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EDITORIAL
When High Tide Inc., a high-impact, retail-forward enterprise built to deliver real-world value across every component of cannabis, reflects on its key milestones for 2024.
The company points to the launch of its disruptive Cabana Club program in the United States and Europe, all while closing 2024 as the top revenue-generating cannabis company in Canada for the third consecutive year. The Company continues to grow rapidly, largely utilizing internal cash flow.
It has delivered continued rapid growth in its unique membership program, which remains the largest such bricks-and-mortar cannabis loyalty program in Canada, with over 1.55 million Cabana Club members and over 57,000 ELITE members. They also added 29 new Canna Cabana locations in 2024, closing the year at 191 stores across Canada. It’s a marketing success story, delivering positive net income for two consecutive quarters, an annualized revenue run rate of over $525 million dollars, five consecutive quarters of positive free cash flow with trailing free cash flow totaling $21.8 million, and a cash-onhand balance of $35.3 million, a record.
The expansion of the first-of-its-kind and innovative Cabana Club membership program across the entirety of the United States (U.S.) through cabanaclubusa.com, as well as the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) through cabanaclub.eu, building on its existing international customer base of over 4 million. As a result, they were recognized as a Top 10 Ranked Company in the Diversified Industries Sector by the TSX Venture 50 for 2024 and achieved a ranking of 87 out of 417 in the Globe and Mail’s annual ranking of Canada’s “Top Growing Companies” with 486 percent revenue growth over three years, marking the fourth year in a row the Company made this list.
“This year has been extraordinary for High Tide from an operational, financial, and growth perspective,” said Raj Grover, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of High Tide. “The Cabana Club continues to be our crown jewel,
now boasting over 1.55 million members in Canada, including 57,000 ELITE members. This success has driven our 12 percent market share in Canadian brick-and-mortar sales, and its recent rollout in the U.S. and Europe is already showing encouraging results. To accelerate our international growth, we are gearing up to expand further in the European cannabis market early next year.
High Tide, Inc. is the leading communitygrown, retail-forward cannabis enterprise engineered to unleash the full value of the world’s most powerful plant and is the second-largest cannabis retailer globally by store count.
Creative Group, Inc., a full-service meeting, incentive, and recognition company with office in Toronto, announced a strategic collaboration with Virtual Incentives, a leading provider of global digital reward solutions.
This partnership aims to bring innovative incentive solutions to the global stage, enhancing the way clients manage and distribute rewards across the diverse markets Creative Group supports.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Virtual Incentives to provide our clients with more flexible and seamless global payout options,” said Jamie Schwartz, Sr. Director of Performance Solutions Strategy for Creative Group. “This partnership strengthens our ability to support clients’ needs for customizable, reloadable gift card rewards or incentives, particularly as businesses continue to expand globally. Physical or virtual gift cards are easy and safe and can be used in many ways such as rewards, spending money for event attendees, gratuities, and holiday gifting.”
The partnership will leverage Virtual Incentives’ digital rewards platform, offering instant, secure, and personalized payouts across multiple currencies and markets. By combining Creative Group’s expertise in incentive and recognition programs with Virtual Incentives’ advanced technology and global content network, this collaboration will deliver enhanced solutions to boost participant engagement, motivation, and loyalty, while streamlining payment logistics for events. Whether it’s for reward or travel, gift cards play an important role in participants having a positive experience.
“Our platform is designed to simplify global reward with industry-leading variety, and through this partnership, we will be able to deliver greater value to Creative Group’s clients, helping them drive performance and achieve business objectives more effectively,” said Nathaniel Shelley-Reade, Chief Revenues Officer at Virtual Incentives.
Both companies are committed to
delivering innovative solutions that drive performance through recognition and incentives. This collaboration will benefit clients by providing a streamlined, digital-first approach to reward management, further enhancing Creative Group’s already robust offering.
Cineplex, the key partner in Scene+, Canada’s largest entertainment and lifestyle loyalty program, and a leading entertainment and media company, opened its newest Playdium location at Toronto’s CF Fairview Mall.
Located adjacent to Cineplex Cinemas Fairview Mall, Playdium Fairview is the ultimate entertainment destination for families and kids of all ages – all under one roof. Playdium Fairview offers state-of-the-art gaming, spacious party rooms and a variety of fun food options for the whole family.
“Adding a new Playdium next to our theatre creates the perfect place for families and friends to enjoy movies, gaming and great food — all in one amazing space,” said Ellis Jacob, President and CEO, Cineplex. “As the country’s top entertainment destination for Canadians of all ages, we’re excited to bring Playdium to Toronto, where our guests can connect and create memories for both everyday fun and special occasions.”
“Creating vibrant destinations and memorable experiences is at the heart of our business, and as a company with the same shared values, Cineplex is an ideal partner,” commented Rory MacLeod, EVP, Operations, Cadillac Fairview. “Entertainment adds an extra dimension to our overall shopping experience and we’re thrilled to support Cineplex with the opening of Playdium at CF Fairview Mall.”
The Canadian Scholarship Trust Foundation (CST) recently launched the CST Cashback Rewards program to help customers boost their post-secondary education savings.
Through this program, CST Savings customers can earn automatic cashback on everyday purchases by using Paymi’s proprietary card
linking technology. To start earning cashback, users simply connect their bank accounts and shop in-store or online using their debit or credit cards. The platform offers a wide range of offers from an extensive list of retailers, restaurants, and service providers, including well-known brands such as Mary Brown’s Chicken, Bass Pro Shops & Cabela’s, Decathlon, Simons, Lyft, Comfort Inn, Ashley, SkipTheDishes, La Vie en Rose, Bikini Village, and many more.
“We know long-term saving can be a challenge for many Canadians, especially during the holidays,” says Jeff Beck, Chief Marketing Officer, CST. “At CST, we are driven by one goal: to inspire hope by improving access to post-secondary education. Saving for education requires a head start, and we are proud to offer our customers extra support through the CST Cashback Rewards program.”
CST Cashback Rewards is just one of the unique and exclusive benefits available to CST customers. In addition to this cashback benefit, CST Rewards also supports postsecondary education access for customers through its Founders’ Awards scholarships, a CST Loyalty Bonus, and a referral program.
“At Paymi, we are thrilled to partner with CST to power the CST Cashback Rewards platform,” said Zane Mistry, General Manager, Paymi. “Our mission is to make cashback rewards as easy and rewarding as possible, and this collaboration aligns with our shared goal of supporting Canadians in achieving their financial goals.”
Founded in 1960, the Canadian Scholarship Trust Foundation is dedicated to improving access to post-secondary education to foster a more resilient and inclusive country for generations to come. For more than 60 years, CST has helped almost 700,000 Canadian families set their children up for success through post-secondary education. As the creators of education savings plans in Canada, CST has awarded over $2 million to students pursuing post-secondary education through
its scholarship and bursary programs.
Paymi is one of Canada’s leading rewards platforms, dedicated to bringing the best offers and cashback to its users. With a focus on innovation, user experience, and value, Paymi partners with top retailers to offer unmatched cashback rewards in the most frictionless way, transforming everyday shopping into a rewarding experience. Paymi is forging impactful partnerships with Canadian businesses seeking to offer the gift of cashback rewards to their customers through a card-linked rewards platform, designed, powered, and managed by Paymi.
A special report from the BMO Real Financial Progress Index reveals concerns about the cost of living are affecting Canadians’ spending plans for 2025, with nearly a third (30 percent) planning to minimize spending in the new year.
Nearly half (46 percent) of Canadians say the higher cost of living will affect their financial new year’s resolutions — a 4 percent increase from 2023.
BMO’s special report explores how concerns about current economic conditions have affected Canadians’ approaches to financial planning ahead of the new year and reveals:
2024 Financial Wrap: Amid increased concerns about the cost of living (54 percent), inflation (50 percent) and a possible economic recession (42 percent), the leading sources of financial anxiety include concerns about overall financial situation (82 percent), fear of unknown expenses (82 percent), housing costs (73 percent), family related expenses (67 percent) and keeping up with monthly bills (64 percent).
Ringing in Financial Optimism: Despite continued concerns about the cost of living, the majority feel they are making real financial progress (87 percent) and are optimistic about
their financial future for the upcoming year (72 percent). 37 percent feel more financially secure than they were a year ago.
New Year, New Goals: Over one in five (21 percent) Canadians plan to create financial goals and/or a budget for 2025. Among the 69 percent of Canadians who have already set financial goals for themselves, top goals include saving for retirement (58 percent), saving for a vacation (47 percent), and paying down debt (40 percent).
Planning Prognosis: Only a third (33 percent) currently have a financial plan and 59 percent do not have a household budget for the year.
Over a third (36 percent) are planning major purchases within the next year, but one quarter of them (24 percent) plan to modify their purchases to account for rising costs of living.
Annual Review: To stay on top of financial planning and goals, on average, 92 percent of Canadians review their financial plan at least once a year.
According to BMO Economics, Canadian households can look forward to lower borrowing costs in 2025 as the Bank of Canada is likely not finished its easing policy. After lowering its overnight target rate by 175 bps since June 2024 — the most aggressive move among major central banks in that period — an additional 75 bps of rate relief is anticipated in the first half of 2025. However, longer-term borrowing costs, which have already fallen sharply, are likely to decline only moderately further as economic activity picks up.
“The new year marks a fresh start for self reflection and improvement, and we want to empower Canadians to focus on building good habits and making real financial progress by encouraging them to get a head start on defining their financial goals,” said Anthony (Tony) Tintinalli, Head, Specialized Sales, BMO. “As we look forward to the new year and its possibilities, Canadians can work with a financial advisor to build a personalized plan and take advantage of convenient online banking tools to help monitor their budgets and establish good financial habits that will set your financial future up for success.”
