10 Effective engagement marketing tactics to boost customer engagement

Cassy Aite
September 23, 2022
10 Effective engagement marketing tactics to boost customer engagement

Forget talking at your customers and expecting them to buy — that doesn’t work these days. You'll get real value by creating an experience that feels personal and rewarding. Enter engagement marketing, an approach to marketing that’s customer-focused with clear benefits for your brand awareness and bottom line.

In this guide, we’ll take you through the basics of what engagement marketing is and discuss the impact it can have on your numbers. Plus, we’ll share some of our favorite engagement marketing tactics so you can build a winning customer engagement strategy for the year ahead.

What is engagement marketing?

Engagement marketing is all about creating that two-way conversation with your customers. Instead of talking to them through generic ads and email campaigns, you’re making the moment feel more personalized, unique, and interesting.

The key to great engagement marketing is to show up where your customers are and create experiences that they can’t help but participate in. You want to create a social media campaign they can actually take part in, a poll they feel compelled to share their views on, or a push notification that shows them an amazing deal at the perfect time. It’s a marketing strategy that goes hand in hand with personalization, so marketing automation and smart AI often play a part in your efforts.

Engagement marketing persists through almost every marketing medium — with content marketing, email marketing, social media, and community building being some of the best ways to do this. You can weave engagement marketing into every stage of the customer journey too — from branded events that raise awareness through to personalized recommendations at checkout.

The impact of engagement marketing

Creating the kind of content and experiences that your customers want to engage with is one of the best ways to retain customers and enjoy brand loyalty. It’s also an effective way to make sales, attract new leads, and also gain valuable data on your prospects and customers’ likes, dislikes, and preferences. All of this can help you further optimize future marketing campaigns.

As marketers, we’re always looking for ways to prove impact and demonstrate how valuable our traditional and digital marketing strategies are to executives. To measure your engagement marketing, measure key metrics like conversion rates, number of clicks, social media post engagement rates, video views, lead generation, and time spent on page. Engagement marketing done well will give you an increase in numbers across these metrics, so it’s a useful way to see what’s working and where you can make improvements.

10 effective customer engagement marketing strategies to try

A man looks happy about engagement marketing

If you’re looking for practical ways to add engagement marketing to your toolkit, you’re in the right place. Here are ten of our favorite omnichannel customer engagement marketing tactics for your marketing team to work into your strategy.

1. Personalized product suggestions

Customers don’t want to be faced with unrelated new product suggestions or generic promotions that they’d never be interested in. Instead, use data and automation tools to serve up personalized product suggestions to your customers.

There are lots of ways to do this. Use the data you hold on your customers’ browsing and buying history to create tailored suggestions — like Netflix does with your personalized recommendations. Another option is to introduce an interactive product quiz on your website to help your customers find their ideal product.

2. Customer focused social media campaign

As consumers, we all spend time on social media catching up with our friends, family members, and favorite brands and influencers. Make your brand’s time on social media platforms count by finding ways to engage customers through social media campaigns.

Create a hashtag around a fun idea, cause, or meme-worthy moment, and try to get it trending. Run a social media marketing campaign where you gather user-created videos or images, and transform them into a video of appreciation for your loyal customers and fans. There are endless opportunities when it comes to social media. For an example of how to create engaging social media, take a look at Wendy’s Twitter feed.

3. Active community group or forum

Give your customers their very own space to talk about all things about your brand with a community group or forum. This is an ideal place to encourage customer engagement and get useful insights, by sharing polls, asking questions, and requesting customer reviews and photos.

While Facebook groups are still big, don’t forget to look beyond this for other opportunities to create community spaces. Discord is now not just for gamers or tech fans, but is a great place to build a community. If you do have a gamer-focused audience, a Twitch stream where you can partner with fans and influencers is another fun way to ramp up engagement.

4. In-person or online workshop

One way to foster customer engagement is to create an interactive experience where they can’t help but get involved. In-person and online workshops and immersive events are great ways to improve customer engagement.

Choose a theme or topic that’s interesting to your audience, then build an engaging experience or event around it. Give your customers a behind the scenes exclusive, or help them learn a new skill. For hybrid and virtual events, use our Hoppier virtual cards as a simple and fun way to provide lunch — with the bonus of your guests being able to order from their favorite local vendor.

5. Gamified customer loyalty scheme

A woman enjoys a gamified engagement marketing experience on her phone

There’s something so powerful about being able to reward your customers’ interactions with your brand — both big and small. Introducing a gamified customer loyalty scheme is an exciting way to encourage and reward engagement, and drive brand loyalty.

Give your loyal customers lots of different ways to earn points, badges, stamps, or a reward token of your choice. Reward customers for making purchases, providing referrals, completing surveys, leaving reviews, sharing social media posts, and participating in any other meaningful brand interaction that you want to encourage. You can get really creative with your sales incentives scheme here, and go all-in on a branded experience with a fun logo, creative tokens, and unique rewards.

