What is Engagement Marketing? Definition & 4 Ways to Use it

Acquire new buyers. Grow buyers’ lifetime value. Convert buyers into advocates.

As a brand marketer, you need to become a steward over each customer’s journey. Meet them where they are and build bonds with them. 

How?

• Take a cross-channel approach (email, content, social media, etc.).
• Personalize content and communications.
• Unify the experience across all devices.
• Gamify interactions.

Why? 

• It’s extremely effective.
• It costs much less than traditional advertising.
• It builds trust and brand preference.
• It can put your business in the powerful position of being a thought leader.

This is the basic, scannable version of customer engagement marketing. If that’s all you need, you can skip down to the closing to hear CataBoom’s pitch on why you should choose us as your gamification engagement partner. 

Otherwise, keep reading for a more well-rounded definition of engagement marketing, five ways to develop engagement marketing strategies, and examples of using gamification for engagement. Then, of course, you’ll get to read our pitch. 

Engagement Marketing Definition

Engagement marketing utilizes strategic content to engage an audience using meaningful interactions to create loyal customers.

Engagement marketing does not entail popup ads or passive advertising. It uses behavioral data to learn how to reach people in meaningful ways and on a more personal level. 

Engagement marketing means moving customers quickly through the following five levels of the sales funnel: 

1. Awareness
2. Engagement
3. Conversion
4. Loyalty
5. Advocacy

This inbound marketing approach aims to establish solid engagement with people, wherever they sit in the sales funnel and during each stage of the customer lifecycle.

What Is an Engagement Strategy?

To put it briefly (we know you’re busy), an engagement strategy is an omnichannel digital plan to:

• Foster brand awareness
• Build customer loyalty
• Nurture relationships from acquisition to retention

And how do you develop engagement marketing? By:

1. Identifying audience communities
2. Learning the language of these communities, where they meet, and their needs
3. Stimulating the business growth process using this knowledge

5 Ways to Use Engagement in Marketing

Knowing how to develop and use engagement marketing is half the battle. Using targeted strategies and a cross-channel approach is the other half. 

Businesses can achieve this by utilizing the following five ways to engage in marketing:

1. Email marketing
2. Content marketing
3. Social media marketing
4. Marketing automation
5. Loyalty programs

And guess what? Gamification can be used in all these areas—and is proven to work. 

Engagement Marketing Examples Using Gamification

It’s true. Gamification has everything you need to drive customer engagement results. To prove our point, here are some engagement marketing examples using gamification as a means to an end:

• Have you ever collected frequent flyer miles?
• Have you ever tracked your workout?
• Have you finished a task just to reach 100% completion? 

If so, you’ve been gamified…and it worked!

Gamification is employed worldwide to acquire, onboard, reactivate, and retain subscribers, members, and buyers. 

It does this by:

• Creating brand awareness
• Driving traffic
• Acquiring downloads
• Engaging followers
• Instilling purchase intent
• Promoting action intent

The gamification approach to customer engagement marketing can be applied to:

• Website return visits and email acquisition
• Loyalty acquisition and engagement
• Rebate and offer stimulation
• Mobile app adoption and retention
• Social activation and engagement
• Community building
• SMS acquisition and engagement
• Street team and event activation
• Media amplification

CataBoom’s Pitch

Here’s our pitch:

CataBoom was built to help your business dramatically increase engagement with your audience, by every measurement:

1. 50% increase in web traffic and return rates
2. 60% improvement in email click-through rates
3. 90% decrease in acquisition costs

Plus:

4. 2X social engagement
5. 4X redemption rates
6. 25X survey completions

Some of the world's largest and most respected brands use CataBoom’s engagement and gamification platform to achieve these numbers. Have you ever engaged with the likes of Intel, Kellogg’s, T-Mobile, PepsiCo, and Warner Bros.? Yeah, we know you have because we helped that happen. Explore our case studies to see how we did it.

Engage with CataBoom. Schedule your demo to offer your customers incentives, rewards, and on-brand unique experiences.