One major recommendation from BMO to their customers: Take Advantage of Loyalty Programs: Loyalty programs such as AIR MILES allows Canadians to get more out of their everyday purchases by earning Miles on groceries, gas, pharmacy and more. Miles and/or other program rewards can be redeemed and used towards the purchase of appliances, apparel, travel and more.
Regular Budget Check Ups: Free, digital banking tools including BMO Insights allows Canadians to conveniently monitor their incoming and outgoing money flow, spending and expenses that will help build the framework to create an accurate budget. Seek Professional Advice: Working with
a financial planner or advisor can help Canadians develop a personalized plan that reflects their financial goals, sources of income, time horizon, appetite to risk and financial obligations, and make any necessary adjustments.
Customers can build financial literacy, conveniently monitor their financial plans, and reach their financial goals through BMO’s innovative digital tools and resources:
BMO SmartProgress: This tool helps customers learn more about important personal finance topics and build financial literacy anywhere and at any time. It is a free, online financial education platform featuring customized, interactive content, including videos and tools, on complex financial planning topics including budgeting and credit management, homeownership and investing.
BMO CreditView: Customers can quickly and easily check their credit scores and access new tools and advice to manage their credit profile online and on mobile.
BMO Insights: Customers get help saving more, monitoring spending and account values, and spotting unusual activity with 25 BMO Insights that provide customers free, quick, and personalized views of their daily spending to help them make informed decisions. Popular online insights include:
CashTrack: Using artificial intelligence, these insights monitor customers’ cash flows and let them know if they will run out of money in the next seven days.
Spend Categorization: These insights notify customers when there has been a significant increase in a specific spending category or if a free trial has expired.
BMO Savings Amplifier Account: To help make saving easy and automatic, BMO’s award-winning solution offers no monthly fees, a competitive interest rate, and unlimited no-fee transfers to other BMO accounts. In addition, its digital Savings Goals feature enables customers to set, track, and manage their financial goals.
Launched in February 2021, the BMO Real Financial Progress Index is an indicator of how
consumers feel about their personal finances and whether they are making financial progress. The index aims to spark dialogue that will help consumers reach their financial goals and to humanize a topic that causes anxiety for many — money.
The research detailed in this document was conducted by Ipsos in Canada from September 2nd to 14th, 2024. A sample of n=3,404 adults ages 18+ in Canada were collected via the Ipsos panel. Quotas and weighting were used to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. This survey has a credibility interval of +/- 2.4 per cent 19 times out of 20, of what the results would have been had all Canadian adults 18+ been surveyed.
in Ontario and British Columbia.
“We know how much Canadians love their pets so we’re thrilled to expand our presence with Pet Valu, Canada’s largest specialty pet retailer,” said Blake Wallace, Senior Director of Retail Partnerships at Instacart. “Whether you’re welcoming a new pet to your family, restocking everyday pet essentials, or splurging on your pet’s favorite treat, customers can find whatever they need for their pets all in one place with Instacart, delivered right to their door with speed and ease.”
“At Pet Valu, we’re committed to creating seamless shopping experiences for our devoted pet lovers so they can spend more quality time with their pets,” said Tanbir Grover, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Pet Valu. “Joining forces with Instacart allows us to expand our availability through a new channel, its customers and bring our large
Instacart, the grocery technology company, and Pet Valu, the leading specialty retailer of pet food and petrelated supplies in Canada, announced that pet lovers can now shop over 600 locations across the country exclusively on Instacart for same-day delivery in as fast as an hour.
This collaboration will make shopping for pet essentials easier and more convenient than ever before, with quick and reliable delivery straight to customers’ homes.
Millions of pet owners across Canada can browse and order food, treats, toys, and more from the Pet Valu family of stores — including Pet Valu, Bosley’s by Pet Valu, Paulmac’s, Total Pet and Tisol — through the Instacart app or website, ensuring their furry family members never miss a meal or playtime. Pet Valu’s launch is the largest pet retailer collaboration for Instacart Canada and expands their offering to cover over 500 new stores, adding to the 100 locations rolled out earlier this year
selection of high-quality pet goods to more pet parents across Canada, while providing the convenience of same-day delivery.”
With Pet Valu teaming up with Instacart, pet owners will have access to Instacart’s community of tens of thousands of experienced Canadian shoppers to help with picking, packing, and delivering customer orders.
Instacart works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop. The company partners with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 85,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. Pet Valu is Canada’s leading retailer of pet food and pet-related supplies with over 800 corporate-owned or franchised locations across the country. For more than 45 years, Pet Valu has earned the trust and loyalty of pet parents by offering knowledgeable customer service, a premium product offering and engaging in-store services.
BY SHANA HAYNIE
Brands live and die by their ability to engage customers. If your customers aren’t interacting with your product or service, you won’t be driving interest, adoption, or conversions; let alone deep brand loyalty that lasts.
To get — and keep — customers invested, brands need to develop
dynamic, inspiring experiences for their customers. For brands to make informed, data-driven decisions about the customer experiences they build, the journeys they orchestrate, and the campaigns they create, they need to be making them based on insights about how customers actually interact and engage with their products and services.
One of the biggest challenges in achieving this is determining how to quantify customer engagement with your brand. The fact is, engagement looks different in different industries, for different service types, and for individual companies. It’s often challenging to know what good or bad performance looks like, and it’s even more challenging to decipher which metrics are
most important for understanding customer behavior.
Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of the top twenty customer engagement metrics for brands of any industry. We cover what each metric is and explain how brands can use each metric to measure customer engagement. We also identify which stage in the customer journey each metric
is most useful for analyzing. This way, you should be able to find out which metrics are most impactful for your organization.
We also interview leading industry experts about how they use customer engagement metrics to maximize impact with their audience. With real-life insights, you can learn how to actually use the metrics in a practical way.
Let’s start with what customer engagement metrics are and why they are so important for brands looking to understand customer activity and improve customer experiences.
Customer engagement metrics are units of measurement that help brands quantify, analyze, and understand customer engagement with their brand and its products and services. These include various KPIs that look at how customers interact, communicate, and connect with a brand over time. Customer engagement analysis is the process of using these KPIs to study customer engagement with a brand. Brands then leverage this information to optimize and improve their customer experience and marketing campaigns.
5 Benefits of Measuring Customer Engagement
For brands to connect with their customers successfully, they need to understand what customers do (and don’t) like about their brand experience.
Below, we look at the essential benefits customer engagement metrics provide companies looking to engage their customers at scale.
1. Make data driven-decisions: Measuring customer engagement allows you to actually quantify engagement in a meaningful, actionable way, and ensures your future decisions are data-driven.
2. Understand customer behavior: Having detailed analytics about where, when, and how customers engage with your brand allows you to deeply understand customer activity, behavior, and buyer intent.
3. Increase customer engagement: Having
meaningful, actionable insights about customer engagement empowers you to optimize your experiences and campaigns to maximize engagement, helping you increase conversions, retention, and brand loyalty.
4. Build customer-centric experiences: When all of your customer experiences are developed based on customer engagement data, you naturally build experiences that are centered around what they want.
5. Set realistic, achievable goals: With a solid means of tracking engagement and clearly defined benchmarks for measuring success, brands are able to develop achievable (yet challenging and motivating) goals that drive their brand forward.
Ultimately, measuring customer engagement enables brands to quantify customer engagement. This allows them to analyze engagement meaningfully and develop actionable steps to improve the overall experience and increase both satisfaction and engagement.
To help brands actually use these key performance indicators (KPIs) effectively, we not only explain what each metric is and how to calculate it; we also indicate which stage of the customer journey it’s most useful for measuring engagement and explore how brands can use this metric to understand — and improve — customer interactions.
mobile websites.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of single one-page visits by the total number of first-time visitors (or entrance visits).
Measuring customer engagement is objectively challenging because it spans the entire customer lifecycle. To understand it, brands are looking at a broad span of time and numerous customer interactions, attempting to attribute meaning to each one.
The difficulty lies in the fact that with so many different customer engagement metrics available to look at, it’s hard to know which one to apply at a specific time or in a certain circumstance. Which metrics are best for analyzing engagement in the awareness stage versus the retention stage? Are the metrics providing information on the quantity or quality of the engagement? Beyond that, you also need to consider which metrics provide the best signals of engagement for your brand and your particular use case.
Below, we look at some of the most important metrics for measuring, quantifying, and qualifying customer engagement.
Views are simply the total number of views a website, advertisement, or marketing message gets.
These are commonly simply called views in social media and digital advertising in general; they are often referred to as page views for websites.
It’s calculated by simply counting the number of total views an advertisement or message receives.
How to determine the number of views a webpage or marketing message receives: Views, or page views, are one of the most basic customer engagement metrics. It’s particularly significant for analyzing the earliest stage of the customer journey — awareness. It’s a solid indicator of how much reach and exposure your campaigns are getting.
While views certainly don’t paint a complete picture of engagement, they are useful for calculating other important metrics and are vital for comparing a number of other metrics in order to fully understand the relationship between engagement and exposure.
How to calculate bounce rate: The bounce rate is often confused with the exit rate, which measures the rate at which visitors exit a page. However, the exit rate does not strictly measure single-page visits, and could come at the end of a sequence of page views or other on-page actions. Instead, the bounce rate only measures visitors who leave after a single page view. This makes the bounce rate a significant indicator of poor early-stage customer engagement. Typically, a high bounce rate means most visitors are leaving with a negative first impression of your brand.
3
Customer Journey Stage(s): Awareness
Brands can even find creative 20
Customer Journey Stage(s): Awareness
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that land on a webpage for the first time and leave without taking any further action, such as clicking a link or visiting a second page on the site. The bounce rate is an important on-page engagement metric for a brand’s desktop and
Impressions are used to measure social media engagement from users and followers and include different types of quantifiable interactions such as likes, comments, shares, and more.
These values are simply calculated by totaling the number of interactions of a specific type. How to count social media impressions: Social media impressions are extremely valuable, as they are quantifiable metrics that allow brands to measure early-stage visibility and engagement. These values provide significant insights into the success of lead generation and early customer acquisition efforts, and can be used to analyze the performance of the awareness stage of the customer journey.
