The State of

Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
North America Edition
How insights can help you connect the dots to
build an impactful customer engagement strategy
and provide a delightful experience.
 Table of
Contents

Foreword 01
How Traditional Customer Engagement has Evolved 02
Creating a Seamless Customer Lifecycle Through 03
Insights-led Engagement
Inside the Insights 03
Today’s Customer Engagement Landscape 04
Insights on Customers 08
Insights on Journeys 10
Insights on Campaigns 11
Impact of Insights on Business Metrics 13

The Path to Insights-led Engagement 14

Accelerate Your Insights-led Engagement Journey with 16
MoEngage
Foreword
Customers today have more options than ever before. Brands are
turning to personalization in their communications to build stronger
relationships with customers—from elements such as preferred
message frequency to relevant content based on purchase history
or affinity.

Our internal research suggests the critical role

unique insights play in meeting the customers’
expectations of hyper-personalized
communication from brands. To understand the
impact of insights on successful customer
engagement strategies, MoEngage commissioned
a survey of 2,000 marketers across North America
to understand their points of view.

The survey respondents are segmented by organizational roles, job

levels, and industries. ‘The State of Insights-led Engagement
Report’ acts as a beacon light for marketers to move from a
campaign-centric approach to a customer-centric, insights-led
approach in their customer engagement strategies.

Kshitij Hastu
Regional Vice President - North America
MoEngage

01 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
How Traditional
Customer Engagement
Has Evolved

Covid-19 accelerated digitalization cohorts or segments. Their pursuit of

efforts across all industries by personalization often falls short because
they don’t have the necessary customer
three to four years. The share of insights. This can be reinforced by utilizing
digital or digitally enabled the right tech stack.
products in North America
Our survey findings reveal a gap between
increased by six years. what marketers want versus what the
-McKinsey & Company current tech stack delivers. Brands must
move beyond the surface-level data
collection as it relatively remains
There was a massive opportunity for
disconnected and cannot easily be used
marketers to study their customers by looking
for deeper analysis, such as predicting
at their purchase journeys. However, how
customers’ buying patterns or evolving
successfully marketers were able to achieve
needs.
this is questionable.
This is where an insights-led approach
In a rapidly transforming digital landscape,
comes into play. In this report, we delve
providing long-lasting impressions to
deeper into an insights-led approach to
customers has become crucial and more
customer engagement. We also learn
challenging due to short attention spans and
about North American marketers’ current
the availability of numerous options.
approach to gathering and utilizing
Marketers need to take a step back and look
customer insights.
at customers more holistically. This means not
staying limited to essential information such
as name or location and examining customers’
affinities, journeys, or the campaigns they
engage with.

Based on the limited information, marketers

send irrelevant recommendations that
overwhelm the customers instead of
personalized suggestions to address their pain
points. Brands mistake personalization for
sending a communication to broad customer

02 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
Creating a Seamless Customer Lifecycle
Through Insights-led Engagement
We now understand that today’s customer Analyze and Segment
needs hyper-personalized engagement. To
meet customers’ expectations, you must move
beyond the campaign-led messaging
approach using cohorts, hypotheses, or
generic campaigns. This can be achieved
through insights-led engagement.
AI
An insights-led engagement approach is a
continuous loop that uses real-time insights by Insights-Led
monitoring customer behavior, existing data, Engagement
and buying patterns across multiple channels
to build a personalized experience. It allows Optimize Engage
brands to analyze data at scale, measure
long-term campaign impact, optimize
engagement, and predict future behavior.

Inside the Insights

Insights-led engagement is the path to more The survey respondents included:

profound, personalized customer
2,000 male and
experiences. For brands like yours to adopt female marketers
an insights-led approach, you’ll need to take
stock of where you currently stand. from
North America
For ‘The State of Insights-led Engagement across six industries (BFSI,
in marketing
Report 2022’, MoEngage commissioned a functions
Media and Entertainment,
Telecommunications,
survey from December 2021 to February Consumer Shopping,
2022 to understand the impact of Ed-tech, and QSR)

insights-led engagement and why it is a

pressing priority for marketers today. who are Managers, From varying organization sizes
Senior Managers, Directors, small businesses (0-500),
and C-level Executives mid-size businesses (500-1,000),
and enterprises (1,000- 5,000+)

03 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Today’s Customer Engagement
Landscape

To build an understanding of what marketers are currently analyzing, we first observed their
existing customer engagement tech stack. Next, we found out what roadblocks they face in
keeping their customers engaged.

