I know, I know.
I said I would never do it again.
They said it could never happen.
But, at the end of the day you knew it had to happen. Right?
I mean, no matter how hard I fought it, how bad I wanted not to – I have to do it.
I have to enter the battle for the definition of “engagement”.
What did you think I was talking about?
You see, that’s the problem.
If you know me, follow me on Twitter or somewhere else or heard me talking the past few years you know I am just wrapping up my second divorce – (which makes me single – hello ladies 
– and therefore getting engaged to get married would not be outside of the question.
You might’ve been surprised to read about that in a business blog, but not the first time it’s been done.
But I am not talking about that engagement, just like you are not talking about that when you are talking about engagement with your clients.
How do I know?
Because you don’t know what engagement means. And I have the data to prove it.
I did a study last year, April through June, where I interviewed 45 CMOs from different countries and industries. The goal was to find out what they thought about engagement, what they thought it meant, and how they had to react to it to make sure their organizations were prepared and addressed the issue.
What were the findings? Like I said above, there was not a lot of agreement as to what engagement meant, how it was defined and what they needed to do about it.
I wrote one of my traditional long, but awesome, reports about it (thanks to my friends at ThunderHead who sponsored it) and I am now ready to share the information with you.
Two ways to get this information:
1) If you are not patient – go here to download the report now (there is also a consumer report on engagement you will get, another great read to get a two-sided perspective)
2) Sign up for the webinar. I am doing a webinar on 04/16 (April 16th for people who grew up in Argentina or live anywhere but in the USA).
The webinar will give you access to all the information on the report (see some tidbits below) and will give you a better explanation of the model of engagement we are proposing (see chart below).
Some of the most interesting findings from this report:
- Engagement is not an action or a single exchange with a customer, it is a function that happens over time. It is not the same, not related directly to, as Customer Experience, Customer Interaction, Customer Relationship or any of the terms we use today (but I said this before).
- You cannot engage a customer in a single interaction anymore than meeting someone for the first date signifies you are engaged to get married (or I’d be in trouble after this past year… but ask me sometime about my wonderful experiences dating at the tender age of 46)
- Engagement can only be measured as a function of value given and value received (value exchange) as it accumulates over time (which is the same as saying that there is no metric for engagement – another fuzzy metric… yay!)
- Trust, and how to create and maintain it, is the biggest barrier to engagement. Nearly three quarters of the interviews surfaced a lack of understanding of trust as a key issue for brands – and engagement cannot happen without trust!
There are many more fascinating tidbits about engagement, a formula that will let you understand engagement further, and a great discussion and synthesis of the conversations I had.
Go ahead, sign up for the webinar and come hear me (and my very cute argentinian accent) present the report (you will get a copy of both reports at the end: consumer and CMO interviews), or simply go and download the report now if you are impatient.
Either way, we are starting the conversation that matters for the next two decades: what is engagement?
I am getting engaged into this conversation — what did you think I was talking about?