That being said, social media can also be used as a tool for fostering long-term retention, encouraging consistent engagement, community-building, and brand loyalty. It can also provide further insights when brands begin to analyze which impressions actually lead to click-throughs and result in conversions (versus those that lead to churn).
ways of using impressions to properly value their impact on engagement. For example, since shares show a deeper level of brand advocacy, companies could weigh these higher to attempt to quantify the value of these impressions beyond their total values.
4 Average Time on Page
Average time on page is a metric that measures the amount of time the average customer spends on an individual webpage. It’s important to note that time on page does not factor in exit pages.
Time on page itself is tracked from the moment a customer lands on a page to the point that the user clicks a link to proceed to the next page. The average time on page is calculated by dividing the total time spent on page by the total number of views (minus the total exits).
How to calculate average time on page: Brands can look at average time on page across the entire site, for specific groups of pages (product pages, landing pages, etc.), or for individual pages, enabling them to drill down deeper to understand customer engagement across the website.
Because of this, time on page is an extremely valuable customer engagement metric. However, while it indicates customer engagement, time on page isn’t always a positive engagement signal in all contexts. For example, an ecommerce site may see a lot of time on page for their product pages.
This is certainly a positive, as customers are seriously considering their product as an option. However, there are situations where lengthy time on page metrics could be a sign of an issue like friction in the customer journey. For brands to truly understand the engagement they’re seeing, they’ll need to analyze time on page alongside a number of other key customer engagement metrics, particularly average session duration and bounce rate.
5 Average Session Duration
Average session duration measures the average length of time a customer spends on a website during a single visit. A session begins from the moment a customer visits the website for the first time, and ends when they click an exit page.
While time on page measures the time a user spends on a particular webpage, average session duration measures the amount of time they spend on all pages within a single session.
It’s calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions by the total number of sessions.
How to calculate average session duration: Average session duration is a critical metric used in web analytics to understand user engagement. After all, it directly measures how long customers engage with a website. Not only that, but it actually empowers brands to analyze where and how customers are spending their time on your website. This can be used to identify which pages are performing best and which ones are underperforming, so you can double down or make improvements.
Average session duration is particularly useful for analyzing early-stage engagement during the awareness and consideration stages of the customer journey.
Naturally, longer session durations indicate more engagement, which is almost always a positive sign. This shows customers are spending more time considering your product, which increases the chances of a conversion. For this reason, longer average session durations are often seen as a signal of higher customer intent.
As with other metrics, looking exclusively at average session duration can paint a skewed picture of customer engagement on your site. For this reason, average session duration is often analyzed alongside other related metrics, most notably bounce rate.
A high bounce rate can have a strong negative impact on session
duration, as sessions with high bounce rates are very short.
A high average session duration isn’t exclusively a positive metric though. For example, a long average session duration on a checkout page can indicate issues with the checkout process or purchase journey.
Similarly, a long average session duration on a customer support page that’s meant to help customers quickly and conveniently solve customer issues could be a sign customers aren’t getting the answers they need (or at least not fast enough).
Always remember, the average session duration can mean different things in different contexts, and can be used to signal both positive and negative customer engagement issues. When used properly, it’s a crucial metric that provides direct insight into customer activity and engagement on your website and allows you to measure engagement in the awareness and consideration stages of the customer journey.
6 Pages per Session
Customer Journey Stage(s): Consideration
Pages per session is the average number of web pages a visitor accesses per session. This includes all pages that are visited, not only unique pages. Even if someone revisits a page they’ve already visited in the session, that page would still count towards this total.
It’s calculated by dividing the total number of page views by the total number of sessions.
How to calculate pages per session: The number of pages a visitor sees per session indicates the level of customer engagement across your website, and can be a positive or negative signal in different contexts. It helps brands understand how easy their website is to navigate, how compelling their content is, and whether or not customers are interested in what you have to offer.
Average session duration and average time on page show how long customers spend engaging with your brand, whereas pages per
session provides insights into the depth of this engagement.
It provides insights into whether or not customers progressed to other pages, which is a sign of general satisfaction, interest, and potentially, buying intent. Put simply, it helps speak to the value (rather than volume) of the engagement you’re getting across your website.
After all, a customer who explores 2 blogs, 3 product pages, and 7 testimonials likely has higher buyer intent than a customer who spends more time on-site, but only views 2 blogs and your ‘About Us’ page.
For this reason, pages per session has relatively little meaning when analyzed alone; instead, it’s often used alongside average session duration, average time on page, and even bounce rates to paint a comprehensive picture of customer engagement. It’s critical to use these customer engagement metrics together to fully understand website engagement.
The delivery rate is the percentage of messages that are successfully delivered to recipients.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of messages delivered by the total number of messages that were sent.
How to calculate delivery rate: In general, message deliverability is a measure of the reach of your campaigns, or at least the potential reach of your campaigns. It represents the exposure your messages get. Delivery rates are most commonly associated with email marketing, but it applies just the same to SMS and mobile push marketing as well.
While the delivery rate has limited value on its own, it’s frequently used in conjunction with other metrics from the awareness stage — particularly the open rate and click-through rate — to understand and analyze early-stage customer engagement and journey progress.
Customer Journey Stage(s): Awareness / Consideration
The open rate is the percentage of customers that open an email, SMS, or mobile push notification that they’ve received.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of messages opened by the number of messages delivered.
How to calculate open rate: The open rate is another metric that measures the reach, effectiveness, and relevance of your campaigns. Since customers have to take action to open the email, SMS, or mobile push they received, it’s one of the first real instances of engagement and represents your ability to capture customer attention.
However, this is still in the early stages of the customer journey, and there is no guarantee that the customer will complete a conversion or become a brand advocate.
In particular, the open rate measures how impactful your email subject lines, mobile push taglines, and rich media content is at enticing customers to interact with your marketing messages in the first place.
In general, the click-through rate represents how effective a particular ad or message is at capturing customer attention and — arguably more importantly — getting customers to act on that attention.
It’s therefore frequently used to measure the success of marketing campaigns, particularly in terms of their ability to engage customers early in the customer journey and nudge customers towards product adoption and conversions.
insight into engagement behavior. By comparing the conversion rate to initial page visits and social media impressions, brands can see how many visitors become customers. By comparing the conversion rate to average order value (AOV) and customer lifetime value (CLV), they begin to understand what’s driving revenue the most.
your customer retention rate over time consistently.
Still, it’s also valuable to compare the retention rate based on customer acquisition channels and journeys to see which ones develop customers with greater engagement and retention rates.
Customer Journey Stage(s): Awareness / Consideration
The click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of customers that click an email, mobile push notification, SMS message, or digital advertisement that they’ve opened or viewed.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the total number of opens or views.
How to calculate click-through rate: The CTR is an early — but extremely significant — marker of engagement and a common measure of how successful your marketing campaigns are at generating leads.
While delivery and views really only mark the reach of your campaigns, the first click marks the first high-intent action you elicited from your customers.
The conversion rate is the rate at which customers complete a conversion event. Typically, the conversion rate measures purchases, but it can also be used to measure other conversion events, such as subscription renewals, newsletter opt-ins, or account registrations.
The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of customers who completed a conversion event by the number of unique impressions.
For digital conversions, this could include a customer who visited a website, viewed an advertisement, or received an email; whereas for physical conversions, it could include customers who visit a store, receive a paper ad, or see a billboard.
How to calculate conversion rate: The conversion rate is a valuable KPI that brands use for a number of reasons, including understanding overall sales performance, analyzing the purchase funnel in detail, and isolating pain points in the checkout process.
However, it’s also particularly useful from a customer engagement perspective. First and foremost, customers who complete a conversion have certainly engaged with a brand to some degree, no matter how streamlined the purchase journey was.
More than that though, comparing the conversion rate to other customer engagement metrics provides brands deeper
Overall, the conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for understanding the success of your engagement initiatives. And while it has limited value in assessing the actual quantity of engagement your brand is receiving, it’s critical for understanding the direct impact that engagement has on generating revenue.
The customer retention rate is the percentage of customers a brand retains over a given period of time. It’s a critical metric for brands looking to understand how well their campaigns, customer journeys, and brand experiences are at keeping customers.
The customer retention rate is calculated by dividing the number of customers at the end of a time period by the number of customers at the beginning of the period, excluding the number of new customers acquired during that same period.
How to calculate the customer retention rate: Plain and simple, customers who stick around continue to engage with your brand. For this reason, the customer retention rate is a common signal of a brand’s sustainability, growth, and overall success. It’s also often considered an early indicator of brand loyalty and future advocacy and typically leads to increased repeat purchases and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Although not a great way of measuring the quality or impact of engagement, the customer retention rate does indicate the percentage of customers who are regularly engaging with your brand. It’s good practice to track
The churn rate is the number of customers who stop using your products or services in a given time period. The inverse of the customer retention rate, churn rate, is a strong indicator of poor or inadequate customer engagement, and it signals where customers are dropping off in the customer journey.
The churn rate is calculated by dividing the number of customers who left in a specified period by the sum of the customers at the beginning of the period and new customers gained in that same period.
How to calculate the customer churn rate: The churn rate is an extremely useful customer engagement metric, as it actually allows brands to measure customers who stop engaging with your brand, products, or services over a specific period of time.
Brands can measure churn in a variety of ways, from the number of customers that delete your app, uninstall your app, or simply stop using your services on a consistent basis.
Brands have complete control over the period they analyze; while brands typically look at a week, a month, or a year, brands can track any period of time, from hours to decades. This empowers brands to analyze not only overall customer engagement but also churn during specific seasons or for particular campaigns.
With this information, brands can better understand where customers leave customer journeys to isolate the performance of individual campaigns, channels, and messaging.
