The Definitive Guide to Customer Engagement

There’s a coffee shop you go to where they start making your flat white the moment you walk in. A restaurant where they seat you at your usual table. A pub where the bartender already has your pint poured before you’ve taken your coat off.

You’re a regular. They know you.

That feeling, being recognised, remembered, understood without having to explain yourself from scratch, is the single most powerful force in customer engagement. And it’s exactly what most brands fail to deliver. Every channel starts fresh. Every interaction acts like the first one. The customer walks in for the hundredth time and the brand says, “Hi, welcome, tell us about yourself.”

Customer engagement is what happens when a brand stops treating every customer like a stranger. It’s the depth and quality of the relationship your customers build with your brand over time, and it’s shaped by every interaction, every touchpoint, every moment a customer decides whether your brand is worth their attention.

Savvy marketers understand this. The key to building lasting relationships that result in more purchases, better retention, and increased customer lifetime value comes down to having a strong customer engagement strategy.

In this guide, we’ll cover what customer engagement really means, how to build a strategy that delivers measurable results, and how to track whether it’s working.

Customer engagement is the depth and strength of the relationship a brand builds with its customers across every touchpoint over time. It captures how emotionally invested, behaviorally active, and cognitively connected a customer is; not just whether they made a purchase, but whether they keep coming back, advocate for the brand, and feel a genuine connection to it.

The distinction matters. Two customers can complete the same purchase. One walks away satisfied and never thinks about the brand again. The other follows the brand on social, looks forward to new releases, writes reviews, and recommends it to friends and family. Same product, completely different level of customer engagement. The second customer is worth far more to the business over time.

The main types of customer engagement

Customer engagement shows up in three distinct forms:

Emotional engagement is the feelings and associations customers build with a brand. This is the difference between a customer finding their interactions with a brand and its products satisfactory, and finding them exceptional. Emotional engagement is a clear sign that customer loyalty is growing.

Behavioral engagement is the observable, measurable actions customers take: purchase frequency, time spent on site or in app, participation in loyalty programs, average order value.

Cognitive engagement is the degree of attention a customer gives to your brand’s content and communications. Are they absorbing what you put out? Do they find it relevant enough to act on?

Understanding all three dimensions helps you go beyond one-time conversion and build relationships that compound in value.

The SAP Global Engagement Index 2026 surveyed thousands of consumers and businesses worldwide. The findings reveal a widening gap between what customers now expect and what most brands can deliver. Four trends stand out.

1. The Engagement Divide is growing

Consumers are moving faster than the organizations trying to reach them. With AI tools at their fingertips, they compare, evaluate, and switch with almost no friction. The SAP Engagement Index calls this the Engagement Divide: the distance between what customers need in the moments that matter and what brands can deliver today.

The scale of the disconnect is significant. A full 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them, and 60% admit they don’t pay attention to brands even when the product meets their needs. For 48% of consumers, the overall experience matters more than the brand itself. Loyalty is becoming conditional on execution.

Most brands believe they’re performing well. The Index shows 78% say they deliver seamless experiences across channels and 77% say they have a strong emotional bond with their customers. Consumers tell a different story: 75% feel put off by disorganized experiences, and 41% say brands don’t understand them as a person.

Think about what that means in practice. Three quarters of brands say, “We know our customers.” Four in ten customers say, “No, you don’t.” That’s the Engagement Divide in a nutshell.

2. Personalization has moved from preference to expectation

Consumers have made their position clear. The Index shows that 58% believe most marketing emails they receive are irrelevant, and 37% say brands don’t personalize content to their needs at all. The downstream effect is measurable: only 16% of recipients will read the subject line, and just 29% will read beyond the first sentence or two.

To close this gap, companies are connecting their customer data across systems and using it to deliver recommendations, offers, and content that reflect real behavior and preferences. The Index found that 63% of consumers say their favorite brand delivers seamless, connected experiences across mobile, web, and in-store, and 58% value personalized product recommendations.

3. Omnichannel investment is outpacing data readiness

Investment in omnichannel engagement is accelerating. The Index reports that 76% of businesses are investing in omnichannel engagement technologies to meet customer channel preferences. The ambition is there, but the infrastructure to support it often lags behind.

