eCommerce Glossary: Engagement Rate

Glossary

Building Good Rapport with Existing Customers and Creating New Relationships with Others

Understanding and Calculating Engagement Rate

Digitalization has changed the landscape of how businesses interact with their existing and target customers. It is very difficult to keep an audience engaged if the content is not well prepared. It is the digital marketing strategy that will determine if the target audience is attracted to your business. This is where engagement rate plays an important role.

The engagement rate is a parameter that is used to determine whether the target audience is engaging with your content as much as you had planned for while preparing your digital marketing strategy. Even though there could be several other ways to measure the success of your digital marketing strategy, still customer engagement has always been considered a key parameter to determine the cost-benefit analysis of your marketing campaign.

There are many ways of engagement rate calculation, out of which we will cover the most commonly used ones. First, let us understand the basic method to perform the engagement rate calculation. The engagement rate is calculated by dividing the total number of engagements by the total followers and expressing this number in the form of a percentage (by multiplying with 100).

Engagement Rate = (Total # of Engagements / Total Followers) x 100

Here, total engagement is the summation of all the customer interactions and will vary based on the measurement followed by the specific platform on which you are running your campaign. The total followers’ figure is the total follower count of your social account on the specified platform. Now, let us look into how some factors can be used to tweak this formula and make it more beneficial for you.

Calculated Based on Reach

In this method, divide the engagement you recorded per post by the reach acquired through that post.

Reach per post considers only your active followers who are viewing your content, as well as those who are viewing your content but don’t follow your page.
Reach per post can vary a lot during the entire content duration, which could sometimes lead to disproportionate ERR calculations.

Calculation Based on Post

In this method, divide the engagement you recorded per post by the follower count of your page.

This method is used when the data pertaining to reach per post varies a lot and becomes unreliable.
The major issue with this method is that it does not include the people who are engaging with your content but don’t follow your page.

Conducting Proper Research and Knowing Your Target

In this method, divide the engagement recorded per video post by the total views of the video content.

This the best method to evaluate how your video content is performing.
This method fails to eliminate from the equation the repeat viewings made by a follower.

Calculation Based on Impressions

In this method, divide the engagement you recorded per post by the impression count of your post.

Mainly used to assess the success of engaging customers using paid content, while considering impressions as the base factor.
Data pertaining to impressions can vary a lot and tend to be unreliable when used alone. It can deliver a better effect if used with the reach figure.

Calculation Based on Daily Engagement

In this method, divide the engagement you recorded in a day by the follower count of your page.

This calculation method provides you an insight into the daily engagement level, irrespective of the individual post-wise engagements, giving you an idea of the overall brand positioning with your target audiences.
The figures could vary based on the number of posts you are sharing in a day or how many times the same follower is engaging with your various contents. These points need to be factored in to use this method effectively.

Final Key Notes on Drip Marketing

Tips To Using Engagement Rates

With an ever-increasing competition resulting in competitive pricing and the best product delivery schedule, customers are swayed by the overall experience they have while interacting with a brand. Here are some tips you can try out to use engagement rates to deliver the best experience to your targeted audience.

It can provide you an idea of which content is not performing well. You can use it to strategize on the content creation aspect of your marketing plan.
It can provide you an idea about the platform-specific performance of your content. You can use it to determine if the social platform is suitable for your business or not.
It can provide you an idea of the audience segment who interacts the most with your content. You can use it to identify people who will act as influencers for your brand and promote it.
It can provide you insights into how any campaign is performing. This way you can use it to identify if any campaign that is centered around any new launches, is performing well or not and if it needs further modifications.
It can provide you with insights on whether your content attracts the attention of your targeted audience or a different segment of people. This way you can use it to identify any unmissed audience segment that you had not initially planned or considered while preparing your strategy.

When you engage properly with your target audience, you ensure that your brand is visible to them and even a wider population. When your audience is happy by engaging with your content, they automatically recommend your brand to the people they know. This way not only does your audience base grow organically, but also your brand is recognized by your audience as a credible business. Clearly, you can understand that audience engagement is key to build excellent customer rapport and increase their affinity towards your brand.

Since engagement is a defining parameter of your marketing campaign, hence it is essential that you can correctly measure this parameter. This is where the engagement rate plays a pivotal role. It will inform you if your content is accepted by your targeted customers. Unless you get your target audience to engage with your content and spread positivity about your brand, you will not be able to convert them and generate business from them.