6. Simplified ordering

Engagement marketing isn’t always about a big event or campaign — sometimes it’s about how you make the entire experience better for your customer. With a few optimizations to your ordering and checkout process, you can improve customer satisfaction and encourage future engagements.

Think about how you can make your ordering process easier. One-click ordering and simplified recurring subscriptions are both great ways to reduce friction and improve the customer experience. Add in personalized product suggestions and offer the chance to earn loyalty points, and you have the recipe for an engagement-focused checkout experience.

7. Q&As on social media

There’s such a huge potential audience out there on social media, but it’s hard to know what to post to capture their attention. A great way to get people involved with your brand is to host a Q&A session using a live media option like Instagram Stories or Twitch.

Partner with a celebrity, influencer, or industry expert for your Q&A, promote it in advance, and encourage your audience to ask questions both in advance and live during the event. This can create a unique moment for your customers to get involved, and help you uncover valuable data around your customers’ preferences and interests.

8. Relevant push notifications

You might have seen the request to enable push notifications when you land on a media website or online store. Sending relevant push notifications can be a powerful way to encourage your customers to shop with you at the right time — but it needs to be done responsibly.

Like with any messaging campaign, you need to consider frequency and relevance. Stand out from other brands by only sending notifications for products or promotions that your customer would love — something you can do with the right mix of data and automation. Make this clear to your customers upfront, and encourage them to allow push notifications to hear about offers you think they won’t want to miss.

9. Design contest

If you have a creative audience or operate in a product-focused niche, a design contest can be a super fun way of engaging customers. Challenge them to submit a design idea for a new product, product personalization, or some branded swag, and allow everyone to vote on the designs they love best.

A design contest works well because it offers novelty, creativity, the chance to win, and a real sense of community. Even if your customer doesn’t want to submit a design, they can still vote and comment on others and share their support. For the designers, there’s a chance to see their design come to life with a brand they love. Plus, you can throw in other rewards too, like a Hoppier virtual card for your design contest winner and the runner-ups.  

10. Fundraiser or community event

We can all think of brands that have a close connection to a charity or cause. For brands with a big heart, hosting or supporting a community event or fundraiser not only helps you demonstrate how much you care, but it’s a great opportunity for engagement marketing too.

Fundraisers and community events are a way to give back and get closer to your customers. You can raise money for vital causes, meet your supporters, and increase brand awareness by having your brand attached to the event or experience. Encourage your customers to donate if they can, to spread awareness on social media, and to take part in exclusive experiences at the event.

Hoppier: A simple way to create engagement

One of the simplest ways to encourage more engagement from your customers is to offer a genuine reward, thank you, or gift in return for their loyalty or engagement. Hoppier gives you an easy way to do this, with virtual cards pre-loaded with a balance that you can send by email in moments.

Easy to use

Building a customer engagement marketing strategy takes a lot of time and energy, so you want your tools to be as easy to use as possible. With Hoppier, you can set up a program and customize your card and experience in no time at all.

A Hoppier virtual credit card tool for engagement marketing

Decide what you want to call your program, and find a fun emoji that matches the occasion. Personalize your Hoppier virtual card with your brand colors and company logo — or create a fun logo unique to your VIP loyalty scheme, workshop event, or community group.

A spending balance on a virtual credit card

Next up, set a spending balance and redemption period for your virtual card. You can leave this open ended so your customers can spend the balance whenever they like, or set a deadline. Any money left unspent after the deadline gets returned to you — which means less waste and money back in the budget for future marketing campaigns.

Great for rewarding your customers

Hoppier makes it easy to say thank you to your customers and show that you care about all the different ways they engage with your brand. It’s a great way to offer rewards as part of a customer loyalty scheme, design contest, or user generated content campaign on social media.

Vendors that customers can purchase from with their virtual credit card

Our virtual cards are also ideal for event catering for your virtual or hybrid events. You can customize your virtual cards so customers can use them at food and drink vendors — giving your event attendees a fun and completely personalized way to order drinks, snacks, or lunch for your event or virtual experience.

You can use Hoppier for other personalized customer moments, too. Set up a program where you send a virtual card as a thank you bonus for referring new customers, or send a virtual card to your customers on their birthday or renewal date. There are lots of ways you can integrate our virtual cards into your engagement, loyalty, and experiential marketing campaigns.

Make engagement marketing a priority this year

Engagement marketing is all about putting your customer at the center of the experience, and designing opportunities that create that two-way interaction. It’s an approach to marketing that fosters brand loyalty, customer retention, and more interactions that can make sales happen.

Engagement marketing tactics work great for both in-person and virtual events. If you’re looking for more ways to ramp up the interaction for your next event, watch our webinar on how to create memorable and engaging virtual events.

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Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?

Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo

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Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?

Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo

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