223: What is “engagement trajectory” and what should you do with it?

I thought I had coined a new phrase in the May issue of The Krehbiel Letter, which is available online right now. Link below. 

The phrase was “Engagement trajectory.” That is, how engagement is changing or trending at the moment. It turns out other people have already used the phrase, so I don’t get any points for that. 

Why does “engagement trajectory” matter? 

The most basic reason is that it’s weary work getting new customers. It’s far easier to keep the ones you have. 

In the publishing business model, engagement is crucial. 

It’s clearly a key metric for an ad-supported service, because you need those eyeballs. The more often they engage with your service, the more opportunities you have to sell ads. Keeping eyeballs is easier than getting new ones. 

Subscription publishers have an unfortunate tendency to ignore engagement. This is a left-over habit from print. They get their payment, and the next touch point is renewal, so they don’t think much about the subscription until the renewal cycle starts – maybe three or four months before expire. 

Digital publishing is a different animal. We can track engagement all year long. And we should be. 

Think of every engagement metric you have.  

• Opens

• Clicks

• Site visits

• Page views

• Time on site

• Video views

• Logins

• Comments

• Whatever 

Track them, score them, create an engagement index, and when the index goes down, take some action. 

It might be as simple as sending an email. 

The point is that everyone in your database is trending in some direction with respect to that engagement index. You should have a strategy for each group. 

Just for fun, let’s make four groups. 

• Increasing rapidly 

• Increasing moderately 

• Decreasing moderately 

• Decreasing rapidly 

What are your opportunities – or what can you learn – from each group? 

Let’s take “increasing rapidly.” These are your stars. Can they become brand ambassadors? Can they contribute content? Should you interview them? Can you get a testimonial? Can you find out what it is about your content that’s so appealing to them? 

What about decreasing rapidly? They used to be engaged, but something has turned their attention. Did you do something wrong? Are they your bellwethers – the leading edge of a new trend that you’d better find out about? Is your content only valuable for the short term? 

There are so many questions to ask, but you can’t do it unless you’re tracking engagement trajectory. 

Links 

May issue of The Krehbiel Letter