“Don’t find customers for your products. Find products for your customers.” This strategic advice from marketing expert and entrepreneur Seth Godin is spot-on for how engagement marketing should work for small businesses.
Today’s most successful brands don’t just push products, they put loyal customers at the center of everything they do. They listen, adapt, and create experiences based on what people actually want and need.
Engagement marketing is a strategy that helps you move beyond generic sales tactics to build real, two-way connections to keep your brand human, relatable, and trustworthy.
What is engagement marketing?
Engagement marketing, also known as customer engagement marketing, aims to build genuine relationships with your target audience to help meet your customers’ needs. Instead of using traditional advertising to simply raise awareness about a product, engagement marketing invites a customer base to interact with a brand in meaningful ways. Customer interactions could look like witty social comments, helpful content, personalized messages, and experiences that make customers feel valued and less like a dollar sign. When executed well, engagement marketing leads can drive increased customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and customer retention rates.
Types of engagement marketing
To effectively engage customers, it helps to understand several different types of engagement marketing methods. Whether you’re engaging existing customers or reaching out to new ones, strategically using a mix of these techniques can give you a competitive advantage:
Reactive engagement
This happens when a customer reaches out first, maybe with a question, a complaint, or another type of comment, and your brand responds. Let’s say someone DMs you on Instagram because their package is late. Your empathetic, helpful reply is considered reactive engagement.
Reactive engagement also works on a larger scale. If you get a lot of customer feedback that something about your product or website is confusing, for example, posting a video that explains how it works is also reactive. These moments help build customer relationships by showing you’re not just listening, you’re acting on what you hear.
Proactive engagement
Proactive engagement means you’re anticipating customer needs. You can do this by regularly reviewing customer data for valuable insights, like what products someone viewed but didn’t buy, how long they browsed a particular category, which emails they opened (or ignored), and if they’ve stopped engaging with your company altogether. These details can guide you toward thoughtful touchpoints, like a friendly nudge about their abandoned cart, an email with product recommendations based on recent browsing, or a helpful explainer that addresses the value of something they looked at but didn’t purchase.
Emotional engagement
Striking an emotional connection is more than just a feel-good goal. Gallup found that around 70% of buying decisions are based on emotion, not logic. That means how people feel when they interact with your brand—whether it’s on your website, in an email, or on social media—can have a major impact on whether or not they buy anything. And whether or not they come back. One of the most powerful emotional engagement tools is sharing customer success stories. These highlight real people and their positive experiences with your products, which helps others see themselves in your brand. It encourages conversation, trust, and connection.
Social engagement
To boost social engagement, create back-and-forth moments on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. It involves more than posting quality content. You should also reply to comments, share user-generated content (UGC), host interactive livestreams, and start conversations. Social engagement creates two-way conversations that traditional marketing does not, and it builds community, encourages participation, and humanizes your brand.
Customer engagement marketing strategies
- Customer understanding
- Personalization
- Segmentation
- Omnichannel expertise
- Timeliness
- Customer feedback
Creating satisfied customers is the result of thoughtfully designed engagement efforts that focus on relationship building. These elements form the foundation of a strong customer engagement strategy, helping your brand connect in ways that feel genuine, timely, and customer-first:
Customer understanding
Engagement marketing relies on understanding your audience, and that insight is what makes your customers feel valued. To do that, pay attention to customer behavior, such as what they’re browsing, what they’re buying, and the point where they drop off. Analyze their reviews, customer support chats, and social comments. These are gold mines for understanding what your customers want and what they don’t.
Personalization
Customize your communication with your customers as much as possible. Recommend items based on past purchases, show recently viewed products, and offer discounts for birthdays. When a message feels like it was custom-tailored for someone, they’re far more likely to engage.
Segmentation
Not every customer should get the same message. Segment your audience by location, buying habits, or where they are in the customer journey. This lets you speak to specific needs instead of sending generic one-size-fits-all blasts that are easily ignored.
Omnichannel expertise
Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that creates a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. Your customers might interact with your brand on your website, email, through Instagram, or even in person. You don’t need to have the exact same messaging everywhere, but you do need to keep the experience consistent. Your tone and visuals should always feel like they’re coming from the same brand.