Marketers prefer CRMs and multichannel CEPs in their tech stack

What does your customer engagement tech stack consist of?

Customer
analytics platform
16.5% Marketing automation platform
19.9%

Customer relationship
management (CRM)
Multichannel customer
23.1% engagement platform (CEP)
20.9%

Customer data platform (CDP)

19.5%
When asked what their customer engagement stack consists of, 23.1% of North American
marketers selected a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform as their most
preferred customer tech stack, followed by a multichannel Customer Engagement Platform
(CEP) with 20.9% of respondents. Even though marketers are using a combination of CRM
and multichannel CEP, there lies an opportunity to deep dive into customer insights.

04 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
What does the customer engagement tech stack look like for different company sizes?
Small Businesses Mid-size Businesses Enterprises

20.4%

20.5%
22.9%

25.6%
19.4%
16.9%

21.6%

19.5%

15.9%
19.5%
18.5%
21.7%

15.7%
21%

21%
Marketing automation Multichannel customer Customer data Customer relationship Customer analytics
platform engagement platform platform (CDP) management (CRM) platform

CRM adoption is highest amongst enterprises (25.6%) and small businesses (22.9%). Meanwhile,
21.7% of mid-size companies utilize multichannel CEPs.

What does the customer engagement tech stack look like for different industries?
Marketing automation Multichannel customer Customer Customer relationship Customer
platform engagement platform data platform management analytics platform
20.6%

20.6%
20.3%

20.5%

25.4%
23.8%
22.9%

25.6%
23.5%
14.3%

18.4%
19.9%
16.2%

19.5%
21.3%

18.2%

21.8%
22.1%

21.2%
25.1%

14.1%

14.1%
16.1%
19.1%

19.1%
21.1%

11.1%
23%

23%

18%

BFSI Consumer Shopping Media & Entertainment Ed-tech QSR Telecommunications

Except for Educational Technology (Ed-tech) and Media & Entertainment which use both
multichannel CEPs and CRMs, 22-26% of other industries leverage CRM to meet their customer
engagement needs.

05 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Lack of real-time analytics poses a barrier
to effective engagement

What is your top customer engagement challenge?

Inability to map the customer journey and create Inactionable data and getting unified
communications tailored to each individual customer profile data across systems
15.4% 16.8%

Inability to personalize the customer

experience across channels
15.4%

Lack of real-time analytics

Lack of understanding
33.9%
around which channels
are most effective and when
18.6%

For 33.9% of respondents across industries, organizational roles, and sizes, lack of real-time
analytics is the biggest customer engagement challenge. This is closely followed by a lack of
understanding of the channels to utilize, their efficacy, and relevant timing to send the right
messaging (18.6%). Over 40% of marketers across job roles face similar challenges while engaging
their customers.

Despite using a mix of CRM and multichannel CEP, marketers still struggle to drive real-time
insights to their engagement strategies so they can course-correct. Our survey data suggests that
marketers still depend on campaign-based metrics. If marketers want real-time analytics, they must
pivot from a traditional campaign-based approach to a customer-centric strategy.

06 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Siloed data leads to fragmented
customer experiences
So far we’ve seen which customer engagement challenges North American marketers face and
which tools they use to effectively engage with their audience. To holistically assess the current
state, we now dive deeper into how customer engagement operations are managed.

How do you manage customer engagement resources and operations?

40.4% of North American

Integrated planning, Teams operate marketers manage customer
execution, and independently engagement operations by
streamlined (marketing teams,
email teams, enabling marketing, email,
decision-making
for future initiatives social and mobile social and mobile teams to
30.2% teams) operate as independent
40.4% teams. These numbers
indicate how various functions
work in silos, resulting in
scattered data with no focus
on insights and often leading
to disjointed customer
Joint planning but separate execution experiences.
29.4%

Insights on Customers
In the previous section, we reviewed the current state and approach to customer engagement. Now,
it’s time to peek into the marketers’ approach to various insights. We asked marketers in North
America about what insights they gather on their customers. Our findings are as follows:

What customer insights are marketers measuring currently?

