50+ Marketing Experts Reveal Their Best Customer Engagement Strategy To Fight The Impact Of COVID

The world as we know it has changed, thanks to the advent of COVID-19. We are in the midst of arguably the most significant healthcare crisis the world has ever seen, and it continues to unfold.

The impact of the pandemic has been unprecedented. From our lifestyle to the effect on the global economy, businesses, and user behavior, everything is undergoing a tectonic shift.

It is hard to draw parallels to the current situation with any historical incident, leaving brands scurrying for a new, effective marketing and communication strategy.

Are you running a business of your own? Are you facing the need to alter your marketing strategies because of the massive impact of COVID-19? Are you struggling with the right user engagement strategy to maintain your brand relevance, and not sound tone-deaf?

To answer some of these questions, I decided to seek clarity from leading marketing experts from various businesses. The idea was to understand what folks from diverse verticals are doing regarding engagement and curate multiple opinions about the most effective communication and engagement strategy.

I have managed to get insights from over 50 marketing experts about a key question – ‘How has COVID impacted their business, and what strategy have they adopted in terms of user-engagement?’

Here is a list of all the insightful answers from the marketing champions I reached out to.

Abhishek Shetty – CMO, Celio India

Avoid insensitive transactional communication and be quick to humanize the messaging to show better empathy. Bingo challenges like ‘stay at home’ for consumers have worked well for us.Click To Tweet

While the current state of business is in hibernation mode, my team and I are making sure that we put in extra effort during this time to ensure the business recovers with little downtime when things normalize around us. Below are some strategies that I am following:

1. We are saying no to transactional content: This is the best time for marketers to focus on increasing the holy grail of marketing which is “engagement” and promote less of those transactional communications which often irks quite a few and can be perceived as highly insensitive in the current scenario. The best thing is to humanize communication in a manner that people would find reassuring and compel them to start a conversation with the brand. Bottom-line becomes less transactional and more empathetic. Don’t hard-sell and show some support. Some emerging trends are Bingo challenges, stay-at-home challenges, etc. which we have leveraged quite well!

2. Re-evaluate, re-learn, re-target: We are using this time to unearth different consumer insights! Such insights will be actionable and will make your communication to consumers more relevant and drive stronger actions. This could be creating micro-segments that you hadn’t previously thought about or stronger up-sell and cross-sell strategies across product lines.

3. Build strong immune and IT systems: We are also using the time well to build more robust systems to serve consumers better by putting feedback and NPS mechanisms in place so that the brand can better track, study, and serve its consumers.

Apurv Narang – Deputy General Manager, Growth and Marketing Paytm Money

Paytm Money is sub-segmenting & personalizing its campaigns for driving engagement & rightly address the needs of all the investor profiles with it.Click To Tweet

Paytm Money has always believed that we are in the business of trust, & has always focused on maintaining our exceptional service standards in processing high volumes of investments (industry-leading 99.8% success rates) & onboarding of new investors with KYC (over 95% completed in less than 30 minutes).

Our user engagement strategy revolved around keeping up to these commitments, & we had to further sub-segment & personalize our campaigns for driving engagement & rightly address the needs of all the investor profiles with us. Broadly, we had a 2 fold approach towards the situation:

1. Dedicated focus on traditional investors who had to move digital for their investment needs & we could see a surge in these Existing to Mutual Fund Market Investors coming on our platform for managing their investments.

2. At the same time, we also kept reinstating our existing investors to stick to their investments & not indulge in panic selling due to volatile market scenario caused by COVID-19, with relevant nudges to help them further invest for emergency funds & diversify their portfolio towards right asset allocation.

We believe that since we help people manage their investments towards their future, it is of utmost importance for us to help them navigate through these tough times in the best possible manner, & all the user metrics shall fall in our favor if we are aligned right with fulfilling their interests for the long term.

Charmis Pala – Global SEO Director, Cleartrip.com

Cleartrip’s core philosophy is ‘Making travel simple’. The online support mechanism gives information regarding travel itineraries & cancellations. It is also circulating the airline policies and future news.Click To Tweet

Cleartrip is a consumer-focused brand where we believe that our consumer is our brand ambassador! Our core philosophy is “Making travel simple”. During these times, we aim to help our users with the most updated information regarding their planned travel itineraries with Cleartrip. Our engineering and support team worked hard and shipped a user-friendly online support mechanism that helps users with all the necessary information regarding their travel itineraries, cancellations, and much more.

Praval Singh – VP, Marketing and Customer Experience, Zoho

Zoho is focussed on serving customers, non-profits, and governments during this crisis. It recently announced ‘Zoho Remotely’ to help teams continue to work while staying in.

The economic impact we’re starting to see now isn’t just because of the coronavirus. In fact, the virus is only a catalyst or a trigger. A global economic crisis has been long coming and for all you know, this might just be the tipping point.