Because churn rate directly tracks lost customers, it’s often seen
as a strong indication that your customer engagement strategies and efforts are underperforming.
It’s most commonly used to identify where you need to improve retention and engagement efforts. Modern Customer Engagement Platforms (CEP) help marketers predict churn before it happens so they can course correct in a timely manner and keep customers on track.
Active users is a metric that measures the number of customers that use a brand’s app, platform, or service within a specific period of time.
It’s calculated by simply totaling the number of customers that access a service within a specific time frame. Some brands choose to be more strict, setting refined parameters for what qualifies as an active user.
Theoretically, this can be measured using any period of time. However, brands commonly use one of the following two metrics when measuring active users: daily active users (DAU) or monthly active users (MAU). Some brands also measure weekly active users (WAU).
How to count active users: While Active Users refer simply to the actual count of monthly or daily active users, this raw data also enables brands to calculate averages and active user rates. For example, brands can average the MAU across a year (or multiple years), helping them both analyze past behavior and anticipate future usage.
Brands can also determine the percent of customers that are DAU, MAU, or WAU.
The formula for calculating the daily active user rate: The active user rate helps brands understand the percentage of customers who are actively engaging with their brand on a consistent basis. This can be used to identify gaps in user engagement and find out how to increase retention.
Overall, active user metrics enable brands to calculate the frequency with which customers
are actively engaging with your brand and its products or services.
Stickiness is a customer engagement metric that allows brands to measure traction and retention by determining the ratio of customers that engage with your service more consistently.
It’s calculated by dividing the active users from a specified period of time to active users from another (longer) specified period of time, and results in the ratio of customers that engage more consistently.
While brands can theoretically use any parameters, they typically use Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), or Weekly Active Users (WAU) to calculate stickiness.
The most common method is to divide Daily Active Users (DAU) by Monthly Active Users (MAU).
How to calculate customer stickiness: Stickiness is commonly used for measuring app engagement, but it can be used to measure service usage in general. Brands simply need to define the parameters that qualify an active user each day.
For some brands, that may mean simply accessing the app, while for others it may mean watching a video, playing a game, or completing some other time of action (or even a specific series of actions).
Stickiness is a strong signal of whether a brand is driving more consistent engagement and traction from their customers, since it actually indicates the ratio of customers that are more active. Therefore, a rise in stickiness would mean more customers are engaging more regularly, while a decrease would mean that customer engagement is dwindling.
In particular, brands use stickiness to understand customer engagement and retention, as it reflects a brand’s ability to drive more consistent, frequent engagement from its existing customers.
The feature adoption rate measures the percentage of customers that use a specific feature of your product or service at least once. It allows brands to quantify feature adoption to understand how many customers engage with new features.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of customers who use a feature at least once by the total number of customers.
How to calculate the feature adoption rate: Feature adoption rates give brands direct insights into which features are seeing the most engagement.
In general, this helps brands identify their priority features so they can properly allocate their attention and focus. With this information, companies can better manage product development initiatives, engineering support, and budget planning.
In the most basic sense, this helps brands uncover which features are irrelevant (and may need to be sunsetted) versus those that are impactful (and may need to be improved).
This also provides insight into which customer cohorts or segments are most likely to use certain features, and it can help brands develop a roll-out strategy that increases feature adoption rates. If a brand finds that a certain feature is only used by longtime customers, they can avoid nudging new customers towards that feature and instead focus on promoting it to active, repeat customers for greater impact.
It’s calculated by multiplying the average order value by the average number of transactions (per year) by the average customer lifespan (in years).
How to calculate customer lifetime value: Unlike clickthrough, conversion, and churn rates, the customer lifetime value doesn’t actually allow brands to measure the quantity of customer engagement. That is, it doesn’t measure individual actions with your brand. However, CLV is incredibly useful for measuring the quality of customer engagement. Since a rising CLV means customers are either converting more frequently or increasing their order values, a rising CLV means an increase in the volume or value of conversion. At the same time, it signals an increase in the volume or value of your customer engagement.
This makes CLV an extremely strong signal of the value of your engagement and allows you to track how this changes over time. When using the CLV to analyze customer engagement, brands should never take it at face value. Instead, brands need to look at where this increase is coming from.
If it’s an increase in volumes, it means a significant increase in engagement, as more customers are converting. However, if the lift is more associated with higher order values, it’s less indicative of a spike in engagement and instead a reflection of engagement value.
Customer lifetime value (CLV), sometimes stylized as customer LTV, is the average value a customer will generate for your brand over the course of their lifetime as a customer. Essentially, it represents what each customer is worth to you.
Customer Journey Stage(s): Retention / Advocacy
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a score used to quantify customer satisfaction with a brand and its products or services. It’s determined using survey results, where customers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a sliding numerical scale (typically from 1 –5, 1 – 7, or 1 – 10).
The CSAT score is then calculated by dividing the sum of all positive responses by the total number of responses.
How to calculate the customer satisfaction score or CSAT:
Obviously, the CSAT score is used mostly to determine customer satisfaction, whether that’s their general perception of a brand, or more focused feedback on a specific product, feature, or campaign.
However, the CSAT score can be applied to almost any scenario, including customer engagement. Brands can ask their customers about their satisfaction with a particular marketing campaign, the channel they’re receiving communications on, and so much more.
Brands can use these scores to quantify customer satisfaction with particular customer journeys and experiences, allowing them to hone in on what is (and isn’t) working.
The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a score used to quantify how easy it is for customers to interact with a brand and its products and services.
It’s determined using survey results, where customers are asked to rate how much effort was required to use the brand’s product or service, find relevant information, or resolve an issue. This is done by asking questions that customers can answer using a sliding numerical scale (typically of 1 – 5 or 1 – 7).
The CES is then calculated by dividing the sum of all customer effort ratings by the total number of responses, resulting in the average score.
How to calculate the customer effort score or CES: The Customer Effort Score (CES) gives brands a direct way of quantifying ease of use for their products, services, and overall brand experiences. Brands can use this both at a high-level and more granularly to understand engagement with particular customer experiences. For example, brands can ask customers how easy it was to adopt and use a feature, potentially even for different use cases. Similarly, brands can ask customers how easy it was to submit a customer support request, how simple it was to get a resolution, and how
seamless the process was.
The challenge is that as you ask your customers more questions you require more feedback, leaving you increasingly dependent on customer participation.
Rather than measuring overall satisfaction, the CES aims to measure how easy a specific experience was, helping brands identify pain points and friction in their customer journeys, whether it be onboarding or checkout.
This empowers brands to quantify and measure how customers feel about their experiences with your brand, and make meaningful, datadriven improvements that foster engagement.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a score (determined from survey results) that indicates how likely a customer is to recommend your brand, product, or service. It’s a common metric used to measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and — in particular — advocacy.
Customers are directly asked how likely they are to recommend your brand to someone else on a scale of 0 to 10. Customers are then divided into three main groups: promoters (those that answered 9 or 10), passives (those that answered 7 or 8), and detractors (those that answered 0 – 6). The NPS is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters using the following formula.
How to calculate the net promoter score or NPS: The net promoter score can range from its lowest point of -100 (if all customers are detractors) to its highest point of 100 (if all customers are promoters).
While it’s often (rightly) used as an indicator of customer satisfaction and advocacy, it’s also a major signal of customer engagement levels. After all, promoters are customers that engage frequently with your brand, and likely plan to keep doing so.
For this reason, NPS is often
seen as a direct indicator of a brand’s current customer engagement level.
At the same time, NPS is a solid indicator of future growth. That’s because the actual referrals these promoters say they are likely to make haven’t come to fruition yet. Once they do, you’ll see more customers flocking from referrals to get the same quality service your existing customers shared with them.
For these reasons, the NPS is most notably a measure of loyalty and advocacy, while also being an indirect measure of satisfaction and engagement.
The ticket volumes for customer support channels refer to the number of support tickets each unique customer support channel is getting. Brands can use this information to analyze which channels have the highest engagement, as well as identify what the associated queries and issues commonly are.
In the most basic sense, ticket volumes are a great indicator of which channels are receiving the most engagement. More significantly, they provide valuable insights into the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the various channels and help brands understand which channels customers prefer for different scenarios.
For example, high phone call ticket volumes for high-stakes problems indicates that customers prefer to handle more important, intimate issues via the phone, while high email response rates for low-stakes problems indicates that customers prefer to handle simple, one-off issues digitally.
Similarly, a change in ticket volumes after the deployment of an on-site FAQ section could be used to measure the success and impact of this customer support feature. Ultimately, ticket volumes help brands understand the usage — and performance of — customer support channels. They also
help brands isolate pain points and hurdles their customers are experiencing so they can resolve these issues in the customer journey.
As you can see, these metrics are vital for brands, enabling them to actually measure and quantify customer engagement. But still, these measurements are only as good as the insights that marketers can extract from the data.
Marketers still need to know what to do with these metrics, which takes time, repeated iterations, and experience.
Now that you know what metrics to track and how to use them (with unique insights from leading experts), it’s time to devise a clear strategy for tracking and measuring them yourself.
Consider which metrics will be most useful for your industry and unique business case. Make sure you think critically about how each metric can be deployed to help you actually understand customer engagement with your brand in a meaningful, actionable way.
This will ensure you can consistently deliver better, faster, and smoother experiences that will impress your customers and keep them coming back for more.
MoEngage’s Cross-Channel Marketing solution empowers marketers to build intuitive customer journeys and dynamic campaigns that engage and retain customers across the channels they use. With omnichannel analytics, you have the ability to minutely segment customers so you can develop personalized journeys, experiences, and campaigns that they love.
Schedule a demo with our sales team to find out how MoEngage’s customer engagement platform can help you keep — and activate — more customers.
SHANA IS the Head of Content and Organic Growth for MoEngage’s North America region and has over a decade of marketing experience helping businesses reach and engage their customers through strategic storytelling. When she isn’t writing or editing, you can find her playing pickleball, singing karaoke, or walking her dog, Dexter.
