US Firms 'Failing to Measure Customer Engagement'

According to a study conducted in the US by Forbes Insight and marketing agency George P Johnson (GPJ), just 59% of Chief Marketing Officers are measuring customer engagement, despite it being regarded as an essential metric for brand marketers.

The study, New Rules of Engagement: CMOs Rethink Their Marketing Mix, is based on a survey of more than 300 marketing executives working in organizations with over $500m in annual revenues.

Findings revealed that 67% of marketers view customer engagement as very important, although 27% have no specific strategy for it, and more than a third believe their companies are doing only a fair or poor job engaging their audiences.

Most (86%) respondents believe it is the CMO's responsibility to come up with a definition of customer engagement relating to their organization, and the accompanying metrics to measure it.

These metrics were found to be retention (58%), sales (44%), and revenue per customer (35%).

While putting a high value on understanding the drivers of consumer engagement, more than a third (36%) of respondents say their company does not measure customer engagement at all.

'Clearly, the report shows that brand marketers are turning to engagement as a way to break through the clutter, join the conversation with their customers and improve brand resilience,' states Stuart Feil, Editorial Director of Forbes Insights. 'They believe they can do a better job at engagement, but often don't know how.'

The study can be downloaded at www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/engagement .

Web sites: www.forbes.com and www.gpj.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.