At Zoho, we’re leaning towards serving our customers, non-profits, and governments during this crisis. Our focus right now is to survive and help others survive, and we’re engaging with various verticals via our COVID-19 related relief initiatives and work-from-home resources. We recently announced Zoho Remotely (a remote working tool kit) to help teams and individuals continue to work while staying in. It’s available for free to all businesses, until July 1st, 2020. Over 15000 businesses are already using Remotely.

Saumya Singh Rathore – Co-Founder, WinZO

To keep the users engaged WinZO has launched 10+ games such as Ludo, Carrom, Pool on the platform. Main focus is building organic content and are relying on positive word of mouth.Click To Tweet

WinZO has always emphasized delivering the best content to attract new users. To meet the increasing demand of our users amid the lockdown, we tied up with Tencent India and Garena for PUBG Mobile and Free Fire, which was made live within 7 days on our platform. Additionally, to keep our users engaged we have launched 10+ games such as Ludo, carrom, Pool on the platform as well. WinZO has also worked towards building SEO/organic and rely on positive word of mouth rather than going on and spending millions in the paid acquisition.

Sai Thota – Head of Digital Marketing, Ferns and Petals

Ferns & Petals are innovating the concept of contact-less with the idea of digital gifts with services like guitarist on call, etc. It ran a campaign called 'Love In Lockdown' promoting such digital gifts.Click To Tweet

COVID-19 & the lockdown has negatively impacted our gift delivery service. We had to innovate around the concept of ‘contact-less’ and thus came out with the idea of digital gifting with services like Guitarist on Call, Celebrity Video with Recorded Personalized message, Personalized Poetry on Call, etc. On the other side, we also had to educate the customer about this and thus also come out with a campaign called Love In Lockdown promoting these 100% contactless digital gifts. Both the innovation & the campaign worked so very well that we are doing 600 – 800 transactions every day.

Amandeep Singh – VP of Marketing, Pocket52

Pocket52 designed its communications around 'responsible gaming', urging users to enjoy its platform. The focus is on exploring novel channels of acquisitions including tie-ups with other start-ups.

Gaming was one of the sectors that actually got boosted post the COVID-19 lockdown. We experienced growth across segments at Pocket52.com. We are a proponent of responsible gaming at Pocket52, and we designed our communications around ‘responsible gaming’, urging our users, both new and experienced, to enjoy our platform and the game of poker as a leisure activity.

Also, since the COVID-19 caused a drop in demand for ad inventories, we decided to use this as an opportunity to acquire new customers and explore novel channels of acquisitions including tie-ups with other start-ups and new digital channels.

Calvin John – Director of Brand Marketing, Glance

Glance engages users through AI-driven personalization and high content liquidity. Engagement is driven by leveraging properties owned and operated by our partner smartphone brands.Click To Tweet

Glance today has 100 million DAU’s (Daily Active Users) who spend about 25 minutes/ day. Since Glance is a lock-feed, our engagement strategy needs to have an added responsibility of being visually appealing and lock screen worthy. We engage users on Glance through AI-driven personalization and high content liquidity. We also drive engagement by leveraging properties owned and operated by our partner smartphone brands. Finally, for users who do not have Glance-enabled phones, we engage users on experience.glance.com.

Vishal Singh – Director of Digital Marketing, MyGlamm

MyGlamm is creating virtual features on its app for maximum engagement and promotion on this feature. The moto is to provide safety tips /WFH / personal care suggestions to the users.

We are keeping content both relevant and sensitive to the crisis. Also, setting the communicating expectations for customer service. We are creating virtual features on our app for maximum engagement and promotion on this feature. We are also giving safety tips /WFH / personal care suggestions to our users.

Dhanraj Bisht – Head of Enterprise Marketing, MapMyIndia

MapMyIndia has expertise in mapping real-time hyperlocal information. It gives the opportunity to help the users mitigate this crisis by providing them live COVID updates.Click To Tweet

Any strategy, one way or another, stems from the core purpose of an organization. The same is the case with MapmyIndia’s strategy since the COVID outbreak. Our expertise in mapping real-time hyperlocal information gives us the opportunity to help our users (businesses, governments, and individuals) mitigate this crisis. As we’re providing them with live COVID updates as well as support tools to resume business operations safely, we’re focused on keeping our users and their safety at the center of our engagement strategy. Incidentally, this strategy closely ties back to the company’s mission – To make the world better through maps and location technologies.

