How Brands Link Offline Activity to Mid-Funnel Customer Engagement

And why it's so important

Digital marketing is loaded with metrics that can map to customer engagement, but the same cannot be said of the offline world. eMarketer’s Lauren Fisher spoke with Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of TV advertising and analytics firm Samba TV, about why marketers are looking at customer engagement as more than a mere sales driver, and what forms of data are critical for fleshing out mid-funnel engagement—even when it's offline. Navin was interviewed as part of eMarketer’s May report, "Understanding Customer Engagement: How to Map and Make Sense of the Metrics that Matter."

eMarketer:

When it comes to customer engagement, are your clients considering just the acquisition process or the retention process as well?

Ashwin Navin:

Marketers might be looking for specific programs to help them do one thing—for example, deepen customer engagement in post-acquisition. But it doesn’t mean they’re not doing anything else. They might also be looking for marketing programs to accomplish a specific goal at the upper funnel.

Take a subscription video service—they might have a sizable subscriber base through acquisition efforts over the last several years, but in looking at the customer journey, they might realize marketing isn’t just about acquiring subscribers. It can serve another purpose. You already have someone as a subscriber, but now you want to gain share as a source of entertainment or video.

Take a subscription video service. ... You already have someone as a subscriber, but now you want to gain share as a source of entertainment or video.

eMarketer:

Are most brands good at identifying the levers, proxies or metrics that tell them about some of these longer-term measures, like lifetime value or share of video consumption?

Interview conducted on March 20, 2018

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