Customer engagement is an essential metric for any online brand. According to one study by Gallup, fully engaged customers represent a 23 percent higher share in profitability, revenue, and relationship growth. In addition, 86 percent of buyers are willing to pay more if it means a better customer experience. These two stats are just some of the many data points that demonstrate the importance of engaging your customers.

If we accept that customer engagement is important, the question then becomes, how can brands improve their customer engagement? There are a few key strategies you can use, that when implemented, will drive up your customer engagement metrics.

Deliver a Personalized Experience

The first thing you can focus on is providing a more personalized experience to each of your customers. 64 percent of customers expect tailored engagements, so this is a good place to start. There are several ways you can personalize the experience, but a few simple ones to try are:

• Recommendations - Provide product recommendations based on past purchases or browsing history.
• Record Interactions - When providing customer support, you should have a record of any past conversations. This will allow you to follow up on those issues, use them in the current service request, and remember key details about the customer.
• Use Their Name - Displaying the name associated with their account when they log in or using their name during conversations is a great way to personalize the experience.

Personalizing the experience for your customer is all about recording key information about them - their name, address, purchase history, etc - then using it throughout their time on your site. The more personal information you can use, the better.

Better Writing

The words you use throughout your brand play a large role in how well you can engage your customers. If your copy is dull or stilted, it will cause your customers to lose interest in what they are reading. The first place you should look to improve your copy is on the website itself. Each page should have a goal and writing that helps you achieve that goal. Whether it is to get more email subscribers, sell a product, or provide more information, writing is an essential ingredient.

This same principle applies to your blog. Having a blog on your website is a great way to provide your customers with more information and introduce them to your products or services. But no one is going to read a long blog post if it’s boring. Use these tips to make your blog posts more exciting and keep your customers engaged.

Finally, look at the words you’re using in your email marketing campaigns. More than likely your customers are getting dozens of emails every day from other brands. You need yours to stand out and hold their attention long enough to get them to visit your website. This guide can provide you with some more information on how to write emails that convert.

Different Types of Content

Of course, not everyone responds the same to writing. Some people love to sit and read a long blog posts, while others would prefer to absorb the information in another manner. This means even if you have an amazingly written blog post, it won’t be enough to draw everyone in. To engage more customers, you need to explore using different types of content.

For example, you could produce a video that explains the same information as your blog post. Have someone on your team present the information in a clear manner, then get some royalty-free music for your videos to improve them even further.

Creating new content like videos, infographics, and slideshows allows you to reach a wider audience than a single blog post would. So, the next time you’re working on your content strategy, be sure to include other mediums, as every customer likes to be engaged differently.

Foster a Community

Customer engagement isn’t just about your brand interacting with a customer. If you can create a space online for your customers to engage with one another, this will go a long way. Customers will then spend more time on your site and dive more deeply in it, making them likely to become repeat customers.

To do this, you should invest in community software. With community software, you can easily create a space on your website for users to ask questions, share answers, comment on articles or products, and share content. This will create a hub where your customers can gather and interact.

If you don’t want to invest in community software, a simpler solution is to just allow comments on your content. A commenting feature allows your customers to share their opinions and you have the opportunity to respond and interact with them. However, keep in mind that you will need to moderate your comments to ensure they are all high quality.

Provide Free Trials

To get customers engaged with your product, sometimes you need to get them a free sample or trial. It’s not always easy to demonstrate or talk about the benefits of your products or services - you need customers to experience them for themselves.

If you don’t already have some sort of free trial system in place, consider adding one. Let your customers use your product for free for 30 days so they can decide if they want to purchase it. Customers are more likely to give a product a chance if they can do so for free.

Want some real-world examples of how effective free trials can be? Here are 10 great case studies to check out.

Split Test New Strategies

Finally, it’s important that you are always looking for ways to improve. You may install a new feature now that improves engagement, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found the perfect setup. A great way to continuously improve your customer engagement is through split testing.

Split testing works like this: You first create two versions of a webpage. Let’s say you want to see which would work better, a long blog post or an infographic. On one version of the page, you would have the blog post, with the infographic going on the other. You would then show each new visitor one of the pages at random. Over time, after getting enough visitors to each, you would be able to see which one leads to more engagement.

You can use split testing on practically anything - your email copy, your blog content, your calls to action, or even the entire look of your website. The purpose is to try new things, see what works, then try something else. The more tests you run, the more you’ll learn about your audience and what engages them. To learn more about split testing, you can check out this guide.

Always Look for New Ways to Engage

The more engaged you can get your customers, the more your business can grow. Once you find an engagement strategy that works for you, don’t stop there. Always be on the lookout for new ways to engage your audience or ways to improve your current strategy. Customer engagement may not pay large dividends immediately, but if you can develop good habits, it will pay off in the long-run.