Ajitesh Pandey – Head of SEO, Sportskeeda

SportsKeeda as a sports brand and publisher, is focusing on sporting events that are still active. The events which are being organized and streamed online are one of the key focus areas.Click To Tweet

As a Sports brand and publisher, we are focusing on sporting events that are still active. Considering the current situation, the engagement and daily active users have increased in online gaming/Esports or virtual tournament space. As content creators, we are focusing on covering multiple aspects related to this category right from different games like PUBG and Freefire to the personalities who are engaged in Esports and the configuration they prefer to play. The events which are being organized and streamed online are also one of our key focus areas. The response and engagement to such content from the readers have been really nice and it has helped us in minimizing the impact of COVID-19 on our revenue to a certain extent.

Vishal Singh – City Head, New Business, Marico

Marico launched a platform by the name #MaricoChangeMakers for you to share with it your innovative ideas and thoughts on accelerating and building its business in this “New Normal.

As you are aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted human behavior way more than we can comprehend at this moment and has forced us to change the way we used to operate our businesses. Today, the future of businesses will be defined by the ability and speed to identify and adapt to the various changes. Keeping this in mind, we have launched a platform by the name #MaricoChangeMakers for you to share with us your innovative ideas and thoughts on accelerating and building our business in this “New Normal”.

To ensure food safety for the needy, Marico in partnership with government agencies are providing meals for migrant laborers, the police force, health-workers, poor and elderly people. We are working with CII and FICCI under the able guidance of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and other Government authorities for this initiative. We have also partnered with Swiggy, Zomato and National Restaurant Association Of India to deliver these meals to the beneficiaries.

There is a continuous challenge of labor, transportation, and closure of customers/retailers point which is impacting our business significantly across geographies. However, we remain committed to ensuring an adequate supply of essential items to our consumers. We are focussing on the manufacturing and distribution of essential commodities like edible oils and oats.

Paras Katoch – Online Sales Vertical Head, Vajor

It is the perfect time to work on the content strategy on the key SEO friendly platform like YouTube & LinkedIn. The focus is more towards brand awareness & recall then sales.Click To Tweet

We shut down the e-comm operations because of COVID-19. However as they say, when one door gets closed the other opens. I find it to be the perfect time to work on the content strategy on the key SEO friendly platforms like YouTube & LinkedIn. The focus is more towards brand awareness & recall then sales. It’s like building content for a year in a quarter.

Keyur Dhami – VP, Customer Success, WebEngage

Extension of memberships programs, loyalty points, etc. can be done so that your loyal users feel valued. Strengthen your engagement and retention stack so that you can bounce back in future.Click To Tweet

1. Utilize social media and web/app channels to run quizzes, contests, games, etc.
2. For platforms having heavy demand and disrupted supply chains, ensuring relevant operational updates are sent like delayed deliveries, caps in order, etc.
3. Extension of memberships programs, loyalty points, etc. so that your loyal users feel valued even further.
4. Lastly utilizing this time to strengthen their engagement and retention stack so that once things move towards normalcy, they can bounce back and double down on the opportunities that come their way.

Yathish Kumar – Head of Marketing, Mandee

While the situation is grim for most of the segments, FMCG has been growing tremendously, to say the least. Drip marketing and personalized communication through marketing automation, as well as cross channel communication, has increased our effectiveness as a brand. Also, our partners are glad that we are communicating in this time of difficulty.

Abhilash Pandey – Head of Growth, Itilite

At Itilite, all are creating content, webinars and panel discussions to engage business leaders, and are doing the required bit by sending COVID related travel information to the clients.Click To Tweet

Rather than fighting the impact of COVID, we are comprehending how it will shape up the larger industry and are creating thought leadership around it to help businesses get back to work while keeping safety as a top concern. We are creating content, webinars, and panel discussions to engage business leaders, and are doing our bit by sending COVID related travel information to our Clients. We believe that Coronavirus will be a part of our everyday life for the next few quarters, and we all will need to find innovative ways to get the business started and sustain business growth.

Meera Iyer – CMO, Medlife

In order to market its services, Medlife is accelerating digital platforms mainly focussing on the right messaging with respect to proper healthcare advice.

The demand for home delivery of medicines and lab tests have skyrocketed. It would have been great to serve society and fight the spread of COVID. But we too are restricted to manage the service in the lockdown. We are overwhelmed with the demand. In order to market, we are accelerating digital platforms mainly focussing on the right messaging with respect to proper healthcare advice.

Manav Sethi – CMO, Eros International

The largest focus for Eros is retention instead of acquisition. Try to identify the right cohort and target them with the appropriate messaging.Click To Tweet

The largest focus for us at Eros is retention instead of acquisition. We are trying to identify the right cohort and target them with the appropriate messaging. In terms of messaging, we are portraying sensitivity and addressing the issue with our users proactively.

