Engagement

A busy buyer only leans in when something is relevant to them. Engagement is therefore a stand-in for buying intent that a static list of names can never give. Steady silence usually means the wrong time or the wrong fit. Tracking engagement points limited sales hours at the people most likely to buy and shows which messages land and which are ignored.

• Decide what counts before scoring it. An open, a click, a download and a login each mean something different.
• Weight actions by what they say about intent. A trial signup says far more than one email open.
• Let old activity fade, so recent actions count for more than something from months ago.
• Set a threshold, and route a person to sales when they cross it, so a warm contact does not wait in a slow nurture stream.
• Watch accounts, not just individuals. Several people from one company showing interest often means a buying process has started.

Being shown something, such as an impression of an ad, is passive. Engagement is a recorded action that shows someone paid attention. Opening an email, clicking a link, reading the pricing page, downloading a guide, replying, starting a trial or logging back into the product all count. Each is a small piece of evidence about what the person cares about and how close they are to buying.

Engagement can be measured for a person, for an account made up of several people, or for a single piece of content. The same word is used for all three, so say which one you mean.

Not every action says the same thing. Reading the pricing page twice is a stronger signal than opening a newsletter, and some actions, such as automatic email opens, mean almost nothing. Engagement is useful only once you decide which actions count and how much.

• Counting every open equally, when some are automatic.
• Mistaking activity for intent. A student downloading a guide is engaged but will never buy.
• Scoring everything and never checking that high scores really do convert.