The document outlines strategies for digital marketers to engage effectively with empowered customers whose engagement has shifted due to access to information. It emphasizes understanding customers through detailed personas, maintaining relevance in communications, and creating personalized interactions to enhance engagement value. Additionally, it stresses the importance of adapting to a cross-channel buying process and measuring engagement beyond traditional metrics to improve customer loyalty and conversion rates.

1. Engaging with Empowered Customers:
TIPS FOR THE DIGITAL MARKETER

2. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 2
The New Rules of
Customer Engagement
No one doubts that the fundamental rules of customer engagement have changed.
Whether your company sells laundry soap or automobiles, or offers services for the el-
derly, customers rely on information from many sources and engage with each other to
discuss your brand – often long before you have
any contact with them. Engaged customers
But that doesn’t mean they don’t want or need are worth more to your
to engage directly with your company. In fact, business.
customers are engaging more deeply with
brands than ever before. Fully engaged customers
The challenge for marketers is to find ways
e deliver a 23 PERCENT premium
over average customers in
to engage effectively with customers across
share of wallet, profitability,
channels in a seamless, truly conversational,
way. As most marketers will confirm, it’s not
revenue, and relationship
easy to execute a comprehensive engagement growth.
strategy across all channels. In fact, accord-
ing to a recent McKinsey quarterly report, having the ability to engage their customers
e 87 PERCENT of customers are
and leverage those relationships is the number one digital marketing challenge facing disengaged.2
marketers today.1
Read on for some proven tips on how to engage more deeply with your customers and
prospects to drive more conversions, create greater customer loyalty, increase lifetime
customer value, and generate more referrals and word-of-mouth advertising.
1. “The Biggest Challenge for Marketers: Engagement,” Steve Olenski, MarketingProfs, February 9, 2012
2. “Customer Engagement is Key to B2B Success,” Ned Smith, BusinessNewsDaily, April 15, 2012

3. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 3
Get to Know Your
Customers Better
While messaging documents and brand positioning frameworks can help marketers
stay on message about a product or service, they don’t usually go very far to help
you ensure that you understand your audience in detail – their roles, responsibilities,
needs, and wants. That’s where personas come in.
Research is the best way to inform
Personas enable you and your marketing and your persona-creation process. From
creative staff to get into the mind of your cus- interviews and surveys to site traffic
tomers and prospects. And when you under- analysis, you’ll need quantitative
stand your audience’s world and their motiva-
and qualitative
tions, you can create experiences and content
information on
that engage them more deeply.
which to base your
To do this, start by defining a persona for each persona decisions.
of your target buyers and influencers. Give each
persona a real name, a title or position, tasks To learn more
they need to accomplish, relevant demographic about creating and using personas,
info, problems, needs, and wants. A good per- read “Best Practices for Developing
sona description also includes a narrative that Personas with the Sitecore Customer
describes the flow of that person’s day, includ- Engagement Platform.”
ing their skills, attitudes, environment, and
goals.
Then share the personas with everyone on the
marketing team as well as external agencies
and creative partners. Hopefully you also have an engagement platform that will let you
use the personas you define to track site visitor behavior and gain greater insight for
optimizing your digital marketing efforts.

4. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 4
Understand that Relevance
Has a Shelf Life
Relevance is a key driver of engagement. peak. In being timely and relevant, mar-
Accenture states in its Point of View keters can significantly improve engage-
series, “… without relevance, nothing else ment and help prospects move farther
matters.”3 along the buying process.
Usage indicated by sphere size
70%
However, when it comes to relevance, tim- The problem is that the value of capital- Automatically send Segmented email
email based on campaigns based
ing is essential to effectiveness. Temporal izing on an interest or need in a timely 60% triggers on behavior
relevance is the fashion is proportional to the difficulty
50%
term we can apply to of the task. While research from Mar-
Level of Effectiveness
the fact that rele- ketingSherpa shows that the number- 40%
Allowed Dynamically
vance has a shelf life one way to engage a customer in terms subscribers to personalized email Segmented email
30% specify email content campaigns based
– what is interest- of relevance is with behavioral segmen- preferences on sales cycle
ing to a prospect or tation, that is segmenting based on 20%
customer now, may previous behaviors, it also shows that
not be as interest- the level of difficulty increases with ef- 10%
ing or relevant a few fectiveness (see Figure 1).4
0%
hours from now. Over time, interest wanes 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
and so does relevance. So what’s a marketer to do? You can Degree of Difficulty
start by looking for an engagement Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey
Methodology: Fielded Sep 2010, N=1,115
But if we capture the latest behavior of platform that lets you automate much
our prospect and then trigger an inter- of the process with defined customer in- Figure 1. Three dimensions of relevancy tactics
action based on that behavior in a very teraction scenarios and triggers that move
timely way, we harness all the power of the conversation forward with relevant
relevance. We deliver a relevant comment responses.
or opportunity while interest is still at a
3. “Got the R Factor: Driving Breakthrough Performance in the Era of Relevance,” Accenture, 2012
4. “2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report,” MarketingSherpa

5. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 5
Create a Natural
Conversation
When you think of a normal conversation, there’s There are three essential elements for creating more
a natural cadence to it, and each party remembers natural, deeper conversations with customers:
what was talked about in previous conversations.
The next conversation then picks up where you left 1. Customer intelligence – you need to collect in-
off in the current one. formation across channels in one central place.
2. Moments of opportunity – this is where it’s
To have intelligent, engaging your turn to speak in the conversation. You
conversations across channels, need to identify these moments throughout
you need to follow the rules the customer engagement lifecycle.
of natural conversation by
3. Automated interactions – the only way to
keeping track of the context. If
ensure a timely response is to automate the
you have siloed cha nnels and
marketing, the conversation
engagement flow, so that relevant offers and “Through a combination of keen
is constantly restarted, rather than being a single
content get provided at the height of interest. customer insight, analytics and smart
conversation that builds on the last interaction. creativity, online marketers can stand
Here’s an example of what can happen when you out amongst the 27 MILLION PIECES
put this concept into action: a prospect comes to
To create a natural conversation with each of your of content shared in the U.S. each day
your site from Google. You use the visitor’s key-
prospects and customers, you need to collect, or the 5 exabytes of information created
words to start guiding the prospect to relevant
store and mine customer intelligence across all every 2 days around the world.”5
content and interactions. You can make recommen-
your channels. Everything you learn in one chan-
dations based on what other people using those
nel – behaviors, job title, interests, attitudes –
same search terms found useful. And when that
needs to be accessible in all your other channels
prospect then downloads a report you suggested,
so you can continue the conversation wherever it
that information together with the search terms
left off.
used and other online behavior helps you determine
the right content or offer to suggest next.
5. “An Optimized Framework for Better Content Marketing & SEO,” Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing Blog, October 2011

6. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 6
Take Personalization to
the Next Level
You’ve undoubtedly read the reports that ment toolkit. So how can you take your person-
personalization increases conversions and alization efforts to the next level?
the average dollar amount spent. And you’ve
IDC believes that
probably experienced the power of personal- It starts with data – information that you are
probably already collecting in some way
personalization is a
ization as a consumer. But many companies
about your prospects and critical function for
still haven’t moved beyond personalizing email
with the customer’s name. In fact, personaliza- customers. The data includes all digital marketing
tion is one of the most under-utilized strate- interest level, keywords infrastructures.
gies in marketing. used, preferences, behav- Reaching your
iors, needs, wants, patterns audience sooner
of usage, and more. and grooming
them through a
Then you need to model scenarios completely
for what content or offer to present personalized
next in the customer lifecycle that would be experience will be
most relevant based on this data. Technol-
key to gaining
ogy that can sense and adapt to site visitors’
market share.7
behaviors can help you automate your scenar-
But it shouldn’t be – it should be one of the ios to personalize the experience and deepen
most important tools in your digital engage- the engagement.
6. “Customer Experience Optimization: A Custom Website for Every Customer,” Mark Simpson, CMSWire, March 27, 2012
7. “The Personalization Paradox: To get more personal, B2B marketers need to think in terms of accounts,” Gerry Murray, Technology Marketing Blog, March 28, 2012

7. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 7
Measure Engagement
Value, Not Just Clicks
Measuring open rate, clicks, and traffic to your site are metrics that show digital marketing perfor-
mance from a volume perspective. But two-way conversations and customer engagement with the
brand can’t be measured using purely quantitative methods.
You need a way to measure engagement so you know what’s
working. One way to do this is to start tracking and measuring
engagement value. You can do that by assigning a value or points
to interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. These inter-
actions are your conversion goals and should be indicative or
predictive of revenue. For instance, signing up
for a free trial of a product or service demon-
strates a certain level of engagement and you
would assign a value accordingly.
By tracking engagement value, you can begin
to see trends that you might not see if you’re
only looking at volume statistics and trends. For
example, let’s say traffic to your site has increased, but engage-
ment value is going down, that tells you that there’s a problem
somewhere in your cross-channel interactions. You wouldn’t have
known you had a problem at all if you had only been looking at the
volume of traffic. Example of tracking
engagement value for
With engagement value, you can understand how channels are affecting engagement and which
a website
interactions are performing better than others.

8. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 8
Embrace Today’s Cross-
Channel Buying Process
Customers are empowered by access to infor- and techniques into place that let you under-
mation and it’s changed the buying process, stand and embrace the interplay between all
shifting the balance of power to the customer. your channels and touch points – from your
Google calls it the Zero Moment of Truth, and website to social media, from email to mobile.
it’s the new decision-making moment that You need to create a seamless experience “… Starbucks[is] a multichannel
happens when customers across these channels and leader that connects the dots among
go online and start to learn touch points, knocking down in-store, online,
about a product or service. any silos you may have so mobile and social
that you can listen and learn media environments
That new decision-making in every channel and then with a common
moment happens across apply that insight across all
language, look-and-
channels and devices, with your channels.
customers interacting with
feel, philosophy and
brands and content in real While this is no small feat, it’s commitment to personalization and
time. Many companies have a marketing imperative if you intent-based options.”9
marketing strategies and want to deepen engagement
campaigns targeted towards specific channels. and stop frustrating customers and prospects
They may even have a cross-channel cam- with messages, content, and offers that don’t
paign that starts in one channel and crosses to recognize behaviors happening in other chan-
another like a contest on a Facebook page that nels. With insight across all your channels, you
links to a corporate website. can then adapt your interactions, personalize
them, and become more relevant to customers
But that’s not enough. The trick to adapting to throughout the customer lifecycle.
today’s buying process is to put action plans
9. “Got the R Factor: Driving Breakthrough Performance in the Era of Relevance,” Accenture

9. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 9
Marketing has changed.
Is your company ready?
In the age of the empowered customer, it’s The tactics described in this eBook can help More resources on
clear that the nature of marketing is changing you re-structure your marketing strategy going
in fundamental ways. Traditional marketing forward to adapt to the new imperatives in customer engagement:
is fast losing its effectiveness. Today, online today’s digital-powered world. From breaking
customer engagement is mandatory. Deliver- down silos between channels to intelligently From Web Analytics
ing relevant, valuable interactions that earn responding to your customers as part of a two- to Engagement
prospects’ and customers’ interest and trust is way conversation, you’ll be laying the ground- Analytics—Quality
the new way to build your brand. work for more conversions, greater revenue, Over Quantity:
and happier customers. white paper
Five Steps for
Enhancing Your
Online Customer
Engagement:
webinar
Drive Bottom
Line Impact with
Engagement
Analytics:
podcast and webinar

10. Engaging with Empowered Customers: Tips for the Digital Marketer — 10
About Sitecore
Sitecore redefines how organizations engage with audiences, powering compelling experiences that sense and adapt to visitors
both online and in-person.
Sitecore’s leading Content Management System software is the first to cohesively integrate with marketing automation, in-
tranet portal, e-commerce, web optimization, social media and campaign management technologies. This broad choice of
capabilities enable marketing professionals, business stakeholders and information technology teams to rapidly implement,
measure and manage a successful website and digital business strategy. Businesses can now easily identify, serve and convert
new customers with Sitecore’s Digital Marketing System, part of its encompassing Customer Engagement Platform.
Thousands of public and private organizations have created and now manage more than 32,000 websites and digital experi-
ences with Sitecore including ATP World Tour, CA Technologies, General Mills, ESPN Rise, Heineken, ISS, Lloyd’s of London,
Microsoft, Omni Hotels, Siemens, The Knot, Thomas Cook and Visa Europe.
For more information about Sitecore, visit www.sitecore.net.
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Sitecore. All Rights Reserved.
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