Abhishek Patil – Head of Product and Growth, Cred

User engagement circles around the brand’s core functionality. It should keep the brand afloat in the market showcasing the right reasons as to why the brands exist.Click To Tweet

User engagement circles around the brand’s core functionality. It should keep the brand afloat in the market showcasing the right reasons as to why the brands exist. You need to be cognizant of the users’ situations and manage to put your core value as a service to them.

Dhananjay Yadav – Associate VP, Growth and Marketing, Homelane

Stay in touch with the consumers as much as you can while also not bothering them with over-communication. For Homelane, Webengage journeys are handy for that.Click To Tweet

We are ensuring that we stay in touch with the consumers as much as we can while also not bothering them with constant communication. WebEngage journeys come in handy when it comes to updating the consumers on resuming operating fully. In the end, only the best service matters.

Ruchika Gupta – CMO, Gulabs

Gulabs is promoting no-contact delivery and ease of ordering. Several other informational posts on social media and running ads for geotargeting have helped the business survive in this lockdown.Click To Tweet

We, at Gulabs, are into the manufacturing of packaged roasted snacks, blended spices, syrup concentrates, instant foods, and pickles. We have partnered with Zomato, Swiggy and Dunzo grocery market places so as to ensure the customers have easy and no contact access to these essential commodities at the ease of ordering it from home itself. We have had customer calls and inquiries dropping in for the range, for knowing more about the brand, sharing happy feedback, reviews, and details on how to go about purchasing the same in the future.

Additionally, we have been running ads on social media geo-targeting, letting people know we have the relevant products available, especially it being summer, and knowing that beverages would be the need of the hour to combat the heat.

With it being Ramadan, the rose syrup is a mandate! So informational posts on groups and communities and forwards via networks and known people have all helped engage different target audiences and users.

Going forward – it’s all going to be about healthy eating, watching what you eat, safe eating, assuring your customers the safety with which food has been manufactured and packed, etc!

Samriddh Dasgupta – VP, Marketing, Akiva Superfoods

It’s not a time to push our products but provide information that will help the community. Akiva Superfoods is sharing DIY food hacks for better immunity through social media and email channels.Click To Tweet

At Akiva Superfoods, we have done 3 specific things to enhance the value we provide to our community. We are clear that this is not a period to push our products. Rather this is the time to provide information that will help positively impact the lives of our community. First, we started sharing a lot of DIY immunity, nutrition, and health food hacks with our followers on social media and also through email campaign.
Second, we made available our partner nutritionist who could do e-consultation with our users if needed. Third, we are holding Instagram live sessions with motivational thinkers, physical health and fitness experts, nutritionists, and musicians to add some entertainment and mental destressing to our community. All this has been then populated through targeted emails and social media outreach. We believe that this is the time to be consciously engaged with our audience and deliver empathy, care, and love.

Shivank Sharma – VP of Online Sales, Kapiva

This is the time when information and it’s per capita consumption is quite abundant. Kapiva is managing the mix of sensitivity and responsibility to stamp long term impact on the users’ mindset.Click To Tweet

There hasn’t been such a time in the known past when information and its per capita consumption span have been as abundant. Clearly the playing arena has evolved, the users have become much more sensitive and conscious of the choices they make and expect the brand to replicate-be sensitive and responsible. In the race to survival, the brands that will be able to seamlessly manage this mix of sensitivity and responsibility will stamp a long term impact on the user’s mind. Consider the case of Milk Basket, an NCR based grocery delivery startup. It gave its customer an “option” of contributing additional Rs 8-10 per order in order to carry on its operations in strained times, instead of outrightly charging it’s loyal customers. The latter outcasts Milkbasket as an opportunistic brand, while the former recognizes it as transparent and responsible. Remember the famous quote -“A friend in need, is a friend indeed”? Feel free to correlate.

Shivam Kumar – Founder, Trimahi

Invest a lot of time on social media to have personalized interactions with your customers. Trimahi considers behavioral aspects of the potential audience as well as what they truly desire.Click To Tweet

We, at Trimahi, have started to invest a lot of time on social media to have personalized interactions with our customers.

A study has found out that 70% of the customers have made customer personalization a priority in 2017 but has still continued to go on and shown positive results. Hence, we have resorted to applying this strategy with our customers. For us, personalization can take many forms- including automated messages for our clients to recommend suitable products for them taken from their browser history.

This lockdown has led people to evolve their behavior wherein they are devoting most of their time on social media, making that our advantage. We believe when people follow us on social media platforms, they have invested their time and trust in us. To make the most out of it, we work with the content modified for every type of our audience. We also believe that these people are looking for urgent solutions. By using both our social media strategy and personalized communication, we retain and make our customers happy and satisfied with our content.

For us, a conversation between us and our customers is every information we need or any feedback we desire. To have a personal, one-on-one interaction with them, we get to know a lot of behavioral aspects of our potential audience as well as what they truly desire. This helps us gain an extra point. In a conversation between us and the customers, they ask a question and we reply, whether it’s a recommendation or any tip, we gain knowledge.