At MoEngage, they believe what can’t be measured can’t be managed. For marketers and product developers alike to build intuitive, omnichannel experiences, they need to rely heavily on omnichannel analytics that can help them deliver best-in-class experiences for their customers.
But simply having customer engagement data isn’t enough on its own; brands need to be able to use these metrics to draw meaningful insights about how customers interact with their brand.
After all, there is a major difference between collecting customer engagement data and attributing those numbers to customer behavior at various stages in the customer journey.
Fortunately, we’ve connected with leading
experts that have devised strategies to hone this data for the greatest impact. With the help of the following experts, we explore how leading brands use analytics to both measure and judge customer engagement.
Pooja Ravishankar as Category Marketing Head of Big Basket, one of the first online grocery retailers in India.
Abhishek Joshi as CMO of MX Player, an ondemand and over-the-top streaming service in the media and entertainment industry.
Nitin Sethi as VP Digital of Indigo Airlines, a low-cost airline in the travel and hospitality industry.
The following excerpts came from a panel discussion with these experts that was moderated by Gaurav Chhaparwal, Analytics Leader and Advisor at MoEngage.
Choosing the right customer engagement metrics
Question 1: In analytics, we say what gets measured gets done. What’s that one metric that best represents your user engagement, and why do you think it is the best metric?
Nitin: For us, the most important metric is of people who have flown with us in the last three months. We analyze how many of them are flying with us again, i.e., is it their second or third trips within 3-6 months. It helps us to find ways to retain the customer. It adds to the top line, bottom line, and user retention. This is the best parameter for any transactional service-driven platform.
Pooja: In the grocery sector, everyone requires fruits and vegetables at least once a week. That is the frequency of purchase we look at in Big Basket. Another important metric is how many times has a customer come back every calendar month of a year. It helps us to determine that the customer has not fallen off the bridge and is still active on the app.
We analyze how much is a customer purchasing from us in a month, how many times is he coming back in a year and how diverse is the number of categories across the lifetime, i.e., does the person who typically orders rice and lentils, also purchase fruits and vegetables or other FMCG products on the app. We have found that our loyal customers are the ones who buy from a wide variety of categories.
Abhishek: Two metrics make a lot of sense in my business. One is returning users, i.e., how many users are coming back to my platform. MX Player was launched recently, but it has been in existence for almost five years now. It is one of the unique platforms which has seen a transition in offerings because we kept adding new offerings to the platforms.
The metric of returning users is important because it tells me how the platform, the UI/ UX, and the content is performing. The second metric we measure is the time spent by the user on a piece of content as it adds to the revenue, engagement, and loyalty.
Rely on the data you ingest
Question 2: How do you act upon the data you receive? Can you give us an example of how
you make decisions based on specific data points?
Nitin: Our business has four to five core segments. There are millennials, there are first time travelers, business travelers who take flight in the morning and return in the evening, family travelers, and leisure travelers.
First, we understand these segments well. For example, we know somebody who is on a short trip or traveling alone will be fine to sit anywhere on the plane. They usually do not have any specific seat preferences and may not buy a meal. On the other hand, a passenger traveling with wife and kids would be willing to pay extra for a preferred seat and meals.
Once you get these insights, you will find a pattern that will help you to decide what to offer to each segment. You need to personalize the solution for all types of audiences who interact with you.
Pooja: The audience knows that there are multiple applications of data. However, I will give you an example of a tool that we built, which is analytical in the application. Typically, grocery buying works in two modes.
There is one set of products that you repeatedly buy like vegetables, fruits, and staples. The other set is where you keep discovering as newer products get launched in the market. For the first set, we have built something called ‘the smart basket,’ which runs on an algorithm that predicts what you are running out of in your kitchen.
We keep moving up the item in the list. The smart basket has been in existence for the last five years. We are constantly making it smarter by adding new elements to it.
For example, we notice a shift in consumer’s buying with most of them shifting from regular products to organic products. So, we have both organic potato and regular potato.
Once the customer purchases the organic potato, we start moving the regular potato down the list to upsell the organic ones to the customers or with the mango season around the corner; we will start adding it to the list.
These are a few smart things that we do to personalize the offerings of the app and to improve the product and convenience for the customer. However, we also face challenges because there cannot be a uniform solution to everything. For example, we have to be careful not to offer nonvegetarian recommendations to vegetarians while making basket recommendations.
Abhishek: MX players may have launched recently, but we already have 75 million Daily Active Users (DAU) and 175 million Monthly Active Users (MAU) because we have been there for five years.
The journey between data to information to insights does not happen overnight. You need to spend time on it. Once your insights come, you have to know how to make a strategy for programming and content, user acquisition, etc. That is why we waited for a year or a year and a half to announce our official launch.
In three weeks, we were declared the No.2 OTT platform in the country. We are not a platform that showcases content aggregated from the outside world; we make our own content.
However, one must remember that the content can’t come from thin air because even if the content is based on creativity, it is also backed by science that includes determining who will see it, which geography to target, and so on. It is a continuous 24-hour job, wherein we collect close to 400 billion data points a day.
We do not analyze every data point, but we pull out the relevant ones to see how it works.
Turn insights into action
Question 3: How do you act upon the insights once you receive them?
Nitin: In our business, user acquisition happens on different channels. For example, a fair amount of bookings come from Online Travel Agency (OTA) and direct channels such as mobile apps and websites, SME, and agents.
Once all this information is collected, and the booking pattern is evaluated, you will find that people who come from OTA have a different way of transacting because the enablement happened from them and you don’t have the information of those users until they check their flight status or do web check-in.
You have limited scope to cross-sell and upsell to them as compared to someone who directly comes to your platform and is acquired by you. In this case, you can do a meaningful cross-sell and upsell.
There is a very thin line between intrusive experience and great user experience. You have to use these insights properly to not cross this line. For example, 30-40 percent of the bookings come from our SMEs and agents or a personal assistant. There are chances that they may or may not know what meal you would like to have because
your preference may change based on morning flight or evening flight. Here, you should know when to cross-sell and up-sell without pushing it onto the user.
Pooja: There’s lots of data in the e-commerce and digital context, so it’s important to have a very data-driven culture in the organization. Everybody in the organization should learn to check data before a certain decision is taken.
They should be trained to interpret data correctly because it can also be misleading at times. The second thing is to have the right technology to back this data. In this ever-evolving landscape, it is important to have the best technology that gives you the right data.
Abhishek: We keep it simple. For us, knowing and evaluating the consumer’s journey is very important. We analyze data such as why has a consumer come to the app and what has he clicked on. Has he clicked on the content or has he clicked on the thumbnail because of the content he saw?
We further look at what is consumed, did the user exit or go to another piece of content in the app. That is where crossselling comes in – I should be able to sell him content similar to the one he clicked by using machine learning, PI tool, and recommendation engine.
I have also come to an understanding that people who search for content will always consume long-form content, while people who don’t search for content, will consume the short-form ones. 60 percent of the conversion happens on the short-form content. Users consume different types of content at different time.
For example, the user may be interested in watching the news when he wakes up. In the afternoon, the same person may be interested in watching short form, humor content, at late night, it could be something else. Hence, it’s important for us to show the customer content that is very close to his interest at a particular time of the day.
As they’ve shared, for brands to effectively and continuously increase customer satisfaction and engagement, they need to deeply analyze both the breadth and depth of engagement with their products and services. As these leaders have stressed, marketers and product owners should be able to interpret the data correctly, as nothing is more dangerous or damaging than having the wrong interpretation of data.
BY STEPHEN SHAW
Brett Townsend is the SVP of Strategy at the research firm Quester and co-author of the book “Insights on the Brink”.
Once upon a time marketers would not hesitate to invest in market research before launching a new product or taking a gamble on a Big Creative Idea. Loads of time would be spent up front conducting focus groups and sending out surveys. Weeks would go by as data was collected and turned into voluminous slide decks. The research sponsors would then gather expectantly to hear what the consumer insights people had found. Invariably the audience would get lost in a dense maze of charts and graphs, left wondering: “So what’s all of this data telling us we should do?”.
The consumer insights professional would feel they’ve done their job: delivered the project they were asked to lead. Whether they were being asked to do a brand tracking study, conduct concept testing, decipher consumer usage and attitudes,
define market segments, or measure brand equity, they faithfully followed a methodical and proven process that was usually lengthy and involved and expensive. As far as they were concerned, however, that’s what it took to produce statistically reliable results. Yet those intimidating slide decks, once presented, often became single use artifacts. Whatever new knowledge had been gained would be filed away and forgotten. The researchers would just move on to their next project.
Today many marketers have concluded that the traditional research function, wedded to its rigorous methodologies and practices, has become too slow and costly in an age of real-time marketing where speed and agility are favoured over deep analysis. Traditional research budgets are drying up. Entire research departments are being shut down. Marketers are now doing the work themselves, using doit-yourself research platforms. And increasingly, insight generation is being handed over to data scientists whenever first party data is abundant.
Roughly a decade ago a deluge of clickstream, CRM and social media data began flooding internal “systems of insight”. The Era of Big Data had arrived, and it changed the insight function forever. Marketers realized they could extract more immediate and relevant insights just through direct observation of consumers, using sentiment analysis, voice of customer feedback or individual behavioural tracking. Pockets of insight began to spring up in organizational silos, eroding the authority of the consumer insight group and snatching away research dollars. However, this fragmentation of the insights function has come at a cost: no one is in charge of assembling all of the bits of knowledge and insight into a unified picture of the customer. Marketers see consumers – the CX group sees customers — the digital team sees users — sales sees buyers. Splintered views of the same customer.
Like everywhere else these days AI will have a profound impact on market research, transforming the industry by swallowing vast amounts of unstructured data at scale, sourced through social media, consumer reviews, and community forums. AI can conduct surveys through conversational chatbots. It can process and interpret qualitative data like text answers to open-ended survey questions and video feedback. It can speed up ad testing — testing of any kind actually. And it can generate synthetic insights by simulating the probable voice of a customer, creepily indistinguishable from a real person.
