Virtual engagement

Virtual engagement is a metric to determine the level of affinity between a company and its customers. In today's internet economy, few things matter as much to marketers as the intensity of the feelings a customer has towards the brand or the product of a given corporation. Marketing professionals are engaging prospects and moving them along the customer engagement cycle to become customers and finally advocates.

Online environments play a critical role for customer lifecycle management, where Virtual events have established themselves as part of the marketing mix[1]. Here, all customer activities take place in a controlled environment, allowing detailed feedback about the level of engagement[2]. The customer engagement index[3] can be used to measure how successful a company is in connecting with its community[4]. It is a metric, derived from an aggregation of behavioral and demographic variables and used for assessing lead quality during events in virtual environments.

Industry analysts have established community engagement[5] as a concept, as it has become clear that companies need to focus on a more granular level on the behavior of individual customers or prospects to determine the strength of the connection they have been able to establish.

References

  1. ^ Case Study of a virtual event to complement the marketing mix
  2. ^ http://www.dialoguebydesign.net/press/press_newsletter_july09.asp
  3. ^ http://www.unisfair.com/virtual-engagement
  4. ^ http://www.engagementdb.com/Report
  5. ^ http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/generation-v-defies-traditional-demographics-5495/gartner-generation-virtual-engagement-levels-june-2008jpg/