Creating customized content hasn’t just been used by us and proved amazing results, it has also been used by companies in the UK, US, China, etc. We used this model extensively, and it has proved to be very useful. According to Demand Centric, “78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing. And 61% of buying decisions are influenced by custom content.”

Deep Kakkad – Head of Marketing, DevX.Work

Now is the time to introduce your customers to virtual events. Interact with them, educate them, and keep them engaged. It's not bad to plug-in your product/service as an offer to help, once in a few times.Click To Tweet

In the time of economic crisis, when people are looking for moral support more than ever – now is the time to introduce your customers to virtual events. Interact with them, educate them, and keep them engaged. No matter the niche you are in, you should be able to find topics to arrange online webinars, Q&A sessions, expert interviews, Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn live, etc. to let your customers know that you are in it together by providing them with free value. And, of course, it’s not bad to plug-in your product/service as an offer to help, once in a few times.

Govind Balakrishna – Founder, Affairal

Try to digitally engage with your customers. Affairal does it with both machine learning and human-based personalized and real-time recommendations for a better shopping experience.Click To Tweet

Innovation in products, services, and business models are key metrics to survive in tough market conditions and businesses. For instance, we are a fashion marketplace looking to digitally engage and help customers shop and purchase by partnering with other customers, fashion communities, online stores, and offline stores.
We do it with both machine learning and human-based personalized and real-time recommendations. It’s quite a disruptive technology solution with a unique business model.

Devesh Kabdwal – VP, Media and Marketing, CobX Gaming

CobX recommends considerable spend on digital marketing rather than the other contemporary mediums. A sizable percentage of gamers are there to converse, connect, and socialize.Click To Tweet

In a way gaming, along with OTT platforms, has been a clear beneficiary amid the lockdown brought in by the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been suggesting numerous gaming companies to spend considerably in digital marketing rather than the other contemporary mediums, for evident reasons.

Since almost all of us are stuck at home, socializing through games has somewhat come to the limelight. I know a few entities who have recently added some sort of social engagement tool to their systems and it has worked really well for them. So, while a lot of non-gamers also join the gaming bandwagon during the lockdown, a rather sizable percentage of them are there to converse, connect and socialize, be it with their peers or someone new.

Apart from that, I believe this is the perfect time for gaming brands to go the esports-way. As the latest reports suggest, there has been a surge in the popularity of online gaming. Hence, adding esports tournaments and activities to its existing quiver should help brands solidify their presence in terms of better viewership and engagement and help the brand in the long run.

Ramalingam Subramanian – Head of Brand and Communications, CoinDCX

CoinDCX is ok to work in a reduced marketing spends, however it shouldn’t affect the ultimate value it provides to the customers.

I feel the Pandemic has brought customers where they are appreciating the services which were previously unknown to them. It’s more important than ever for marketers to be compassionate. I am ready to take a hit on my marketing budget if it’s bringing value to my customers.

Divya Dixit – SVP, Marketing, ALTBalaji

Marketing has to do what it has to do. ALTBalaji has to be vocal about the new launches otherwise it is not being true to the consumers.Click To Tweet

We are in an unfortunate situation, while the uptick in subscribers is great for us, it’s not something that we’d like to celebrate. But marketing has to do what they have to do. I have to be vocal about the new launches otherwise I am not being true to my consumers.

Kamanashish Roy – Head of Digital Marketing, Erfolg

At Erfolg, all the communication / messaging and outreach programs have been on the line – Help / Support / What / Empathy - and it paid off.Click To Tweet

We help our clients (B2B – Technology Space) to market their products. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic – we shifted 70% of our focus to Farming rather than Hunting. We opened avenues to support the target audience of our customers. We asked them what help they needed rather than flooding them with content. All our communication / messaging and outreach programs have been on the line – Help / Support / What / Empathy. And it paid off.

Subhashini Parasuraman – Head of Brand and Marketing, Solv

Solv activated a CSR campaign to help feed 200 migrant & BPL families. The exercise got a lot of social media engagement and displayed its purpose driven marketing.

We initiated an MSME survey on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on MSMEs even before the official lockdown announcement. Not only did this survey help us reach out to customers and partners, but it was also picked by the press. We activated a CSR campaign to help feed 200 migrant & BPL families – this initiative was entirely funded by our employees. The exercise helped drive employee engagement, got us a lot of social media engagement, and in essence was a true display of purpose-driven marketing. Overall, we significantly increased our social media activities to keep our audience continually updated and also increased our digital marketing efforts via paid social. We also started an online mentoring series for our MSME customers featuring entrepreneurs who have really made a mark on their respective fields.