If the consumer insights function is to regain any credibility amongst marketers it must evolve from being order-takers to serving as the undisputed organizational expert on the needs and behaviour of customers: not simply describing how people feel, or what they
Like everywhere else these days AI will have a profound impact on market research, transforming the industry…
what is needed have evolved over the years, we have not evolved as an industry. So there’s a lot of frustration - there’s a lot of, well, what does insights even do for me then? And then market research and consumer insights gets cut because the value hasn’t been established — companies feel they can live without it. We’ve seen whole companies just kill their entire insights department because they don’t feel it’s necessary anymore. And so we really are kind of at this brink where either we’ve got to re-establish our value or we’re going to fade into the background and just be order takers for the rest of our existence.
SHAW: Have brand marketers lost faith in traditional consumer research?
TOWNSEND: Why continue to fund something when you don’t feel it’s working for you? They’re not getting what they need from us. The really great consumer insights professionals are the ones who are asking the why, who are making emotional connections with consumers, and really explaining things that are helping their businesses make money. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of companies who don’t have that kind of insights talent and so they don’t see those results. And so therefore they think, yeah, we can do this without them.
think, but offering an explanation as to “why”. Answering that one question — “Why” — is what leads to breakthrough insights. And that is a strategic role, not a specialist function, according to Brett Townsend, who heads up strategy at the research firm Quester, and is co-author of the book “Insights on the Brink”. In the book Brett offers a rescue plan for saving the industry — showing how consumer insights professionals can go from being “order-takers” to strategic partners, working shoulder-to shoulder with marketers to make better business decisions.
STEPHEN SHAW: Why do you feel the research industry is at a crossroads at this point in time?
BRETT TOWNSEND: I think what’s happened is that business has become more demanding. In the early days it used to be okay to give people a lot of data because that’s what market research was about. It was an academic discipline that had a lot of numbers and charts and that was just kind of how people accepted it. But now we don’t have time for that. People don’t need to know every data point. They just need to be told what to do, what’s the problem, what’s the conflict, what are the solutions, what’s our key insight we’re acting on. And we don’t have to be 100 percent sure. People are okay with 80 percent. Although the demands for
SHAW: Well, it’s hard to believe anyone would knowingly invest in a multi-million dollar product launch based on a Survey Monkey template.
TOWNSEND: I think people would be stunned how many large multinational brands make multi-million dollar decisions based on a simple survey. Yeah, it’s shocking.
SHAW: Which brings me to Pepsi. You worked there for almost a decade. And the chief consumer insights officer there was quoted as saying, “While the organization had access to a wealth of consumer insights, we were not driving competitive advantage for our company.” That’s a pretty stunning indictment when you consider how much Pepsi probably spends on consumer research.
TOWNSEND: Yeah, just having been inside Pepsi for a while, you started to see how things were getting to that point where there was just a lot of research going on. It was unorganized and you didn’t really know what people were doing. And there was a lot of duplication, and it was very personality driven. It was whoever was in charge saying “I think we need to be doing this.” What Stephan Gans and Kate Schardt1 did was ask, “How can we make this more efficient? How can we take everything that we’ve learned and digitize it and make it available to everyone?”. They needed to have their insights work harder for them. And what’s interesting is that they ended up getting their budgets
increased because people started to see the impact. But to your point, there’s a lot of key insights leaders at big companies who realize that we have to make a change if we’re going to not only stay relevant, but help our companies make money. Because the minute we think that we’re in the business for anything other than helping companies make money, that’s when we start our demise.
SHAW: Do you find when you’re meeting other CI professionals that they agree with your point of view, who say, yeah, we’ve got to shake things up?
TOWNSEND: Yeah, for the most part, it has been that way. Our first goal for this book was to just start conversations because there was this feeling that there’s a lot of people in this industry who know things are not going the way they should, who know things are broken, who know we need to get better. It’s just that no one has come forward and said this is what should be done. A lot of the books that are written for our industry are dealing with specific methodologies or techniques or certain areas of our business, like behavioural science. There really hasn’t been a book that’s been written about the industry as a whole. We want to get people thinking about how we can get better. Because just continuing to do what we’re doing is not going to be healthy for our industry. We’ve become the greatest threat to our own survival.
SHAW: You talk about brand marketers just looking to check the market research box in the stage gate process. What explains this inclination to just go through the motions?
TOWNSEND:We’re saying to brand marketers that if we clean up our side of the street, you know what, there’s some things on your side of the street that we need you to clean up too because we’re always going to have to work together. They’re wringing their hands because they can’t get what they need from insights. They just see methods, they just see questionnaires, they just see surveys. And so they think, well, we can do that. It’s a cultural shift that has to happen. We can only do so much if there is not a culture of consumer centricity throughout the entire company. Brand marketers need to take as much responsibility for the consumer as consumer insights do. You do see great organizations where everyone is aligned, you have that culture, and they’re killing it. All the way from their innovation, their new product development processes, down to their storytelling and their marketing, it runs throughout the organization. But then, like I said earlier, you’d be stunned as to how many big brands are just trying to get by doing the bare minimum. And it’s why you see a lot of innovation that fails. It’s why you see a
lot of ads that fail because they are clueless as to how to emotionally connect with consumers, partly because they may not want to work that hard to establish that emotional connection. But they’re also not getting the insight that allows them to understand what actually is connecting consumers to their brand.
SHAW: I want to ask you about one of your signature aphorisms in the book, which is, “The what informs but the why transforms”. Can you explain exactly what you mean by that?
TOWNSEND: Sure. The greatest data in the world still only tells you what, it doesn’t tell you why. And that’s what market research has been doing for so long, is just informing people. In very few organizations has the market research actually been transformative. A lot of people think they want to be data driven. We hear that a lot: we’re going to be a data driven organization: “We’re going to dive into point of sale data, we’re going to dive into panel data”. And they lose sight of the people. There’s a lot of brands out there that perform - there’s just not a lot of brands that perform with purpose. And I think that’s really where the magic is. And a really great example is all the static data that senior executives want: brand tracking, brand awareness, NPS, things like that, all of those are static numbers that just tell you what you know, there is no explanation as to why.
SHAW: It’s just a snapshot in time.
TOWNSEND: You’re right. You can have an NPS score of 27 — okay, what does that mean? Why aren’t you at 50? There’s no explanation behind these numbers. And so companies don’t know where to start to
try to fix these problems. And so then they’ll throw a survey out there and they’ll find out that consumers will tell them 20 things that are wrong and then their heads are spinning, they don’t even know where to start. Well, you’re asking the wrong people, you’re asking the wrong questions and you’re going about it the wrong way, by just simply trying to throw stuff out there and explain static data that you have.
SHAW: Well, I guess to some extent it’s because marketing research has this role of monitoring performance and effectiveness and those measures you mentioned are a way of doing that.
TOWNSEND: A lot of people are just content with mediocrity is what I’ve come to learn over the years. They just want to keep their jobs. People don’t want to rock the boat very much. Our sales are doing okay, we’re getting our bonuses, I’m getting promoted. We can just kind of keep going the way it is. And I think that’s really become true in the consumer insights industry because of all the cuts, and because of the way the industry has been marginalized slowly but surely over the last decade or so. We’ve got a lot of people who are afraid for their jobs, afraid to push back, afraid to say no. We’ve turned into order takers. They know they’re being asked to do bad research, but they don’t say anything about it. They just go on with it because they’re like, well, they told me to do it, so I do it. Well, did you give them better options? Did you express concern? A lot of times the answer is no. They just kind of do it. And it’s unfortunate.
We’ve got a lot of people who are afraid for their jobs, afraid to push back, afraid to say no...
SHAW: As you know there’s this expression in research called “the last mile” which is the distance between the charts and the graphs and their conversion into actionable strategy. You argue that’s what holds back CI from being seen as more than just a cost center. What can CI professionals do, though? They come out of school trained in methodology but not terribly well versed in business strategy, marketing strategy, customer strategy. How can CI professionals actually narrow that strategic deficit?
TOWNSEND: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think the first thing is we as an industry have to develop much better business acumen. One of the biggest criticisms of our industry has been that we operate in silos. We do our research, and then we make recommendations that don’t really take into consideration how it impacts the entire business. A lot of times what we do and what we recommend will affect new product development, it’ll affect supply chain, it’ll affect sales. And we are completely unfamiliar with those areas of the business.
So I think the first thing we have to do as an industry is to have better business acumen.
From people who really love your brand and are loyal to your brand and are invested in your success, you get very different data…
We have to take that education into our own hands. Then once we learn how the entire business operates, we can start to recommend research that we should be doing that can be beneficial to a lot of different areas. When I got my MBA, the accounting professor told us, “Look, my job is not to turn you into accountants and finance people, because that’s not why you’re here. My job is to make it so you don’t look like an idiot when you’re looking at a P&L statement or a balance sheet.” We just need to learn enough where it helps us inform the rest of the business on some of the best ways to go about doing research.
SHAW: I think what organizations should be doing is having their strategists serve an apprenticeship in the research area. The outcome would be a much better marketer at the end of the day.
TOWNSEND: I think it can be really beneficial to consumer insights to bring in people from different parts of the company because they’re the end users. They can think more about the customer than they did before. Because, like I said, I think it’s the entire company’s responsibility to put the consumer first.
SHAW: In the book you say a lot of companies have turned research work over to the big consultancies.
TOWNSEND: Oh, absolutely. Because what CEOs want are outcomes, and they want direction, and they want to be told the right things to do. And in many cases, they don’t feel they’re getting that from their consumer insights people. They’re getting data, they’re getting information — they’re not getting outcomes and direction. And that’s what the big consulting companies do for them — they deliver outcomes. And so, yeah, they’re paying 10 times as much in many cases to do that. But it just shows how desperate senior executives are to get great insights and direction because they’re willing to pay that much more to get it. And I think we could save companies so much money, and we could be even more effective
than these bigger consulting giants if we’re just doing our job the right way.
