The State of Customer Engagement in the US in 2022

As much as we'd like to, we can't simply consult a crystal ball to predict what will drive successful customer engagement outcomes this year. We can, however, do the next best thing, and conduct a round of exhaustive research—taking into consideration what leaders in the field think is working and what the data from billions of real users engaging with brands across the world reveals. That's what we do each year as part of our annual Global Customer Engagement Review (CER).

The Braze CER is a comprehensive report on the state of customer engagement across industries and regions. Here we share the top findings on the state of customer engagement in the US in 2022, based on extensive market research, proprietary insights from our leading customer engagement platform, and 1:1 interviews with innovative brands.

The State of Customer Engagement in the US in 2022: Top Drivers

Brands looking to deliver sustainable growth in the US find themselves operating in a challenging landscape. There’s never been a time where consumers are logging more hours of the day online—but, at the same time, consumers are increasingly less likely to be loyal, engaged customers who actually convert.

Companies understand that they need to engage digitally with their audiences, or risk becoming irrelevant, or, worse, obsolete. But when it comes to delivering the kinds of personalized experiences that users are looking for, that's another story altogether.

What worked in 2021 is likely to lend brands an advantage in 2022 as well: Creating valuable, customer-driven experiences.

The State of Customer Engagement in the US in 2022: Top Strategies for Strengthening Customer Engagement

Here are some of the most powerful ways to deliver value, create customer-driven experiences, and build meaningful relationships with US consumers.

Customer Engagement Index Scores: Areas Where US Brands Excel (and Areas for Improvement)

We created The Braze Customer Engagement Index in 2021 to provide a universal framework for measuring customer engagement all over the world. Today this index is being used to assess the level of maturity of customer engagement strategies and programs in place within organizations, countries, and regions, ranking entities across three levels of maturity:

1. Activate (least mature): These groups are just starting their customer engagement journey
2. Accelerate: These groups are moving their customer engagement efforts forward by collaborating, experimenting, and employing data-driven strategies
3. Ace (most mature): These groups are at the top of their field and utilize streaming data to power fully baked customer lifecycle-driven engagement strategies

While nearly one-fifth of US companies rise to the top and achieve Ace status (19%), the majority of businesses fall within the mid-range, Accelerate (50%). Another one third are just getting started, with 31% at the Activate level.

US brands outperform EMEA and APAC organizations in the areas of data ingestion and personalization. That reflects the way many brands in the US currently use single-customer profiles and propensity/behavioral modeling to personalize messages, including context based on real-time and past engagement.

That said, US brands lag behind EMEA and APAC companies at setting objectives and executing on real-time marketing orchestration. These results suggest US companies should prioritize ensuring they have cross-functional teams owning customer engagement while expanding their measurement of engagement and upleveling their strategy to focus on customer behavior and company strategy.

About the Study

The findings we've reported on here come from our 2022 Global Customer Engagement Review, an analysis we conducted using the following three data sources:

1. Marketing decision-maker market research commissioned by Braze: Wakefield Research collected insights from 1,500 marketing executives at the VP level or higher from across 14 global markets, representing B2C companies with an annual revenue of $10 million or more.
2. Braze customer data: This was aggregated from over 5.4 billion global users in connection with the Braze customer engagement platform, which powers experiences between consumers and 1,000+ brands across 50+ countries.
3. Braze customer interviews: For in-depth learnings, we connected with top brands from across five different industries and three different regions, including a US company.

Final Thoughts

For insights on how innovative brands are achieving strong customer engagement results in the US and around the world, check out our full 2022 Global Customer Engagement Review. It's packed with actionable recommendations for how to increase engagement, retention, and revenue within an increasingly consumer-privacy-driven context.