Tony Lawrence – Head of Digital Marketing, e-intelligence

e-intelligence has increased the conversation rate, optimized the landing pages, tried and used multiple tools to enhance the user experience and set up a sales flow for the clients.

The pandemic is very real and the issues and circumstances are real too. We, as marketers, need to accept it and treat this as we would treat any other challenge that we face every once a while. Accepting it is the first step.

We have been doing a lot of activities for all our clients. The identification of users is the most important right now. Since there is a downfall of activity for most businesses, we cannot let go of even a single user. We have taken measures to make sure we increase the conversation rate, optimize the landing pages, try and use multiple tools to enhance the user experience, and set up a sales flow for the clients to help them come out of it as smoothly as possible.

We have also started retargeting to all the past customers using local data available with them in terms of emails or mobile numbers collected at the storefronts or businesses. These ads have a way better engagement ratio. Coming up with online options for the end clients to interact with the businesses is something that everyone is looking for.

People are spending twice the time on social media platforms these days. A clear marketing campaign can go a long way. You just need to make it convenient for people to interact. Everyone is looking for a solution, you need to give them what they are looking for.

Rajeshwari Srinivasan – COO, Titan

Taneria focused on positivity - called #ThreadsofJoy where the brand highlighted the little joys that still abound in each day of the lockdown life.

A good brand should be sensitive to the COVID context, which is why at Taneira we worked on two communication strategies. The first focused on positivity – called #ThreadsofJoy where the brand highlighted the little joys that still abound in each day of the lockdown life.

The second focused on the insight of Caring – now that one has acclimatized to the initial shock of lockdown, one starts to focus on activities at home that focus on care, whether it be cooking, gardening, or cleaning. The brand, therefore, focused on #SareeCare where we worked on Live Instagram Sessions and home-produced videos that educated our followers on how to better care for their sarees.

Gaurav Bhawnani – Co-Founder, SuperHumans

Content is a very good strategy to go after, especially for your bottom of the funnel users. Engage with the users and give them content on the how-to stuff!Click To Tweet

Content is a very good strategy to go after, especially for your bottom of the funnel users. Engage with the users and give them content on how-to stuff because lots of people are doing things which they wouldn’t have done otherwise like setting up their own website.

Damandeep Singh Soni – Marketing Consultant

Brands should focus on developing and marketing a category, right now. Marketers should highlight why their category is helpful in times like these.Click To Tweet

Brands should focus on developing and marketing a category right now. Marketers should highlight why their category is helpful in times like these, instead of promoting their company. Drill down on your marketing budget and be generous, that’s all I have to say.

Naman Sarawagi – Co-Founder, Refrens

Educating the users about your product is important. For marketers it is necessary to measure every dollar that’s spent with respect to revenue gain.Click To Tweet

It’s the best time to build the product because once the market opens up, the demand is certainly going to go up. Educating the users about your product is still important. For marketers, it is necessary to measure every dollar that’s spent with respect to revenue gain.

Ashmita Venkatesh – Head of Marketing,Rajmita Corporate Services

Give a percentage back to the community with every purchase. This is not only the right thing for the brand to do morally but it will also add to your brand loyalty.Click To Tweet

The 2 most successful user engagement strategies out of the many are 1) over communication- as customers are our community, we are over-communicating to not only support and inform our customers to help each other get through this pandemic socially but also helps with top brand recall once we start the business as usual. 2) a percentage giveback to the community with every purchase- this is not only the right thing for our brand to do morally at this juncture but it has also added to our brand loyalty as our customers want to help us through this good cause by already adding to cart 4x times more.

Siddharth Arya – Head, Zoutons

Zoutons as a coupon and deal website shifted its focus on the categories that are flying off the shelves during the coronavirus pandemic. Another strategy was to penetrate the international market.Click To Tweet

As the pandemic persists, consumer habits are shifting majorly. Certain categories have seen a spike in sales numbers, while others such as shopping, restaurants, travel, among others continue to be severely impacted.

We noticed a surge in demand of certain segments for instance pharmaceutical, OTT, online education, gaming, and as a coupon and deal website we shifted our focus on the categories that are flying off the shelves during the coronavirus pandemic.

Our 2nd strategy was to penetrate the international market. We recently launched our websites Zouton.com (USA) and Zoutons.ae (UAE) for ramping up the global traffic, therefore extensively focussing on increasing our reach and customer engagement.

Alok Agarwal – CMO, Orient Bell

Be true to your brand purpose & authentic in responding to the concerns of your customers. OrientBell took the bold step of giving its logo a makeover to underline the need for all to stay at home.Click To Tweet

We have been true to our brand purpose & authenticity in responding to the concerns of our customers.

So in the initial days, we explained just like tiles need grouting & a 3-5 mm distance for the best results, even humans need social distancing.