SHAW: Well, the consultancies can speak the language of the boardroom.
TOWNSEND: And that’s it. And that’s where our lack of business acumen comes in. We don’t understand what’s going on at those levels.
SHAW: I want to move on to a provocative statement in your book when you talk about “gen pop sampling” being a sacred cow. You make the point that it’s better to sample loyal customers. Why is that important?
TOWNSEND: Gen pop sampling is one of those holdovers from our academic past because traditionally you wanted to represent the entire population. When you sample a general population, you get generalized data that is not very specific. But when you talk to people who really love your brand and are loyal to your brand and are invested in your success, you get very different data. In the book “Zag” Marty Neumeier says your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say. The key to every brand is to figure out who is the “they”.
When we were doing beverage research at Pepsi, we were talking to a lot of Coke drinkers, it turned out, who really didn’t care about us. But they were category users, so they were included in our sample. But it was amazing when we started talking to just people who drank Pepsi — the insight we got from them on what they want us to see from our brand that they love and want to support. And I think that’s true with any brand. There are very few instances I can think of where we need to do gen pop sampling anymore, especially when it comes to pure branded research. We need to talk to those who care about us and want us to succeed.
SHAW: The pushback you’ll hear from a traditional market researcher is that’s a skewed sample. And if you want to grow your category share, you need to understand the attitudes and usage of non-consumers of your product. What’s your answer to them?
TOWNSEND: My answer is you do not understand brand marketing then, because the best brands don’t try to be all things to all people. The best brands have a target consumer that they go after. They’re not trying to market to the masses. We have to understand who our target consumer is, what are the conflicts that they are dealing with on a daily basis, how is our brand helping them overcome those conflicts? And how can we strengthen the emotional connection that we have with our brand?
SHAW: It’s that age old debate about market share versus share of heart.
TOWNSEND: Let me give you an example from my from my appliance experience at Electrolux. Haier2 came in and bought GE. And like a couple of these other Chinese brands, they simply throw a lot of cash at retailers to get shelf space and lower prices just to grab market share. But then what? They’re not telling a unique story. They’re not really trying to build a brand. They’re just trying to see how much money they can make and be able to show shareholders all the share gains they’ve made. Well, anybody can do that. And we’ve seen just in the last five or six years that GE has really taken a nosedive as a brand. It doesn’t mean anything anymore because they haven’t invested in the brand, they’ve only been investing in the business. And so it’s getting people out of that mindset, which is very difficult to do because again, if we think about the tenure of senior executives, especially CEOs, they’re only concerned about what’s going on while they’re there. Most CEOs don’t care about what happens after they leave: it’s just how can they maximize their own stock value. And then when they leave, who cares? That’s the next CEO’s job. And that’s unfortunate.
SHAW: You state in the book that without greater consumer empathy, companies are unlikely to experience long term success. What role can CI play in making companies more empathetic? And do they need to think of themselves now as change agents? That’s a lot to ask of CI pros.
TOWNSEND: It is. But if we’re going to not only survive but thrive in this new business climate, that’s what we have to do. The way that we do that as an industry is by storytelling. We have to tell real stories about real consumers. When I was with PepsiCo and I was working with Dollar General, we had to really get at how could we help this particular consumer because we knew they were different. So I went and
spent some time with Dollar General shoppers in what we called food deserts, where there aren’t big grocery stores close by. And what we found was in some cases really heartbreaking. We found people who told us that they are always a month behind on every single bill that they pay, otherwise they don’t eat. This month they paid the electric bill — last month they paid the gas bill. We heard tales about how people had to park their cars halfway through the month because they couldn’t afford gas anymore, and so they had to walk everywhere or bum rides from people. And so, you start to really feel empathy for these people. And then it’s not about how do we sell them something, it’s about how do we provide a solution for them, how do we help them?
And so when I went back and started telling those stories, it wasn’t about a generic consumer — it was about the Johnson family, it was about the Williams family. It was about these real people. And that’s what got the executives to say, okay, we should probably figure something out to help these people.
When we talk about the consumer collectively, that doesn’t work to create empathy. Storytelling is about specific people, specific stories, where you really feel something for someone. That’s when you start to develop this corporate empathy where you feel for these people and realize their job is to provide solutions that help them.
And here’s the thing. It’s great for business. Because when you create those emotional connections and people feel that you understand them and they feel that it’s coming from a genuine, authentic place, my gosh, the loyalty goes through the roof and your business really grows because of it. But it may take a little longer than a quarter to make that happen. And that’s where the impatience of corporate America gets in the way.
SHAW: The storytelling you’ve just described is dependent on the qual work – getting people to open up about the challenges they have in life. Is there a bias today toward quantitative over qualitative research?
TOWNSEND: There is. We’re focused too much on sample size and not on insights. But qualitative research now can be done quantitatively. At Quester we’re one of the very first ones to do qualitative research at scale using a proprietary AI tool that we developed almost a decade ago before AI became a thing, where we can have conversational interactions with 500 consumers and get qualitative information, and then have AI help us analyze it using language patterns on the back end. We just have to ask ourselves, what are we after? We’re trying to identify conflict, we’re trying to identify consumer need, and we’re trying to figure out how we can best solve those
AI cannot develop anything new. It can’t develop anything transformative. There is no empathy and there’s no emotion…
problems and resolve those conflicts. And so, again, that’s where we get so wrapped up in methodology that we’re not focused on outcomes. What does this mean for our business and what do we do about it? And the best way to do that is through telling stories. We’re after insight, we’re after outcomes, we’re after consumer understanding with the ultimate goal of having enough empathy to be able to create solutions for people.
SHAW: Just follow a Reddit thread in a group that’s passionate about a specific subject area and a lot comes to life.
TOWNSEND: I’m a huge proponent of that - tapping into the world’s largest, most unstructured, unmoderated, unfiltered focus group, which is cyberspace, and not Twitter, or X, and Instagram, but these long form groups where people are constantly talking about issues. We can measure beliefs and behaviours at any point in time, as you mentioned earlier, but do we understand the narratives that are driving that? Do we understand the cultural implications of these different groups that are driving the behaviours that we see? That’s where the magic is. That’s where you really get into consumer understanding. And that’s when it gets really fun because not only do you start to be able to uncover narratives that are driving beliefs and behaviours, you’re also able to see
things before they actually develop into trends.
SHAW: There’s gold in the attitudinal information that you’ve just been describing. Why do you think most organizations haven’t done a very good job yet of integrating analysis of first party data with attitudinal data?
TOWNSEND: I think we have a lot of specialists in our industry where people want to be specialized in methodologies or techniques or just a certain area of consumer insights. And while having that understanding is good, we need to have people who understand the bigger picture, who understand business, who are a little more source agnostic.
SHAW: You just referenced AI. What’s your perspective on the use of synthetic data as a proxy or even as a substitute for direct to consumer research?
TOWNSEND: I don’t like that. And here’s why: AI only pulls from what currently exists. AI cannot develop anything new. It can’t develop anything transformative. There is no empathy and there’s no emotion in AI at all. And AI collection methods have already become a commodity. Like everybody thinks AI is the new thing. Well, guess what, I just came from a conference a couple weeks ago where everybody’s talking about an AI data collection tool they have. So it’s a commodity now. It still comes down to how do you tell stories, how do you analyze, how do you put things together, how do you deliver outcomes? The way we gather information, that’s not going to separate anyone. It’s helping make things cheaper and more efficient, but it’s not where the real insight is.
SHAW: You state that the need for traditional market research will fade over the next 10 years. Okay, but what replaces it?
TOWNSEND: What replaces it is strategy and consulting. It’s not that we won’t be doing consumer insights or market research projects anymore, but if the agencies only focus on that, I don’t think they will be around in 10 years. Or they’ll struggle to survive because they’re just project oriented. The need is not for more market research projects. It’s for consulting, it’s for partnership, it is for strategy.
1.
STEPHEN SHAW is the Chief Strategy Officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in delivering a more unified customer experience. He is also the host of the Customer First Thinking podcast. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca
The Skift Meetings Megatrends 2025 examines the pivotal shifts shaping the meetings and events industry in the year ahead. This report dives into the transformative forces redefining how we connect, collaborate, and create experiences. From AI-powered personalization revolutionizing event design to the growing demand for authenticity, sustainability, and mental wellbeing, the landscape of events is evolving at breakneck speed. But with change comes opportunity — and challenges. How will you harness new technologies while maintaining the human touch? How can planners adapt to an increasingly diverse and multi-generational workforce? What strategies will ensure your events resonate with audiences craving purpose and connection?
This report isn’t just about trends — it’s a blueprint for staying ahead in a competitive, rapidly evolving industry. Read on to discover the insights and strategies that will define the future of events. The report reveals a dynamic landscape
shaped by transformative forces, from artificial intelligence and sustainability to mental health and generational inclusivity.
Personalization in events has been a tantalizing promise for years, often touted by event tech platforms but rarely executed with the depth and precision attendees hope for. Planners wanted to deliver unique event experiences, but the technology couldn’t adapt to attendees’ needs and wants. On the other hand, attendees expected personalization akin to what they received from brands like Netflix or Spotify, only to be met with generic agendas and one-size-fitsall networking.
The problem wasn’t intent; it was capability. Legacy systems and manual data processes couldn’t process the vast amounts of data needed to understand individual preferences and behaviors at scale. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the promise of creating genuinely tailored event experiences is becoming a reality.
As sustainability becomes nonnegotiable for many attendees, Creative Group emphasizes adopting eco-friendly practices, such as waste reduction and locally sourced elements, to meet expectations while reflecting each brand’s business values.
