We are familiar with the concept of ROI (Return On Investment), the return on investment, which measures the profit obtained in relation to the investment made. In this article we will explain what ROE(Return on Engagement) is, a concept that has been used in digital marketing for just over ten years.
First of all, it is important to translate the concept of “Engagement“, so that we are clear about what we are talking about. Granted, we are fluent in English, but sometimes it is easier to understand things in our own language.
In the context of digital marketing, by engagement we mean the commitment, loyalty, involvement and participation of a person with a brand. It is in some way an indicator that measures the level of adhesion, of attachment of this person to the brand.
Traditionally, brands have tried to calculate how much engagement and involvement can generate a certain action or strategy – and the corresponding economic investment – in social networks, blog, web, app, video…
The difference with ROI is that ROE is more difficult to translate into numbers, since we are talking not only about interaction with the brand, which can be measured in different ways, but above all about the impact on the strength of a brand.
Engagement KPIs
There is a whole battery of KPIs(Key Performance Indicators) that are often used; for each action, engagement objectives can be determined and evaluated.
For a webinar, for example, this could be the number and percentage of people who register, those who attend the online course, the number of requests for information or quotes received after the webinar, etc.
For a video it can be the time spent watching it, if you watch it to the end, the number (and percentage) of likes obtained, clicks on links, interactions, times shared, comments received, subscriptions to the channel …
Experience in many companies has shown that they tend to put too much focus on these kpis and generate a kind of obsession with the number of fans, shares, registrations, info requests, downloads… the goal being to increase these numbers in any way possible to legitimize our actions.
If we have seen so many times brands with inflated fan numbers on various social networks, coming from dubious origins, it is for a reason…
It is clear that the actions we carry out, and in particular in the field of digital marketing, must have some indicator of results, and that there are not many other ways to evaluate the impact produced. So the method is the right one.
Empathizing with people
However, brands need to evolve their thinking and put themselves in people’s minds. Okay, it’s not a very new concept, we’ve been reading the same thing everywhere for years!
But let’s try to do it for real. We are a person, not a consumera usera user singleuser, a visitora audience or a cohort … (they have given us some nice names, haven’t they?)
How the brand intends to reward me for my loyalty, for my commitment to it, for the value and the information I provide with my personal data, my navigation or behavioral data collected through the cookies that are installed on my computer every time I open a new web page.
In the age of data, my location, my interests, my contacts, my behavior, my intentions and my intentionseven my words (!) are stored and analyzed. What will I get from brands, beyond personalized advertising and remarketing (with banners everywhere for having looked at a product)?
Brands that will know how to focus on solving a person’ s problems, provide content with added value, service, inspiration, information or quality entertainment, social value; those that will know how to humanize the relationship (let’s not talk about B2B or B2C, let’s talk about human to human), forget for a moment about kpis to be perhaps more altruistic, are the ones that in the long term will strengthen their image and get the maximum Return on Engagement.
Finally, this ROE can be measured through datamining on social networks, in forums or blogs, in comments, analyzing and structuring the information of millions of written words. It is a more in-depth work, which requires means to do it, but it is surely very valuable.