Later, we took the bold step of giving our logo a makeover to underline the need for all to stay at home.

In addition, we have continued upgrading our website ( www.orientbell.com) to give all large & small customers all the support they need to select tiles. Given the lockdown, we have introduced disruptive new features like image search that allow them to take a photo or an image and find tiles that look similar to it.

Kshitij Maurya – Head of Marketing, QuantInsti

Increase the frequency of posts on social media. QuantInsti team is putting in extra efforts to cater the customers resulting in higher customer satisfaction and improved enrolment to rating ratio.Click To Tweet

1. Increase the frequency of posts – People are more online, more on social media, try various post types as it’s the best time to do R&D on the engagement front.
2. Return of the hits from the past – For content, instead of creating new content which can be a time-consuming process, channel your efforts in repurposing and sharing the best content from the past that is still relevant i.e. webinars, blogs, ebooks, etc.
3. On the business front, align your offerings in line with the current situation and try to make them more accessible (reduced prices and proactive support).
4. In fact, teams are putting in an additional number of hours than normal times to cater to our customers which is resulting in higher customer satisfaction and improved enrollment to rating ratio.

Prajnyasis Biswal – Head of Growth, WorkNetwork

WorkNetwork keeps Community chats feature as the hook for user engagement and Facebook groups, Freelance Community building and Webinars for engagement outside the platform.Click To Tweet

First, you have to understand that hook or feature you need to build in the product which will keep the user engaged and increase the chances of your platform to become viral. Second is engagement outside your product or platform which will increase the awareness and acquisition metrics. These engagements are in the form of community building, talk shows, advertisements, or public relations. This is dependent on your company and its offerings and is not the same or constant for all the companies. I can tell you about our company WorkNetwork. While building this, we kept community chats featuring the hook for user engagement and Facebook groups, freelance community building, and webinars for engagement outside the platform which we believe will help us to get relevant people to the platform.

Small hacks: 1. If you want early users to test your product, use Product Hunt for early engagement. 2. If your users’ age group is from 14-25 years, try to have Tik-Tok and Instagram engagement. 3. If your users are white-collar people, try to have LinkedIn, Slack groups, Telegram, Discord, and Facebook groups for engagement.

I believe engagement is talking to your users or customers. The more innovative approach you have, the more experiments you do, the more are your chances of being successful. Always remember “Don’tStopTillYouDrop”. If you want to know more or ask anything, use Twitter or Linkedin to post a question with #AskPB and I will answer it or will connect you with the right person.

Sree Nandhu – Co-Founder, Game Development Community

Try to be a bigger influencer and help people in any way you can. Game Development Community mostly focuses on assisting Indie game development and help developers by sharing their games on social media.

With COVID, more people are online than ever. With that, it is required to be a bigger influencer and help people in any way you can. We mostly focus on assisting Indie game dev and all those who are related in the game development industry via Discord of ours, which has over 1.5k top industry professionals. We also help developers by sharing their games on social media, mostly on Twitter.

Sukhvinder Singh – Assistant VP, Extramarks

Due to COVID-19, user engagement is driven by live lectures via Extramarks Learning App, which has comprehensive and interactive learning content with Alex, its AI-driven bot.

We, at Extramarks, provide comprehensive digital content for 360-degree user engagement. Due to COVID-19, user engagement is driven by live lectures via our Extramarks Learning App, which has comprehensive and interactive learning content with Alex, our AI-driven bot. Lakhs of students have joined us. Hundreds of schools have been taken onboard our live lecture platform to effectively engage students with our Learn, Practice, Test pedagogy.

Anand Dorairaj – Head of Marketing and Growth, Savari Car Rentals

Savaari has reoriented its content marketing tactics during the pandemic to be contextual and based on three pillars- Credibility, Timeliness, & Humour.Click To Tweet

Savaari has reoriented its content marketing tactics during the pandemic to be contextual and based on three pillars-

1. Credibility- Honest and expert-led content was curated, with a minimal reinvention of the wheel. Adapting this expert content in the context of road travel was key to resonate with our customers.
2. Timeliness – Ensuring that the right information is delivered at the right time to the right audience.
3. Humour- Acknowledging that leisure and business travel is not super-essential, humourous content was used to satiate customers’ appetite for travel, specifically road travel.

Sandeep Hanchale – Director of Growth, Aibono

Aibono focuses on safety and hygiene of delivery team, and supply of good quality produce. Multiple delivery windows along with a hotline to handle queries were set to ensure a seamless experience.