Event designers are increasingly tasked with addressing attendee well-being, making it essential to create events that reduce stress and promote emotional connection. Creative Group’s approach integrates wellness strategies that are empathy-based and customizable to meet the needs of the modern attendee.
Creative Group’s contributions to the Megatrends 2025 report reinforce the idea that understanding the “why” behind every event is crucial in today’s meetings landscape, especially critical given the additional scrutiny on event budgets in 2025. “Corporate events are no longer about simply gathering people for a single objective — they are about achieving complex business challenges, reinforcing organizational culture, boosting brand loyalty, and recognizing and retaining top talent,” says Van Dyke.
However, the shift is less about AI and more about planners changing how they structure their data and events. One of the most impressive abilities of Large Language Models like ChatGPT is sifting through mountains of data from multiple sources — such as registration forms, tracking data and survey responses — to identify patterns. Analyzing data is one of the keyways that AI is make personalization scalable. However, these advancements in cleaning and analyzing data do not directly deliver more personalized events.
Accurate recommendations for people to meet and sessions to attend are at the core of the event’s personalization promise. Recommendation engines don’t work with generative AI, they work with predictive AI, a field that has not seen the same attention as generative AI. Predictive AI works behind the scenes, but make no mistake, they are crucial to the inner workings of internet giants like Google and TikTok.
Event tech companies offer solutions capable of making highquality networking and session recommendations. However, a few other elements are needed to make event personalization come together.
Tim Groot, CEO of networkingfocused event platform Grip, has worked on this challenge since the company’s inception almost 10 years ago. Groot says the first step in solving the event personalization challenge is gathering high-quality data on attendees and content.
While clean data is crucial, it won’t solve event personalization alone. As Groot said, “Session recommendations won’t have much impact unless the right people are in the room,” said Groot. His comment reminds us event tech is only one part of the event personalization solution.
Groot added, “It may be more powerful to use AI to create the right sessions instead.” Creating the right sessions in the first place is also an essential part of effective event personalization. The good news is that generative AI excels at looking through survey response data. Creating the right sessions for the audience begins here.
Generative AI also excels at helping marketers create the right messages at the right time. After all, a personalized event experience starts with marketing. Singulate, a new generative AI personalization marketing platform, is just one example of marketing technology designed to personalize communication at scale.
The benefits of event personalization go beyond offering a “wow” factor. Personalization will have a measurable impact on engagement, increasing return on investment (ROI). Attendees with a tailored experience are likelier to have a positive experience. Sponsors and exhibitors also stand to gain. Successful event personalization will generate better sales opportunities, resulting in improved exhibitor satisfaction and boosting revenue opportunities for event organizers.
Perhaps the most promising element of event personalization is its emotional impact of feeling seen and understood, which will boost brand value.
1. Events Have Become More Strategic “Today’s events must go beyond flawless logistics to deeply align with business initiatives,” Van Dyke states in the report. Events must begin with a deep understanding of their purpose. Creative Group advocates for aligning all aspects of event planning with business initiatives, ensuring every element — from agenda to attendee engagement — supports organizational goals. By starting with the “why,” planners can craft experiences that not only meet attendee expectations but also drive organizational objectives forward. This more intentional design focus is the crucial middle between events that check a box and events that move the needle.
2. Addressing Generational Shifts
With Millennials and Gen Z comprising an increasing share of the workforce, event strategies must reflect values like sustainability, inclusivity, and experiential depth — with more immersive and interactive experiences. Creative Group’s methods integrate these elements seamlessly, ensuring events resonate with all age groups while fostering connections across diverse demographics.
3. Immersive and Interactive Engagement
Understanding the purpose of an event also shapes how planners design interactions. Creative Group incorporates principles of behavioral economics — awareness, engagement, and nudges — to create meaningful moments before, during, and after the event, ensuring participants stay inspired by and connected to event messaging, brand and core business objectives
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The Report features an insights interview with Melissa Van Dyke, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing, Design, and Innovation, Creative Group. With an office in Toronto, Creative Group’s expertise underscores how strategic event design can address complex organizational goals while delivering exceptional attendee experiences.
Q A
How do you define “intentionality” when it comes to planning meetings and events?
We believe exceptional event design starts with intentionality — meaning that a purposeful approach drives event architects to clearly define the “why” behind every element. Designing with intention means every decision is a deliberate step toward achieving the event’s goals. Our job as designers is no longer to flawlessly execute the standard agenda at the lowest cost but to ensure each dollar spent has been intentionally invested in inspiring the change the organization desires. Intentional design is the crucial middle between events that check a box and events that move the needle.
Q A
What has caused this intentional approach to gain prominence with today’s meeting planners?
As remote work continues to shape workforce dynamics and distributed workforce models become the norm, the events industry has evolved in tandem. Organizations are rethinking their event strategies and placing greater emphasis on strategic investments, budget scrutiny, and measurable outcomes — sometimes referred to as the “return on experience.”
Today’s audiences expect more than flawless logistics. They crave immersive experiences that align with their values and aspirations while seamlessly integrating messaging and branding. It’s about creating meaningful moments and
Melissa Van Dyke, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing, Design, and Innovation, Creative Group
Since joining Creative Group in 2019, Melissa Van Dyke has held key leadership roles, including serving as the Inaugural Vice President of Design and Insights and the first Senior Vice President of Global Customer Experience and Operations. She has been recognized multiple times for her influence in the industry, including being named one of the “Top 25 Women in the Meetings Industry” by Meetings and Conventions Magazine and selected as one of the “Most Influential People in the Incentive Industry” by Incentive magazine.
shared emotional experiences, as these human connections are our most valuable currency. This emphasis on intentionality is more relevant than ever. By 2030, millennials and Gen Z will account for 65 percent of the U.S. workforce, bringing new expectations around communication, work-life balance, technology, and growth opportunities. These generations prioritize values like inclusivity, sustainability, and social equity, and they expect employers and event hosts to mirror these commitments. These considerations can’t wait. Large-scale events — such as conferences and incentive travel — are often planned years in advance. Incorporating the needs and expectations of this rising cohort today is crucial for creating experiences that resonate in the future.
Can you provide some specific, actionable strategies for creating empathy-driven event experiences that make attendees feel seen and valued?
Q A
Empathy begins with knowing attendees beyond demographics by considering generational values, cultural nuances, and accessibility needs. These insights ensure events feel inclusive, relevant, and welcoming. In today’s overstimulating world, designing moments to soothe the parasympathetic nervous system helps attendees feel calm and centered, enabling better learning and authentic connections. Examples include quiet recharge spaces, relaxation stations with guided meditations, or pop-up wellness activities like breathwork sessions. Thoughtful takeaways, such as grounding stones or essential oils, can also help attendees find balance throughout the day. Empathy extends to emotional connection. For instance, an awards ceremony can enhance nominees’ excitement with touches like heartfelt video messages from loved ones or surprise performances by favorite artists, leaving a lasting impression. Empathy also
allows attendees to choose how they engage. At a tech product launch, this might mean offering hands-on demonstrations for tactile learners, interactive Q&A sessions for engagement, and beginner-friendly content for newcomers.
Ultimately, empathy-driven events create personalized moments, comfortable environments, and tailored experiences that align with attendees’ needs, learning styles, and emotional states, leaving them feeling valued and connected.
How can interactive and immersive elements strengthen two-way event communication to better engage attendees before, during, and after an event?
event challenges, such as networking goals or completing knowledge-based quizzes that tie into event themes. This builds commitment and anticipation.
Nudges (novelty): Use creative prompts like countdown emails with surprises or exclusive content, such as sneak peeks of keynote speakers or event gamification, to spark curiosity and excitement.
Q A Q A
We find that incorporating three behavioral economics principles — awareness, engagement, and nudges — can effectively engage attendees before an event.
Awareness (purpose): Highlight the event’s purpose to create meaningful connections. For example, share personalized stories about the event’s impact or purpose-driven initiatives like sustainability efforts or community support.
Engagement (goal commitment): Encourage goal-setting by involving attendees in pre-
What are some effective methods for tailoring events to address the different values and priorities of Gen Z, millennial, Gen X, and baby boomer attendees?
Each generation brings unique values, expectations, and ways of engaging with the world. Recognizing and embracing these differences is essential for creating meaningful experiences. For instance, millennials and Gen Z see sustainability as a core value — not a trend — demanding authenticity and systemic commitment. They appreciate initiatives like waste reduction, locally sourced food, and biodegradable materials. Meanwhile, Gen X and baby boomers may prioritize practicality and long-term impact, responding to efforts like carbon offsets or cost saving measures.
Incorporating elements such as sustainable hotels, eco-friendly signage, and renewable energy investments can bridge these generational priorities.
Tailored messaging is key. For millennials, emphasizing waste reduction and promoting sustainable practices can go a long way. Millennials and Gen Z are also drawn to companies prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Events featuring diverse speakers and reflecting various perspectives will resonate strongly with these audiences. For Gen X and boomers, highlight tangible benefits, such as cost savings or environmental restoration. Consider traditional philanthropic efforts, like silent auctions supporting social justice.
Finding common ground is equally important. Shared initiatives, such as sustainable transportation, plant-based meals alongside traditional options, and inclusive dietary accommodations, can appeal across age groups. Activities like beach cleanups or tree planting unite participants around a meaningful purpose. Finally, reflect diversity in speakers and content and consider one-for-one gifting brands to add universal appeal. By aligning with generational values and identifying areas of convergence, events can be authentic, inclusive experiences for all attendees.
Our magazines are must-reads for key executives in core corporate competencies.
• Create a strong financial structure and healthy economic ecosystem to ensure capital and cash flow keep their engines running?
• Determine who their customers should be, how they can reach them most effectively, and how they can turn data-driven marketing into profitable sales?
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• Manage their customers with smoothly functioning support departments that are properly staffed and equipped to solve problems, foster loyalty and retain customers?
• Make any or every step in that chain better, faster, cheaper, and more profitable?
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