The underlying challenge is data. The Index found that 29% of businesses say connecting customer and stakeholder data across marketing, sales, service, commerce, and ERP systems is their number one priority, and fewer than 30% currently share their customer engagement data with a CX platform or CRM. Without a unified data foundation, omnichannel investments deliver multichannel volume rather than the connected, contextually relevant experiences customers expect.

The maturity data tells the same story. Only 21% of businesses reach high engagement maturity, where data, channels, and intelligence are connected across the organization. The majority, 63%, remain in the moderate tier, where teams can access portions of shared data but coordination across functions remains uneven.

4. AI is transforming engagement from both sides

AI is reshaping customer engagement from the brand side and the consumer side simultaneously. The Index found that 78% of businesses see AI as essential for retaining customers, and 77% plan to invest in AI-powered customer engagement this year. AI-driven personalization, predictive product recommendations, and intelligent automation can help teams deliver relevant experiences at a scale that manual execution can’t match.

On the consumer side, the shift is just as pronounced. The Index reports that 40% of consumers have already used AI agents that make purchasing decisions and act on their behalf. As AI mediates more of the buying journey, brands that can’t surface the right product, at the right price, in the right channel risk being filtered out entirely before a human ever sees the offer.

Again, the barrier is infrastructure. The Index found that 78% of businesses say they can’t practice real-time AI optimization in their day-to-day campaigns, and 66% admit they can’t use AI to optimize campaign performance. The businesses making AI work for customer engagement are the ones that solved the data problem first, connecting customer, commerce, and operational data into a unified foundation that AI can work from.

Despite being used interchangeably, these three marketing buzzwords actually have deeper, distinct meanings. Let’s dive into each concept and unearth their differences.

Customer engagement is the depth and breadth of a relationship a customer establishes with your brand. It involves both the emotional connection they feel, the loyalty they demonstrate, and the level of active participation they have with your brand over time.

Customer experience is the cumulative impression formed from every interaction a customer has with your brand, from the first ad they encounter to post-purchase support.

Customer satisfaction assesses whether a specific interaction or purchase met a customer’s expectations. A customer can be satisfied with an individual transaction without having any deeper connection to your brand.

Here’s a question for any marketer reading this: how many of the brands you bought from last month would notice if you stopped?

Most wouldn’t. And that’s the problem customer engagement solves. Customers now have more choice, more information, and more channels through which to interact with (or ignore) any given brand. They move across devices, platforms, and touchpoints in ways that rarely follow a predictable, linear path.

Transactional marketing was designed for a simpler environment. It doesn’t account for the complexity of how customers behave, the volume of competing messages they encounter, or the fact that a customer’s relationship with a brand extends well beyond the moments when they’re actively considering a purchase.

Customer engagement shifts the focus from individual transactions to the quality and continuity of the relationship over time. Rather than treating each campaign as a standalone event, engagement treats every interaction as part of an ongoing conversation that either builds or erodes the customer’s connection to your brand.

When engagement is strong, customers refer friends and family, provide feedback, and stay connected even between purchases. That connection has a measurable impact on the numbers that matter most: retention, customer lifetime value, and sustainable revenue growth without disproportionate reliance on acquisition spend.

Engaged customers are measurably more valuable to a business than disengaged ones. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Higher customer retention

Retention is one of the clearest indicators of how well customer engagement is working. When customers feel connected to a brand, they stay. And the economics speak for themselves: Bain & Company found that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. Engagement is what drives the behaviors that make that retention possible.

Increased customer lifetime value

Engaged customers return more often and spend more when they do. Research shows that current customers spend 67% more on average than those who are new to a business. Customer engagement gives you the data and the relationship depth to understand what each customer needs and when, which creates natural opportunities to grow their value over time through personalized recommendations and lifecycle-specific offers.

Stronger brand loyalty and advocacy

Loyal customers are 64% more likely to purchase more frequently than non-loyal, non-engaged ones. Beyond repeat purchases, highly engaged customers become advocates, recommending your brand to friends, leaving reviews, and expanding your reach without additional acquisition spend. That kind of loyalty isn’t earned through discounts, points, and prizes. It comes from consistent, relevant, and respectful engagement over time.