Being part of essential goods, it was important to stand as trusted advisors to our users. Emotional engagement, safety and hygiene of the delivery team, and supply of good quality produce is the need of the hour. Keeping this in mind, using the right communication channel, we ensure the timely delivery of fruits and vegetables.
Multiple delivery windows along with a hotline to handle any queries were set to ensure a seamless experience. Adoption to digital payment was supported using multiple channels.
Bridging supply and demand-side anxiety and delivering what was promised helped us to reduce the number of contacts in the whole supply chain.

Manisha Singh – Head of Marketing, 42Gears Mobility Systems

The best user engagement strategy for a b2b Saas based product during COVID-19 is a webinar and all the other virtual events.

The best user engagement strategy for a B2B SaaS-based product during COVID-19 is a webinar and other virtual events. As now users are able to save ample travel time of office commute, they are now almost available 24×7. The turnout on online webinars has improved by 50-70%. Also, the brand which can act as a helper in this situation is able to drive more engagement.

Aditya Ghosh – Co-Founder, learningtoshare.net

Learningtoshare.net has been using live interaction to engage with the end-users. The sessions are adding value on topics like data visualization, digital marketing, personal branding, etc.

Any kind of learning, from academic learning, professional learning to your own personal life learning, the process should never stop.

At Learningtoshare.net, we have been using live interaction to engage with end-users. If you can mix this function with our tips on ‘being interactive’ with live Q&As, adding value through sessions has n topics like product management, data visualization, digital marketing, personal branding, and more. Then we think all our end users will see a great return on our efforts. The one thing we value right now is human connection and this is the best feature for it.

Nishanth Iyengar – Head of Digital and Engagement, Proline India

The focus of Proline Indiais to help our customers stay active at home. It launched a series of home workout videos and instructions and have promoted a 2 min workout every hour.

Our focus during this time has been to help our customers stay active at home. We launched a series of home workout videos and instructions and have promoted a 2-min workout every hour. During highly stressful times, an active lifestyle not only helps with physical well being but mental well-being too.

Mitesh Shethwala – Head of Marketing, Frendy

Frendy has introduced the - Mein Se Hum Food Kit - in the Mobile App. In this concept, anyone can donate daily essentials like groceries to the needy one in Ahmedabad & Gandhinagar.Click To Tweet

Frendy is a unique Community Commerce Application that lets people create their own social community on the app and avail great benefits on shopping. We are using a few tools to increase engagement and personalized notifications based on certain activity and inactivity of users.

Also, we have in-built engagement options like “Bonus Bonanza” where anyone can earn Rs. 2000 by completing a few tasks and levels.

We have introduced “Mein Se Hum Food Kit” in our Mobile App. In this concept, anyone can donate daily essentials like groceries to the needy ones in Ahmedabad & Gandhinagar. Our team delivers the donation kit to the desired location with the help of AMC and selected NGOs.

“Mein Se Hum Food Kits” are parcels of essential rations directly delivered to the people who need them most at the moment. And in current statistics, we helped out 300+ families.

We are running a campaign on social media of “#SelfiewithMaa” where we have received 1000+ entries so far in 3-4 days.

Payal Jeswani – Co-Founder | Global Sales and Marketing Director, 99yrs.com

Video marketing is the future of selling products and services. Personalization is becoming the hottest trend in better customer engagement with respect to e-commerce shopping.Click To Tweet

During the lockdown times, online traffic has spiked up to 70% than the usual traffic and global e-Commerce Sales have increased to 40%. Most of the companies are now shifting to the online business model and revamping their business strategies. According to me, a solid customer engagement strategy should be video marketing. Video marketing is the future of selling your products and services. For instance, a 1-minute power pack video can build great engagement for your audience in the digital world. On the other hand, personalization is becoming the hottest trend in better customer engagement with respect to e-Commerce shopping and products. E-commerce marketplace giants have achieved major success in personalizing the content to the audience.

Nikhil Mittal – VP Marketing, WhiteHatJr

At WhiteHat Jr, personalization is the key to interact with the consumer, right from advertising to the time they register on our platform, every touch-point is well-conceived in advance.Click To Tweet

We have seen a behavioral shift amongst consumers post COVID. Every parent currently is looking to engage their child in a meaningful activity like WhiteHat Jr. The demand for post-COVID is huge.

For us, personalization is the key to interact with the consumer, right from advertising to the time they register on our platform, every touch-point we interact with the consumer is well-conceived in advance. This amplifies the users’ interest and keeps them engaged throughout their journey.

Amit Bhatia – Head of Marketing, BannerBuzz

BannerBuzz offered safety signs to all the customers and for new users it did it free of cost. These signs were around social distancing, hygiene, and precautions related to COVID-19.Click To Tweet

We are into custom marketing materials such as banners, posters, decals, stickers, etc. We offered safety signs to all our customers and new users free of cost. These signs were around social distancing, hygiene, and precautions related to COVID-19. Our customers are majorly small and medium businesses who need to put such signs at their stores or offices.