Timeliness
The timing of your communication matters, too. Whether it’s a follow-up email after a purchase or a nudge when someone leaves a product in their cart, catching your customer at the right time—with the right ask—can make the sale happen. Use automation tools, like Shopify’s marketing automation tools, to help deliver the right message at the right time.
Customer feedback
One of the most helpful ongoing interactions you can create is customer feedback. This can be done by sending quick post-purchase surveys, asking for product reviews, or running polls on social media. After you’ve read their responses, show your customers you’re listening by making updates or sharing what you’ve learned. This helps build credibility and makes customers feel heard.
Engagement marketing tactics
- Email marketing
- Interactive marketing
- Social media engagement
- Loyalty and rewards programs
- Experiential marketing
Explore some of these tried-and-true tactics for boosting engagement:
1. Email marketing
Email is still one of the most effective tools in your marketing tool kit. Use it to welcome new subscribers, recommend products, send order updates, or share behind-the-scenes content.
For example, you might send a re-engagement email to someone who hasn’t bought anything in a while. Or go a step further by creating an email with product carousels or a color selector to preview different product options. Done right, email keeps your brand top of mind and adds real value.
Best practices for email marketing include segmenting your list, writing subject lines that make people want to read the message, keeping your message clear and mobile-friendly, and regularly testing which links get the most clicks.
2. Interactive marketing
Interactive newsletters, videos, polls, games, and quizzes put the customer first and allow them to be participants instead of observers. These types of campaigns are great for gathering data, delivering personalized results, and keeping site visitors engaged longer.
Best practices for interactive campaigns include keeping it easy to use, promoting the campaign across your email list and social channels, and using performance insights for future personalization.
3. Social media engagement
Social media isn’t just about getting your company’s name out there. It’s about building relationships, too. Engage in conversations in the comments on the posts, reply to DMs, reshare customer photos, and create content for your social media channels that encourages dialogue. Perhaps a fitness gear brand might launch a hashtag challenge asking customers to show off their favorite workout gear.
Best practices for social engagement include posting and commenting consistently, using polls or live streams to invite participation, and spotlighting UGC to build loyalty and community.
4. Loyalty and rewards programs
Loyalty and rewards programs can turn customers into brand advocates, increase customer lifetime value (CLV), and give people a reason to keep buying your products. These programs are especially effective in ecommerce, where it’s easy to reward repeat behavior with special perks and discounts.
For instance, an apparel store might offer early access to seasonal merchandise for customers who hit VIP status. These small touches make customers feel like insiders and build strong, ongoing relationships.
Best practices for loyalty and rewards programs include keeping the system easy to understand, promoting it regularly on your site and in emails, and personalizing the perks based on a customer’s purchase history or preferences.
5. Experiential marketing
Experiential marketing creates brand experiences that customers can interact with. These experiences can happen in person (like a pop-up shop or product demo in a grocery store) or online (like product demo videos or interactive virtual events). Events like these help bridge the gap between your product and your audience. A beauty brand, for example, could create an in-person experience where customers can get free makeovers using the brand’s latest line of products.
Best practices for experiential marketing include making it easy to share information about the event on social media platforms and tying it back to a clear action like signing up for a newsletter, buying new products, or sharing discount codes with friends.
Engagement marketing FAQ
What does engagement mean in marketing?
Engagement in marketing is how your customers interact with your brand. This might look like clicking on links in a branded email that caught their attention, liking a funny or relatable social media post, or leaving a review after a purchase. It can also mean joining a loyalty program, taking a quiz, or telling a friend about your brand. These actions all show they’re connecting with your brand and content.
What is an engagement strategy in marketing?
An engagement strategy is your game plan for how you’ll build and maintain meaningful connections with your audience. It’s everything from the emails you send to how you respond to comments on social media to what type of content you share. For example, your strategy might include welcoming new customers with a fun email sequence, inviting feedback through clever polls, or spotlighting loyal customers in your Instagram Stories. The goal is to keep people interested, involved, and coming back.
What is the point of engagement marketing?
The purpose of engagement marketing is to create experiences that feel personal and genuine. It’s an effective way to build a brand that people care about and trust. This could happen with behind-the-scenes videos, clever emails, or social media campaigns. Whatever the touchpoint, engagement marketing can turn one-time buyers into long-term fans by making them feel connected—not targeted.