Deeper customer insight and first-party data enrichment

Every meaningful interaction a customer has with your brand adds to your understanding of them. Engaged customers are more likely to share data, complete surveys, participate in loyalty programs, and interact across multiple channels, generating a richer, more actionable customer profile. As third-party cookies continue to be phased out, that first-party data becomes the foundation of every personalization decision you make.

More effective targeting and personalization

The more you understand your customers, the more accurately you can reach them. Engagement gives you the behavioral signals, purchase history, and preference data needed to move beyond broad segments and deliver relevant experiences. A total of 31% of consumers cite personalized shopping experiences as a key reason they stay engaged and loyal to a brand. Personalization is the mechanism, and customer engagement data is what makes it possible.

Improved marketing efficiency and reduced acquisition dependency

Customer acquisition costs have risen sharply across most industries. As a result, brands that rely primarily on acquisition to drive revenue are operating on an increasingly expensive model. A strong customer engagement strategy shifts the balance: you grow CLV with the customers you already have, making your existing base the primary engine of sustainable revenue. On top of this, when your engaged customers are also your advocates, organic growth becomes part of the model too.

Stronger competitive differentiation

Most competitors can match your product range and your price point. They can’t replicate the quality of the relationship you’ve built with your customers over time. Consistent, relevant engagement builds a level of familiarity and trust that becomes a genuine competitive advantage, one that makes it harder for competitors to pull your customers away, even when they’re running attractive promotions.

The following statistics are drawn from SAP’s original research, including the Global Engagement Index 2026 and the Customer Loyalty Index 2025.

1. 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them

More than four in five consumers can recall a time a brand let them down, whether through irrelevant marketing, a clunky service experience, or a missed delivery.

Source: SAP Global Engagement Index 2026

2. 75% of consumers are put off by disorganized experiences

Three out of four consumers are actively turned off when their experience feels fragmented, whether that’s being passed between multiple teams to solve a single problem or receiving disconnected messages across channels. Customer engagement can’t live in a single team. It has to work as an enterprise-wide discipline.

Source: SAP Global Engagement Index 2026

3. 58% of consumers think most marketing emails they receive aren’t relevant

Email remains one of the most powerful engagement channels, but the majority of consumers feel brands are missing the mark. When nearly six in ten recipients say the emails they receive don’t resonate, batch-and-blast approaches are failing. Relevance, powered by real-time data and personalization, is what makes the difference.

Source: SAP Global Engagement Index 2026

4. True Loyalty dropped 5% from 2024 to 2025

True Loyalty, the deepest form of brand commitment built on trust and emotional connection, has seen its steepest decline since the Customer Loyalty Index began tracking it. At the same time, Trend Loyalty is rising, with 14% of consumers now classified as trend-loyal and 29% of them quickly losing interest once a product stops trending. Loyalty is increasingly something that has to be earned and re-earned at every touchpoint.

Source: SAP Customer Loyalty Index 2025

5. 28% of consumers have switched brands due to boredom

More than one in four consumers have left a brand simply because the relationship went stale. They weren’t angry. They weren’t mistreated. They just weren’t given a compelling enough reason to stay. Triggered journeys, personalized content, and timely engagement based on customer behavior can keep the relationship dynamic and prevent the quiet churn that boredom represents.

Source: SAP Customer Loyalty Index 2025

6. 64% of consumers ignore brand names entirely when buying consumer products

Brand recognition alone is no longer enough to drive purchases. Nearly two-thirds of consumers focus on the product and the experience rather than the name on the label. Relevance at the individual level, through personalized recommendations, lifecycle-specific offers, and consistent cross-channel experiences, is what earns attention now.

Source: SAP Customer Loyalty Index 2025

7. Increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95%

This Bain & Company finding remains one of the most cited statistics in customer strategy. Even modest improvements in retention have an outsized impact on profitability. Retained customers cost less to serve, spend more over time, and are more likely to refer others.

Source: Bain & Company 

8. 78% of businesses see AI as essential for retaining customers

The number is high, but the readiness isn’t there yet. The same Index found that 78% of businesses say they can’t practice real-time AI optimization in their day-to-day campaigns, and 66% admit they can’t use AI to optimize campaign performance at all.