Customer segment persona type categories Interest, choice, or affinity
(e.g. loyal, price-sensitive, one-time shopper) (most viewed content or
17.8% purchased product)
23.3%
Preferred channel,
message,
and time of
communication
18.4% Probability to purchase,
churn, or hibernate

Customer demographic data (e.g. name, location)

19.9%
20.6%
07 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
23.3% of respondents measure customers’ interests and affinities such as most viewed
content or purchased product, while 20.6% leverage basic data such as customer
demographics for decision-making. Demographic information or areas of interest such as
most viewed content can lead to brands making blanket statements about customers.
However, providing a hyper-personalized experience based on preferred channel or time of
communication will help marketers fine-tune their customer engagement strategies to be
more personalized and relevant.

BFSI in the forefront of gauging

deeper customer insights
The BFSI industry remains ahead of the curve as 26.5% measure customers’ probability to
purchase, churn, or hibernate. Meanwhile, 27.4% of marketers in the Consumer Shopping
industry focus on insights based on persona type categories.
Whereas, Media & Entertainment (23.1%) and Ed-tech (22.6%) marketers primarily measure
customer demographic data. To engage customers, about 26-27% of marketers in QSR and
Telecommunications are measuring interest data.

What customer insights are different industries measuring currently?

Interest, choice, Probability to Customer Preferred channel, Customer segment

or affinity (most purchase, churn, demographic data message, and time persona type
viewed content or hibernate (e.g. name, location) of communication categories
or purchased product) (e.g. loyal, price-sensitive,
one-time shopper)
26.6 %
24.9%

24.3%
22.6%
26.5%

27.4%

25.7%

14.9%
14.3%
19.6%

21.4%
15.4%

18.9%
18.9%

18.9%
18.8%
18.8%

16.2%

18.8%
21.9%
15.6%
23.1%
23.1%
13.2%

18.2%
14.7%

19.7%

18.7%

17.2%
22%

BFSI Consumer Shopping Media & Entertainment Ed-tech QSR Telecommunications

08 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Deeper customer insights translate to
hyper-personalized experiences
29.4% of marketers state that they are using a deeper level of attributes such as preferred
language, communication channel, and content affinity to personalize communication. However,
this is just the initial touchpoint of personalizing content. Marketers can hyper-personalize
messaging by looking at deeper customer and journey insights.

How do you personalize communication with your customers?

Data measuring usage patterns to segment
customers appropriately Deeper level of customer attributes like preferred
11.2% language, communication channel,
and content affinity
29.4%
Data around moments of conversion,
dormancy, and churn
12.6%

Behavioral-based data like recency, Basic customer data i.e.

frequency, and monetary value of purchase name and location
21% 25.8%

09 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Insights on Journey

For effective customer engagement, you must understand their customer lifecycle and
purchase journey. Exploring insights such as what customers care about and how they navigate
through mobile apps, websites, email, and other touchpoints are essential to enhancing the
customer experience.

More marketers focus on measuring the most optimum

path to conversion

What journey insights do brands measure?

For 40.1% of North American

Delightful- Aha Drop-off moments in marketers, measuring the most
moments the customer journey optimum path to conversion
29.9% 29.9% remains their top priority.
The same trend prevails across job
roles and company sizes. Fewer
marketers fail to acknowledge the
importance of creating delightful
‘Aha’ moments and drop-off points
in the customer journey, which are
equally significant in creating
seamless customer journeys. The
findings reveal that marketers
might be analyzing other journey
Most optimum path to conversion insights; however, their existing
40.1% tech stacks’ limitations keep them
from monitoring these insights.

10 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Insights on Campaigns

Now that we have discussed insights on customers and their journeys, it’s time to delve into
critical insights that make your customer engagement campaigns successful.

Marketers focus on engaging customer segments instead

of business ROI

What campaign insights are marketers analyzing?

Our survey shows that 35.2% of

Purchases, opens, Most engaging
marketers focus on the most engaging
clicks, content viewed customer segments customer segments. Even though
32.7% 35.2% insights such as the long-term impact
on business (32.7%) and campaign
performance data (32%) follow closely,
the preference is descending. A similar
trend is observed across job roles,
company sizes, and industries.

Presently, marketers prefer to

deprioritize insights such as the
long-term impact on revenue and
campaign performance data. This can
be because marketers might not
realize the impact these insights have
Long-term impact on on the overall business growth.
business such as revenue
Another reason we observe is the
32.0% limitations faced by their current
customer engagement tech stack.

11 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Email is the most preferred engagement channel
@
What digital channels do you use in your omnichannel strategy?

