A new report from Aite Group, LLC reveals that measuring customer engagement can help financial institutions improve their marketing effectiveness and efficiency. The report, based on an Aite Group survey of 400 U.S. consumers conducted in February 2009, identifies consumer behaviors and characteristics associated with a high level of engagement with their bank.
Highly engaged consumers are five times more likely than other consumers to open additional accounts with their bank, and more frequently refer their bank to friends and family. Unfortunately, Aite Group has found that a mere 25% of consumers can be considered highly engaged with their bank’s brand, and that marketers have no idea how to measure and track consumer engagement. As such, Aite Group believes that customer engagement is an important concept for bank marketers – and a potentially powerful metric to track.
“There is no single formula for measuring customer engagement,” says Ron Shevlin, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. “Based on their strategy and approach to the market, banks must decide for themselves what behaviors characterize a strong relationship, and then segment customers by level of engagement and breadth of relationship to address strategic questions about service and product delivery strategies.”
The report mentions the following IT vendors, consulting firms, and database marketing agencies that are helping financial services firms measure customer engagement: Allant, Allegiance, Inc., ClickSquared, Diamond, Epsilon, Equifax, Harland Clarke, Harte-Hanks, Merkle, One to One Interactive, Powered, and Targetbase.
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