Source: SAP Global Engagement Index 2026

For the full data set, see 24 Customer Engagement Statistics Your Brand Can’t Ignore.

Customer engagement comes in many different forms, and knowing what it looks like is the key to tracking it. Some of the key customer engagement signals that show your audience are developing deeper connections with your brand include:

Digital engagement signals

Social interactions: Likes, comments, shares, and direct messages that show active interest and extend brand visibility within a customer’s network

Email engagement: Opens, clicks, replies, and forwards that reflect the relevance and quality of your messaging

Website and app behavior: Repeat visits, session depth, feature usage, and content consumption that demonstrate ongoing involvement with your brand

Transactional and loyalty signals

• Repeat purchases across time
• Early adoption of new products
• Active participation in loyalty programs

Advocacy and community signals

• Referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations
• Reviews and user-generated content
• Event and community participation

Direct and feedback signals

• Customer service interactions initiated by the customer
• Survey participation and voluntary feedback
• Constructive criticism, because your most engaged customers are the ones invested enough to tell you when something isn’t working

So far, we’ve discussed everything from what customer engagement is to the benefits it holds for your business. Now, let’s look at how you can start to build your strategy, step by step:

1. Define your engagement objectives and north-star KPIs

Before anything else, be clear on what you’re trying to achieve. Customer engagement efforts can serve multiple business goals, from improving retention and growing CLV to reducing churn, increasing purchase frequency, but trying to optimize for all of them simultaneously makes none of them the priority.

Identify one or two metrics that will tell you whether your engagement strategy is working. Build your goals around them using SMART criteria (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) so progress is trackable and meaningful.

2. Identify priority segments and lifecycle moments

Not every customer is in the same place. A first-time buyer needs different engagement than a lapsed one, and a high-CLV loyalist has different needs than someone who’s made a single purchase. Effective engagement means knowing where your customers are in their lifecycle and what kind of interaction is most valuable at each stage.

Map out points in the lifecycle that matter most to your business, like first purchase, repeat purchase, subscription renewal, and churn, and look at where your gaps are. Find out which segments are underperforming, and build automations to target each customer with personalized content designed to keep them engaged and coming back. A strong customer lifecycle marketing strategy gives you the structure to act on these moments systematically.

3. Unify customer data across channels

This is what stops brands from making every customer feel like a regular. If your customer’s email activity, purchase history, in-store behavior, and app usage are sitting in separate systems, every channel is meeting the customer cold. You can’t build the kind of complete customer view that makes personalization possible when the data is scattered across five platforms that don’t talk to each other.

Connecting your commerce, loyalty, service, and marketing data in one place gives you the full picture needed to make every engagement contextually relevant. It’s the difference between “Hi, welcome, tell us about yourself” and “Good to see you again, we think you’ll like this.”

4. Build personalized omnichannel journeys

Customers don’t engage with a single channel in isolation. They move across email, app, web, social, SMS, and in-store in ways that rarely follow a neat path. Your engagement strategy needs to follow them. A customer who opens an email, visits the site, and then sees a retargeted ad should experience a coherent story, not three independent campaigns with no awareness of each other.

Omnichannel marketing means coordinating your messaging and timing across channels so that the customer’s experience feels consistent and connected, regardless of where they are. With your unified customer data, each channel has access to the same view of each customer, making it easier to build engagements that adapt based on each customer’s purchase history and cross-channel behavior. For inspiration on what this looks like in practice, these omnichannel campaign examples show how leading brands have done it.

5. Deliver personalized content and offers

Personalization is what converts a good engagement strategy into a great one. When you can scale 1:1 personalization with AI, predicting what a customer is likely to want next, when they’re most likely to engage, and which channel they prefer, you stop broadcasting marketing and start having conversations.

Personalization at this level requires the unified data from step three and the lifecycle thinking from step two. When those are in place, AI can identify product affinities, predict purchase timing, and tailor content in ways that can’t be replicated manually at any meaningful scale.