Email 19.5%

SMS 13.1%

Mobile or Web Push 12.2% Based on our survey, 19.5% of North

American marketers across
In-app 10.6% organizational roles and company sizes
use email more often. The other
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger 13.7%
frequently used touchpoints in an
Website 11.3% omnichannel strategy include chatting
apps (13.7%), SMS (13.1%), and push
Youtube Ad channels 8.6% notifications (12.2%).
Social media platforms 10.9%

Customer preference helps marketers

prioritize communication channels
How do you prioritize channels for communication?

Based on customer
Behavioral attributes to figure preferences (opt-in data)
out channel & time preferences 38.6% of survey respondents in North
15.2% 38.6% America, regardless of organizational
roles and industries, prioritize their
communication channels based on
customer preferences and opt-in data.
A meager 15.2% prioritize based on
behavioral attributes. While opt-in data
Based on the remains critical, marketers need to
performance consider the entire customer journey
of each channel when thinking about new channel
22.2% engagement to ensure each customer
has an easy path to opt-in and gather
the information accordingly.
Unfortunately, marketers are not
spending enough time analyzing
Based on competitor analysis important behavioral attributes to find
and industry best practices out preferred channels and time.
24%

12 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Impact of Insights on
Business Metrics

Do customers, campaigns, and journey insights impact the ROI of your business?

No 44.6% of North American marketers believe

20% in the high impact value of insights to their
businesses. Their experience tells them that
the revenue and growth of their
organization are closely tied to these
Yes insights. While 20% of marketers feel that
44.6% these insights have a rather low impact on
business outcomes.

In comparison, 35.4% of them remain

neutral regarding the impact of insights on
business metrics. This could be attributed
to focusing on a campaign-centric
Maybe approach that often leads marketers to
35.4% measure short-term metrics instead of
valuable insights that could contribute to
their return on investment (ROI).

Marketers need to move beyond the campaign-centric approach of merely looking at the
best-performing content, channels, or time, and instead start to build personalized, unique
engagement strategies for every individual based on behavioral data and customer lifecycle.
Only then can marketers truly achieve a customer-centric approach to their marketing and
engagement strategies.

13 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 The Path to
Insights-led Engagement

A disassociated customer experience stems out of platform capability limitations,

siloed data, and depersonalized communication followed by a campaign-centric
approach. An insights-led approach would allow marketers to be guided by insights to
build an effective customer engagement strategy, in turn taking a customer-centric
approach vs. a campaign-led approach.

Campaign-led
Approach
Hypothesis driven campaign
planning, with the campaign running
for a broad cohort of users
Insight-led
Customer Engagement
AI-powered data-driven approach to campaign
planning, with messages tailored to individuals

Campaign-centric CRMs only enable you Empowers marketers to go beyond basic

to set-up basic lifecycle campaigns and campaigns and identify the right engagement
business-led promotions campaigns

Measure short term campaign performance Measure the long-term impact of several
metrics, without any understanding of which programs on retention, revenue by customer
customer segments have engaged well segment and optimize engagement

1. Be More Customer-centric
The wide gap between customer perception and business ideology is proof that many
organizations focus on a problem, which is nothing but a mere reflection of what needs to
change. The main obstacle for marketers is getting the right data and insights to create
customer engagement strategies. Often marketers take a campaign-led, channel-led
approach to engagement which is based on broad assumptions about customer behavior.
This inefficient practice can directly impact business ROI, resulting in high churn rates. It is
often the byproduct of using CDPs or CRMs that restrict marketers to rudimentary
campaigns, making personalization even more arduous.

14 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
On the contrary, a customer-centric strategy, which prioritizes engagement based on
each individual’s unique journey, helps marketers leverage insights to roll out data-driven
customer campaigns. Implementing the customer-led approach ensures marketers
forecast the impact of this strategy on long-term business goals such as retention,
repurchase, and loyalty.

2. Unify Data Across Multichannel CEPs

Organizations have data stored in multiple places such as CRM, web analytics, email
marketing, or mobile marketing tools. Data is critical, but it’s even more important to be
able to put that data to use and glean insights to inform your strategy. Unless these silos
are integrated and customer data is unified into a single profile, you will not be able to
understand your customer completely. With this missing piece, you will fail to provide
personalized customer experiences.

CEPs assist in compiling your multichannel data by:

Integrating your Martech Creating a single view of Getting a sense of when,

stack and tools to drive your customers to gain where, and what customers
efficiencies visibility into their engage with
customer journey

3. Witness the Power of Personalization

Due to the scale of digital transformation and data overload, comprehending customer
data into meaningful insights to deliver personalized communication becomes a roadblock
for marketers. Nonetheless, organizations that take a customized approach to
customer-engagement reap benefits in the long run.

