Crawl, Walk, Run: Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Customer Engagement

Data is the backbone of modern marketing. Yet simply running analytics reports to track your campaign results isn’t enough to succeed in today’s competitive market. You need a customer engagement strategy—and that requires research, the right reporting tools, and a commitment to adjusting campaigns based on your findings.

That may sound difficult—but fortunately it doesn’t have to be. At Braze, we’ve found that taking a crawl/walk/run approach to your customer engagement program removes the guesswork and makes it easier to optimize your results. Here’s how to do it.

Stage One: Build a Data Collection Strategy

Before you can develop a data-driven engagement strategy, you need accurate, up-to-date information that provides insights into your customers’ actions. That requires a data collection strategy that’s tailored to your brand.

Yes, optimizing for business-forward metrics such as sales, revenue growth, and customer churn is still essential for success. However, brands that neglect to give customer experience metrics the same attention will miss out on opportunities that build brand loyalty. That’s because customers prioritize experiences—even over price and product. With this in mind, ask questions about how you can improve those experiences and what information you’ll need to answer them as you refine your strategy.

Stage Two: Run Reports to Better Segment Customers

Once you’ve started collecting the right data, it’s time to start digging into it. Reporting tools will help you answer questions about measurement, conversion, engagement, and retention. Below are three impactful ones that can help enhance your customer engagement strategy:

1. Braze Report Builder

With Report Builder, you can compare the results of multiple campaigns or customer journeys in a single view and evaluate which engagement strategies have the biggest impact on your marketing goals. Use this tool to answer questions such as:

• Which campaign delivery methods had the highest impact on open rates?
• Which version of an email had a higher conversion rate?
• Which seasonal promotion had the highest purchase rate?

2. Braze Funnel Reports

With Funnel Reports, you can generate visual reports that analyze the different actions users take on their path towards the ultimate conversion after receiving a particular campaign or customer journey. Use this tool to answer questions such as:

• Where are customers dropping off on the path to purchase?
• How many users completed each step in the onboarding process?
• How many users received, opened, clicked, and started a session after receiving a given email?

3. Braze Retention Reports

With Retention Reports, you can measure the retention rates of users who performed a specific action after receiving a campaign or entering a Canvas journey. Use this tool to answer questions such as:

• How did the re-engagement campaign impact retention after 1 day/30 days?
• Where does engagement start to fall off after receiving a campaign?
• Which message variant impacted retention most?

Stage Three: Reverse Engineer Your Campaigns

Now that you have a baseline for how your campaigns are performing, you can reverse engineer your strategy to boost engagement. Instead of trying to come up with new ways to keep your customers’ attention, take a look at what they’re responding to within your campaigns.

Let’s say a summer sale email performed significantly better than similar emails sent by your brand. Ask questions such as:

• Who was the audience?
• When was the email delivered?
• Was it scheduled or based upon user action?
• What level and type of personalization was used?

Once you’ve identified why customers respond to a particular element of a campaign, you can use this information to replicate and further refine the results in similar campaigns.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that this crawl/walk/run approach is an ongoing process. The data you need to best serve your customers may change over time, and campaigns that once performed well can begin to falter. Continuously evaluating customers’ needs and preferences—and which engagement tactics are paying off—is the best way to keep your campaigns fresh.

To learn more about how to tackle an engagement strategy that goes beyond one-off metrics, download our guide Key Measurements for Customer Engagement.