6. Activate automation for always-on engagement

To leverage the full power of customer engagement marketing, you need to be omnipresent. Wherever your customers are spending their time online, you need to be ready to meet them with engaging content that’s relevant to the channel and personalized to their wants and needs.

Without the aid of technology, manually creating personalized, omnichannel engagements is no small feat for many marketing teams, bringing with it a significant time burden. This is where marketing automation comes in.

You’ve got your newly unified customer data. It’s time to put it to work, save yourself time, and start delivering the right content, on the right channel, at the right time.

With the right marketing automation solution, you’ll be able to quickly create and deploy cross-channel automations that trigger in real time based on your customers’ actions.

You’ll take back the time you’d be spending on execution, scale your customer engagement strategy, and gain the ability to test new ideas and quickly pivot based on results.

7. Measure impact, attribute revenue, and optimize

Your customer engagement strategy is only as powerful as your ability to measure what’s working. Track your north-star KPIs, but also monitor the metrics that illuminate what’s happening across the journey: retention rate, purchase frequency, NPS, CLV. Connect your engagement activities to revenue attribution so you can demonstrate the business impact of your investment. When data shows something isn’t working, change it. When it shows something performing above expectations, double down.

Strategy provides the framework. Here are five of the highest-impact customer engagement tactics you can build into your programs.

Welcome automations: First impressions compound. A well-structured welcome sequence introduces new customers to your brand, sets expectations, and begins the process of building a genuine relationship before that first purchase wears off. Across email, SMS, and web, this is the highest-ROI opportunity in the customer lifecycle. Think: “Welcome to [brand]. Here’s what to expect from us, and here’s 10% off your next order to say thanks for joining.”

Abandonment automations: Browse abandonment, cart abandonment, and checkout drop-off are signals, not dead ends. Abandonment automations respond to these signals with timely, relevant messaging that brings customers back to where they left off. With personalization baked in, they feel like a helpful nudge rather than a generic promotional push. Think: “Still thinking about those running shoes? They’re selling fast, and here are three styles other runners loved.”

Post-purchase automations: Moving a customer from their first purchase to their second is one of the highest-value activities in retention marketing. Post-purchase sequences reinforce purchase value, introduce complementary products, and invite the kind of feedback that tells you what’s working (and where you need to improve). Think: “How are you finding your new jacket? Here’s how to care for it, and a few pieces that go with it.”

Replenishment and reorder automations: For brands selling consumable or cyclical products, replenishment reminders are one of the highest-converting automations you can run. Timed to predicted reorder windows based on purchase history, they reach customers at the moment they’re most likely to need the product again, making the message feel useful rather than promotional. They’re low effort to set up and, once they’re running, they quietly drive repeat revenue without any manual intervention. Think: “Running low on your usual? Reorder in one tap.”

VIP and milestone automations: When a customer crosses a spending threshold, hits a purchase milestone, or reaches a loyalty tier, that’s a moment worth acknowledging. VIP automations trigger at these points to recognize the customer’s value, whether that’s early access to a new collection, an exclusive offer, or a personalized thank-you message. These automations reinforce the behaviors you want to see more of, and give your highest-value customers a reason to stay that way. Think: “You’ve been with us for a year. Here’s early access to our new collection, just for you.”

Once you’ve got your customer engagement strategy in place, you’ll need a way to keep track of your results. These customer engagement metrics will help you uncover exactly how engaged your customers are, and track the impact of your marketing efforts.

Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR measures the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email, ad, or content piece out of those who saw it. It’s an early signal of relevance. A low CTR suggests the message isn’t compelling enough for your audience to act on, regardless of how strong the underlying offer might be. Track CTR across channels and content types to understand which formats and messages generate genuine interest.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate shows the percentage of customers who take a desired action after engaging with your content or campaigns. Most e-commerce solutions will have conversion rate built in, but you can calculate it by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors, then multiplying by 100. A conversion rate that improves over time shows you’re engaging the right people with the right message at the right moment.

Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV is the average spend per transaction, calculated by dividing total revenue by total number of orders. When customers feel understood and served with relevant product recommendations, they tend to buy more per visit. Rising AOV often reflects improving personalization and the success of cross-sell and upsell programs built on data-backed insights.