Hyper-personalization as part of your campaigns will help each message feel like a unique
1:1 engagement with your customers. Unlike some basic automated customization tools,
hyper-personalization tailors content based on each customer segment. This ensures
every customer receives communications they are interested in, leading to positive
engagement, such as increased customer retention and higher conversion.

4. Eliminate Internal Data Silos

As revealed in our survey results, 40% of North American marketers operate
independently creating data and information silos between teams.
This showcases the tendency of organizations to implement counterproductive measures.
The vast quantities of customer data stored separately hamper the overall efficiency and
productivity of the organization. These silos also threaten data integrity, leading to
cross-functional discrepancies.

15 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Accelerate Your Insights-led
Engagement Journey with
MoEngage

All the information we’ve gathered tells us this: insights transform data into delightful customer
experiences. Insights help you connect the dots of customer behavior and turn them into
meaningful actions. Modern customer engagement platforms such as MoEngage go one step
further by helping you automate the process of insights-led engagement, enabling you to
uncover insights such as:

What your customers really want

To engage with your customers, you need to
understand what they want—before they
realize what they want themselves. This is
where insights can lead the way. Insights
reveal who each customer is at heart to help
you create relevant conversations at every
step. With MoEngage Predictive Segmentation
and Recommendations, you can use a
customer’s behavior and personality to
predict their future actions. You can send
them dynamically personalized product
recommendations they are most likely to
engage with at a time and channel they’re
most likely to respond on.

16 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 Who loves you and who doesn’t

MoEngage RFM modeling allows you to

automatically segment customers based on Price
About to Sleep Loyal Customer

their purchases’ recency, frequency, and Sensitive

monetary value. This way, you’ll know

Needs Attention
which customers are price-sensitive, which Recent
Users
need attention, which are hibernating, or Hibernating
which are loyalists, and communicate with Lost
them accordingly. These insights are more
intelligent, more incisive, and more dynamic Can’t Lose Potential
Loyalist
than raw data, and give a strategic Them
Champions
advantage to your marketing strategy.

The path to a delightful customer journey

Think of the complete customer journey for your product. In an ideal scenario, customers
are delighted every step of the way and move smoothly forward on their path. But more
often than not, customers get lost somewhere along the journey or get deterred by
meaningless or negative experiences. Marketers need a way to truly understand the unique
paths taken by each customer—and based on this—craft the perfect journey.

With MoEngage User Path Analysis, you can get a bird’s-eye view of customers' different
paths, dig deep into the steps they take from one activity to another, and fill gaps in the
customer journey. You can learn what intersects the path your customers are on, understand
customer requirements at every touchpoint, find out what keeps them on or off the path,
and help them navigate the journey.

Product Viewed App/Site Opened

App/Site Opened
Notification Received
INSTALL
App/Site Opened
Product Viewed

Notification Received
Added to Cart
Added to Cart
Order Successful
Product Viewed
Others Others

Others Drop off

Drop off Drop off

17 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 About

MoEngage is an insights-led customer engagement platform built for the

customer-obsessed. With AI-powered automation, optimization capabilities, and
in-built analytics, MoEngage is built specifically to cater to your customer-driven
needs and enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels like
mobile push, email, in-app, website push, on-site messages, and SMS.

Fortune 500 brands across 35+ countries such as Ally Financial, McAfee, Landmark
Group, Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, Flipkart, Nestle, T-Mobile, Travelodge, Chegg,
IMVU, and others use MoEngage to orchestrate their cross-channel campaigns and
engage efficiently with their customers.

MoEngage was recognized as one of America’s Best Startup Employers 2022 by

Forbes, #1 Mobile Marketing Platform in G2's Spring 2021 Momentum Report, Q3
2021, a Leader in G2 for Fall 2020 Grid® Reports, and a Leader in the 2020 Gartner
Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms, a Strong Performer in the Forrester
Wave™: Cross-Channel Campaign Management (Independent Platforms). To learn
more, visit www.moengage.com.

Meet the Contributors

Megha Singh Ankita Kaushik Meagan White

Regional Content Manager Lead- Content Marketing Manager Vice President of Marketing
North America North America and Europe North America

18 The State of
Insights-led Engagement
Report 2022
 The State of Insights-led
Engagement Report 2022
To learn how we can help you create an insightful and dynamic
customer engagement:

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questions related to this report, please reach out to

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