Forrester’s Marketing Forum this year covered Engagement, but not the kind of Engagement so often discussed in web analytics.

Nope, Engagement from a Marketing perspective, you know, surprise and delight leads to better customer experiences leads to better customer retention and higher profits.

The presentation came complete with some nifty offline Engagement examples, e.g. the more a patient is Engaged in their healthcare the better the result.  The improved results came from, get this, “improving doctor usability”.  And yes, there was a test on this business optimization effort with tangible results generated.

You can get a good feel for where this conversation is headed from Jeremiah Owyang’s blog by listening to the 2 Forrester keynotes, each about an hour long.  For those short on time, pick one, depending on your interest:

Strategic Level: platforms, frameworks, etc. from Brian Haven

Tactical Level: examples, “how to” etc. from Kerry Bodine

No time for a video?

For a bulleted list of the key points you need to understand in order to optimize your Marketing model, see the “Five Fundamentals of Integrated Marketing” ClickZ article here.

I’ll have more to say on why these ideas are so important in the next couple of days.  For now, I will leave you with this:

If the customer is taking control, it’s only because you’re using the wrong Marketing model, maybe one like this one.  No customer wants to have to “take control” in the first place.

The more Engaging you are, the less old-school “pray and spray” Marketing  – online or offline – you should have to do.

That’s the whole point of Engagement.

Comments on the videos or article?  Anything ring a bell for you?