customers and an excellent return on investment for the restaurant.
As seen in the examples, consumers enjoy feeling included and being rewarded for their loyalty, which highlights the importance of an effective customer engagement strategy that extends beyond transactional interactions to cultivate genuine connection and long-term advocacy. Customer engagement platforms like Easypromos play a pivotal role in empowering brands to significantly boost their customer engagement efforts while streamlining and simplifying the entire implementation process. Whether it’s through interactive contests, loyalty programs, personalized promotions, or user-generated content campaigns, the platform ensures that every initiative can be tailored to seamlessly align with your brand’s unique image, voice, and overall marketing objectives. This level of customization is crucial for creating authentic experiences that resonate deeply with the target audience and ultimately drive increased participation, satisfaction, and enduring brand loyalty.