Repeat purchase rate

Repeat purchase rate measures the proportion of customers who have made more than one purchase. It’s calculated by dividing the number of customers who have purchased more than once by your total number of customers, then multiplying by 100. This is one of the clearest indicators of whether your engagement strategy is successfully converting one-time buyers into loyal customers.

Churn rate

Churn rate shows the percentage of customers lost over a given period. Calculate it by dividing the number of customers lost during the period by the number of customers at the start of that period, then multiplying by 100. A declining churn rate is one of the strongest signals that your engagement strategy is working. If churn is rising, your engagement isn’t doing enough to keep customers connected between purchases.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is the total revenue a customer is expected to generate across their relationship with your brand. Engaged customers generate more CLV by purchasing more often, spending more per transaction, and remaining customers for longer. Tracking CLV over time gives you a long-range view of whether your engagement investments are paying off, and helps you make smarter decisions about how much to allocate to acquisition versus retention.

Interaction depth (DAU/MAU)

The daily active users to monthly active users ratio (DAU/MAU) measures how frequently customers engage with your app or digital touchpoints. A higher ratio indicates habitual engagement rather than occasional, discount-motivated visits. For brands with apps or content-heavy digital experiences, this metric reveals the health of a customer engagement strategy more accurately than any single campaign metric.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

CSAT captures how satisfied a customer was with a specific interaction, product, or experience. Typically collected through short post-interaction surveys on a 1 to 5 scale, it’s calculated by dividing the number of satisfied responses (4 or 5) by total responses, then multiplying by 100. Tracked consistently across touchpoints, CSAT reveals patterns in where your experience is strong and where it’s letting customers down.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely customers are to recommend your brand to others on a 0 to 10 scale. Customers scoring:

9 to 10 are promoters

7 to 8 are passives

0 to 6 are detractors

Your NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. While NPS doesn’t directly measure every dimension of engagement, highly engaged customers are far more likely to be promoters, making it a reliable proxy for relationship strength over time.

Customer engagement metric summary

These are the brands doing customer engagement exceptionally well. From a guitar company that turned retail partners into a global direct-to-consumer powerhouse, to an Australian retailer that doubled down on data and saw email revenue jump 105% in four months, each of these stories shows what happens when you get engagement right. Here’s how they did it.

Gibson Guitars

Challenge: Gibson had built its business largely through retail partners. Moving to direct-to-consumer meant engaging a global fan base directly, across different channels, different purchase stages, and very different levels of connection with the brand.

Solution: By consolidating their engagement channels and building a unified data foundation, Gibson moved from limited customer visibility to a complete view that let them engage each fan in a way that was relevant to where they were in their journey.

Results:

50% growth in email revenue in the first year since using SAP Engagement Cloud.

27% increase in email impact on the business overall.

2x email engagement since using SAP Engagement Cloud.

10% of revenue driven by automation in 2022.

City Beach

Challenge: With a customer database of over one million users, City Beach needed to sustain the quality of personalized engagement at scale. Their data was fragmented. Their view of each customer’s lifecycle position was limited. The result was engagement that felt generic even when it wasn’t.

Solution: By consolidating customer data into a single view and integrating their loyalty program, POS, and service touchpoints, they rebuilt their engagement model.

Results:

+105% email revenue YoY 4 months post-SAP Engagement Cloud launch.

+38% active customers with a 36% retention rate in the same timeframe.

An impressive 14X and 11X ROAS on Facebook and Google respectively using CRM ads.

+48% win back rate from defecting customers within 90 days with SAP Engagement Cloud AI.

+18% of leads converted into first-time buyers in the same period.

+6% conversion rate from first-time to second-time buyers within those 90 days.

CUE Clothing

Challenge: CUE had already built a unified e-commerce platform with SAP Engagement Cloud, giving them a wealth of first-party data. The next step was bridging the gap between physical and digital retail, using customer insights across multiple touchpoints to deliver personalized content that would convert engagement into sales.

Solution: CUE launched video-based style consultations connecting customers to stylists from home, introduced multi-channel wishlists that fed into marketing programs like “Price Drop” and “Back in Stock,” and enabled the ability to sell any product to any customer through any touchpoint.

