Commentary

The Three Rs Of Engagement

by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, September 2, 2009

I was hypothesizing about engagement recently, reminiscing about one of my previous titles as Engagement Architect, and came up with a simple way of looking at how to define the term (at least I think I did).

Actually, there is no standard for how you define engagement because engagement depends on the objectives of the marketer. But I do think there are three unifying themes necessary to define engagement -- and they are recency, resonance and relevance.

Recency refers to how recently your audience was exposed to a message and whether it was still top of mind when it came time to make a purchase decision. If your messaging was noticed recently, then you have a higher propensity for engagement, assuming that it resonated with the consumer. This can be measured through frequency metrics.

Resonance is that second theme: understanding whether your messaging was thought out well and whether it resonated with the target audience. If you resonated with them, they will likely interact either immediately or in a delayed fashion. When they interact immediately, that translates to clicks, visits and time spent. All of these are very common ways that marketers measure engagement, but they're all tied together.

That brings us to the final R, relevance. If your message was shown recently, if it resonated with the consumer and if it is relevant, then you will likely affect behavior and drive sales or acquisitions. You can generate customers because of these three factors and you can measure each of them by evaluating different metrics as proxies for understanding.

Recency is a media metric based on delivery. In television you view delivery reports to determine when and where your spot ran. In online you evaluate performance reports to determine how your campaign delivered and against what target audience. Recency can also be measured specifically by understanding click-through and view-through. If you examine these metrics, they will lead you to an understanding of how recently the audience was exposed to your message.

Resonance is easier, as mentioned before. You can measure whether the message resonated by evaluating click-through, visit rate, time spent and other interaction rates in rich media. If it resonates, they react. If they do not react, then you can only rely on exposure and possibly awareness as a metric, without measuring consideration and/or intent.

Relevance can be measured through proxy by looking at standard measures of intent and consideration via surveys or focus groups. If you see an appreciable lift in any of these metrics, then you can hypothesize that the message was indeed relevant because it influenced behavior. What makes it hard for marketers to come up with their own standard measure of engagement, is that it is not easy to merge all of these data-points together with actual sales data to create a true, holistic picture of what's going on with your marketing!

There are many companies that will crunch this data for you and evaluate historical data to create media mix models for usage in forecasting, but it is very difficult to create a dashboard that does all of this for current campaigns. When you evaluate a weekly or biweekly report, you would love to have access to this wealth of information and have it output an engagement index, but it's not easy!

Of course, our business is filled with very smart people, so I predict that someone is going to crack this nut. It might take a couple of years, but it's going to happen -- and then Pandora's box will be opened once again as we uncover the truth about what does and doesn't work and all the guesswork will be removed from advertising.

I can't wait to see what happens, can you?

commentary, metrics

8 comments about "The Three Rs Of Engagement".

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Michael Kaleikini from One Solution, LLC, September 2, 2009 at 1:15 p.m.
I love when you can get to the basics! This is truly basal in how we as marketers try to figure out what the consumer is looking for, but at the same time how we can re-program in some cases how their behavior will respond to what we put out there. When you know the metrics, you can almost second guess what they will do next.
Nice one Cory!
Reply

Nathan Brookwood from Insight 64, September 2, 2009 at 2:29 p.m.

Cory's message reached me recently, I found it relevant and it certainly resonates. Good job!

Gianluigi Cuccureddu from Agora Media Group, September 2, 2009 at 2:54 p.m.

Hi Cory,

Interesting, the three R's of Engagement.
Must say that Recency is the weakest of the three and in my opinion does not stand as Resonance and Relevancy stand.

The more it resonates and is relevant to a person, the less important Recency is due to the importancy of it.

Tim Orr from Barnett Orr Marketing Group, Inc., September 2, 2009 at 6:53 p.m.

How about another "R" for "Reminiscent," as in "Reminiscent of the direct marketing concepts of 'recency,' 'frequency' and 'monetary.'"? That is, how recently did they buy, how frequently have they bought and how much have they spent?

Kevin Dwinnell from Brand Thunder, September 3, 2009 at 12:02 a.m.

Cory:

I like the structure of the three Rs. We speak engagement with the product we offer, branded browser experiences. The three Rs, however, identifies the key to success when you're dealing with a branded application. With an app, especially one used regularly, you are ensured recency and since an app typically requires user action to download and use relevancy is also virtually guaranteed. Now if you can provide the value that resonates with that user, you've got a truly powerful tool.

That leads to a requirement in addition to the measurement. You have to maintain Trust. This is implied in most marketing efforts, but essential in something like an application where the user extends a lot of faith from the moment they decide to download or install. This could be viewed under Relevancy but I feel it goes deeper than that. If you abuse the relationship you sought through engagement, you undermine more than any single marketing effort. And in our world, that threshold can be pretty low if we disrupt the user's experience.

Bob Gilbreath from Ahalogy, September 3, 2009 at 2:21 p.m.

I love the effort to define this better, but I think you're missing the main way of defining engagement, Cory: It's all about a consumer choosing to pay attention to and interact with the marketing. The three Rs you mention sound an awful lot like ways to make an interruptive ad impression make a bigger impact.

Isn't "engagement" pretty simple - a choice by the consumer to "engage"

Howard Zoss from Zig Marketing, September 4, 2009 at 6:35 a.m.

Recency refers to getting your message as close to the purchase decision as possible ... last message in has the greatest chance of conversion. It was developed in national ad agencies in the 90's.
It is not how recently your audience was exposed to the message.
it is the most powerful strategy on the planet after relevance. It refers to finding buyers late in the purchase funnel when they are actively in external search and getting your value proposition heard at the critical moment of purchase decision.
Digital media enables hyper targeting via contextual and behavioral targeting which yields ROI in the form of increased unaided awareness, purchase consideration and intent.
The data from many digital campaigns is clear ... media is still about targeting and the Internet allows for the ability to leverage recency and create higher levels of ROI.

Mike Einstein from the Brothers Einstein, September 5, 2009 at 9:22 a.m.

Cory,

To echo Nathan's comment here, the relevance of your most recent article really resonated with me. But you left out the fourth "R" - ridiculous! Bill Bernbach must be turning in his grave.