I had a conversation with a student at Otto-von-Guerice University in Magdeburg, Germany, recently. The student, a young lady with a good head on her shoulders, is preparing her thesis on Engagement and asked if she could ask me some questions. I was happy to oblige and asked if I could post our conversation in this blog in return, to which she agreed.
I have her permission to post the conversation, not to use her name (probably best for her as I'm fairly opinionated on the subject). The discussion follows. Her comments are in regular text, mine are in italics.
Enjoy
Good afternoon, Valentina. Do you have a website or something similar I can look at?no, I do not have a website. I am just in the beginning of my research on the topic
No problem Sometimes I wish I didn't either :). Where are you studying?
at Otto-von-Guerice University, Magdeburg, Germany. Economics and Magagement
Management
sorry
Forgive my ignorance, how far is that from Brussels. again, no probs. My spelling is horrible.
Brussels is in Belgium,but anyway both coutries are not far away
Just asking because I might be there in a couple of weeks. Very nice school, by the way. In any case, I've added you to my contact list per your request. Let me know what I can do to help. FYI, I'm much easier to reach via skype or phone. I rarely get my email.
my e-mail box is full of stuff therefore I also prefer skype. I am trying to develop criteria to measure customer engagement
LOL. You're kidding, right? That's a tough topic to get involved in right now. Online Engagement -- Is it MPH or MPG or just a Measure of the Site Itself with no Relevance to Visitors at all?, Online Engagement Metrics: You Have Their Eyes but What Are They Driving?
well, my goal is to compare different marketing strategies in the online environment according to the level of customer engagement and that's why I need first to categorize different levels of engagement
Let me know what you learn.(maybe more helpful) I'm working on a paper with Eric Peterson on the topic right now.
I will consider strategies such as corporate websites, display/text-based/context advertising, e-mai/newsletterl marketing, and some more engaging techniques, such as bloggs, networks, online communities. and I want to rank them in the level of customer engagement
Excellent. Very thoughtful. This is actually something I modified Eric's original work to handle.
I've seen his website, and I read the coments there...
Then you are ahead of most people.
...but I think that for different industries there are different criteria
(BizMediaScience Engagement Blog posts) I would need an explanation of your reasoning for that. By the way, may I reference/post this conversation on my blog? It's very helpful to me to have this conversation with you.
yes, of course
Many thanks. Now I'll have something interesting to write about :).
about the reasoning, I think that different industries have different goals. obviously, the final goal is the profit, but to get there various objectives should be considered I looked at the Customer Engagement Survey of cScape
Never heard of it. Sorry.
they have data from companies in many different branches
I also have a challenge with surveys (in most cases). they assign different weights to different attributes
ok.
e.g. in the top 3 is "purchase regularly" so, I think that somehow the other channels should also be considered
It's always fascinating to me how something like "purchase regularly" equates to a visitor being "engaged". These concepts are part of a blog post for AllBusiness I'll be publishing (this) week. (sorry, clicked wrong button. I'm a Luddite).
:)
till the present moment I gathered so many different definitions and so many scales for measuring this term that now I am really confused about the factors that really matter
ah...you shouldn't ask me. I'm very opinionated.
I do not want to waste your time, may be it is better if I see the links I gave me and try to draw some conclusions from them. Later, with more information and some definite results I will probablyl need your opinion again
Please feel free to ask me (we can set up a time to talk, if you'd like), just be advised that I'm very opinionated on the subject. Ex: I think all these different measures are wishcasting on the part of the web analytics industry as they're questing for greater understanding of consumers. I've written this before.
I pretty much state that all these ideas about "engagement" are nothing more than ways to measure the site, not how visitors are responding to the site.
Thank you very much. I will write you when I have some progress
No probs and looking forward to it. Enjoy your weekend.
thanks, best regards!!
:)
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