Brian Haven of Forrester kicked off with Engagement: A New Approach to Understanding Customers.  Which was no surprise since the theme of the entire conference is engagement.  Honestly I was prepared to yawn, not because of the speaker, Brian is a strong, smart and engaging (see, I can use the lingo) speaker.  And not because I disagree with the thesis of the talk, that we all need to move away from speaking to customers or even the 1:1 mantra of dialogue with customers and evolve to relating to customers in terms of the degree and integrity of the engagement with customers over time.  The reason I was prepared to yawn was that I thought I knew the argument fairly well and I was not expecting to hear anything new or enlightening.

So what stood out in the end?  Brian showed an eye chart slide filled with literally dozens of analytical metrics and data points that to a greater or lesser degree we’re all either already collecting or would like to be collecting.  Brian asked the question, “with all the analytical metrics available, which ones are meaningful?”  At first glance, it was a fairly straightforward question.  I looked at each metric on the slide and there wasn’t a single one I could say was not a valid measurement tool or one I would advise a client was unnecessary.  So my first reaction was that they’re all meaningful.  But of course before that idea could even come out of my mouth I questioned it.  It was then that I realized that the issue was not which ones of more meaningful than others, it was really how can you bring all these metrics together in such a way as to demonstrate value to the business.

And I guess that was Brian’s point.  Engagement is the sum of many points of view, touch points and metrics.  It is trying to measure an ephemeral relationship that most likely changes with every new interaction or more broadly with every exposure to the brand.  It is measuring emotion.

Compare that to sophisticated models that calculate lifetime customer value and you’ve got the two keys to measure the outcome of marketing; increasing customer value, i.e. the revenue over time that can be directly attributed to a customer and secondly affinity, loyalty  or whatever other term you want to apply to the emotional relationship that is a driver of influence.

So thanks to Brian for making me think of how to measure customer value both rationally and emotionally.

On the surface, it was surprising to me, how little the issues have changed over the last decade.  The central issues were still a lack of resources and budget and the tensions between marketing and sales.  But once we got beyond these issues, the real dicussions started.  Is there any meat to Web2.0 tactics?  Is role-based marketing something really new, or is it 1 to 1 marketing in new clothes?  Which marketing automation tools are worthwhile and should we be investing in more PR?

The consensus?  The jury is still out, but at least there’s comfort in knowing we’re all facing the same issues and can still come together to share ideas and experiences.

Tomorrow start the Forrester Research Marketing Forum.