Results:

• 5-6x increase in average order value.
• 21% increase in loyal customers.
• 60% of digital and in-store styling sessions convert to sales.

Read the full story

Adidas Runtastic

Challenge: With a global user base engaging across multiple devices, Adidas Runtastic needed to consolidate their customer engagement strategy around a solution that could process vast amounts of activity data in real time and deliver personalized feedback to users as they trained.

Solution: SAP Engagement Cloud’s real-time data capture and cross-channel automation capabilities gave Adidas Runtastic the infrastructure to scale their digital marketing strategies and deliver millions of personalized messages daily from a single platform.

Results:

• +300% increase in campaign efficiency.
• +8M app opens from campaign content.
• +200 data points measured for content optimization.

Read the full story 

Nike HK

Challenge: Nike HK was sending the same messages to everyone. With multiple brand and business strategies to serve, it was difficult to agree on specific audiences, so the default was batch-and-blast campaigns that lacked the relevance their customers were looking for.

Solution: By grounding decisions in customer data and behavioral analytics, Nike HK moved away from guesswork and built targeted lifecycle campaigns for defined audience segments.

Results:

+33% website visits within the first year with SAP Engagement Cloud.

+110% revenue from automation in the first year with SAP Engagement Cloud.

+10 lifecycle campaigns up from 0 within the first year with SAP Engagement Cloud.

+28% AOV in a 90-day timespan.

When evaluating a customer engagement solution, there’s a lot to weigh up. Onboarding a new platform can take time, and picking the wrong product can leave shortfalls in your strategy.

As a result, it’s crucial that you find the solution for your business that will yield consistent results from the get-go that set you up for long-term success. The right solution should let you answer yes to these questions:

Integrated tech stack: Can you bring your customer data together into a single view, eliminating the gaps that lead to disconnected, inconsistent experiences?

Personalization engine: Can you deliver content tailored to actual customer behavior and preferences – not just first names, but relevant product recommendations, timing, and channel selection?

Marketing automation: Can you run always-on campaigns that trigger in real time based on customer actions, without requiring manual setup for every scenario?

Pre-built strategies and tactics: Does the solution come with proven frameworks and ready-to-deploy tactics, so your team can move quickly without starting from zero?

AI and analytics: Can you predict what customers are likely to do next, which products they’ll want, and when to reach them, so your marketing is proactive rather than reactive?

When evaluating a customer engagement solution, there’s a lot to weigh up. Onboarding a new platform can take time, and picking the wrong product can leave shortfalls in your strategy.

As a result, it’s crucial that you find the solution for your business that will yield consistent results from the get-go that set you up for long-term success. The right solution should let you answer yes to these questions:

Integrated tech stack: Can you bring your customer data together into a single view, eliminating the gaps that lead to disconnected, inconsistent experiences?

Personalization engine: Can you deliver content tailored to actual customer behavior and preferences, not just first names, but relevant product recommendations, timing, and channel selection?

Marketing automation: Can you run always-on campaigns that trigger in real time based on customer actions, without requiring manual setup for every scenario?

Pre-built strategies and tactics: Does the solution come with proven frameworks and ready-to-deploy tactics, so your team can move quickly without starting from zero?

AI and analytics: Can you predict what customers are likely to do next, which products they’ll want, and when to reach them, so your marketing is proactive rather than reactive?

Remember the regular? The customer who walks in and feels known? SAP Engagement Cloud is the infrastructure that makes that recognition possible at scale.

The platform is built for marketers who need to move from fragmented, channel-by-channel execution to connected, relationship-centric engagement. It brings customer data, AI-driven personalization, omnichannel execution, and analytics into one place, so your team can build and launch sophisticated engagement programs without the IT dependency that slows most enterprise marketing down.

Named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines seven consecutive years, and delivering a documented 385% ROI for organizations that use it, SAP Engagement Cloud provides the data foundation and execution capabilities that turn a strong engagement strategy into measurable revenue impact.

Where most solutions handle one piece of the problem, SAP Engagement Cloud handles the full stack: connecting your commerce, service, and loyalty data; using AI to predict customer behavior and personalize at the individual level; and equipping your team with pre-built tactics and templates so time-to-value is measured in weeks, not months.