Contemporary consumers, in fact, prefer to buy goods and experiences from all those brands and realities closer to their own emotional sensitivities, which today have become the real drivers of consumer choice.
A study conducted by McKinsey analyzed sales data in the USA over 5 years (2017-2022) on 600,000 consumer goods, by examining the impact of ESG (environmental, social and governance) claiming on sales.
It was found that products incorporating ESG-related claims recorded 28% cumulative growth over 5 years, vs. 20% of products without such claims, and that brands with more than 50% of sales generated by products featuring ESG-related claims enjoyed higher customer loyalty.
It is a process based on a concept related to brand values, where to maintain strong relationships with their own consumers it is necessary to take a step forward and overcome the old concepts of basic customer insight. Brands today are required to play a very specific, polarized role, within the cultural tensions that polarize contemporary society where, on one side we find those willing to demonstrate their concrete commitment to guarantee their consumers full transparency on their real intentions to generate a positive impact, and on the other those who do not do it and lose ground.
In this context, joining consumers’ engagement to sustainability is no more a choice, but a need. Contemporary companies are discovering that these two aspects, seemingly distinct, can mutually enhance each other, creating a virtuous circle of positive impact and customer loyalty.
This article explores some innovative strategies to effectively integrate sustainability into consumer experience, by turning environmental responsibility into an effective engagement tool. But watch out for greenwashing. What would happen if every company managed to merge its customer engagement strategies with sustainability culture?
Table of Contents
- What is consumer engagement in sustainability?
- How important is engaging consumers in sustainable projects?
- How can companies engage consumers in sustainable projects?
- How is it possible to measure consumer engagement in sustainability?
- AWorld role in Customer Engagement
- How AWorld helped Electrolux Group to effectively engage their consumers
What is consumer engagement in sustainability?
More than a mere sales leverage of products or services, customer engagement is the best occasion that companies have to prove to themselves and to the market in which they are positioned how to make their social and environmental responsibility beneficial by engaging their consumers and making them real brand values ambassadors.
As in all relationships which need a trust trigger, customer engagement in sustainability, more than in other sectors, makes transparency a necessary component to arouse that strong sense of belonging so much to create a real community of consumers. Actually, it is about transforming the consumers from mere passive buyers to active partners in the path to sustainability of a company, creating shared value and a greater positive impact. A need emerged – as many other issues related to sustainability – during the sustainable acceleration of the post pandemic period where consumers globally, driven by a new awareness about environmental topics, started to feel part of a greater pattern and of a social responsibility shared with their favorite brands about everything concerning the supply chain.
How important is engaging consumers in sustainable projects?
As we just mentioned in the previous paragraph, the importance of emotional connection and values sharing is a key topic of consumer engagement in sustainable projects.
Implementing strategies of green consumer engagement, besides being a successful choice in terms reputation for the company brings more than few advantages also in terms of financial performance.
A research by McKinsey showed that companies having a high level of engagement by customers outperform their competitors by 10% in terms of revenue growth, while a study by Edelman found that 64% of consumers take a company’s practices and values into account when decide to buy its products.
To mention a practical example of what doing green customer engagement and doing it well means, let us take for example the case – very well known – of a successful campaign by Patagonia, technical outdoor clothing brand which over time, thanks to its engagement policies about sustainability topics managed to capture even market share linked to upmarket and mass market, such as consumers looking for sustainable, not necessarily technical clothing.
It was back in 2013 and the campaign name was Worn Wear, an innovative program which encouraged the customers of this brand to extend their Patagonia garments life through three sustainable practices:
- Repairs: Patagonia offers free or low-cost repair services for its own products. The company has also published DIY online guides and video tutorials to teach customers how to repair their garments.
- Trade in: Customers can trade in their used Patagonia garments, if in good condition, through the Worn Wear program, getting back credits to use on new purchases.
- Recycle: If garments are no more repairable, Patagonia offers a recycle service.
- Tour and events: The company organizes tours with its “Worn Wear Wagon”, a mobile vehicle which offers free repairs and educational workshops.
With just one campaign Patagonia managed not only to reduce its products impact, but also to create a strong emotional link between its customers and the brand, by encouraging more informed consumer spending. A successful engagement strategy that years later has been partially started again by the brand by launching the well known “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign, a clearly provocative advertising campaign they encouraged consumers to think about their consuming seriously and to buy only what they really needed.
How can companies engage consumers in sustainable projects?
But, is Patagonia’s really the only way for companies to engage consumers in sustainable projects? Let’s have a look at some of them together:
- Providing educational and training free services: workshops, pop-up events for adult and little consumers;
- Green loyalty programs: activating fidelity and reward programs based on rewards linked to sustainability. We talked about it here;
- Sustainable products co-creation contests: from hackathons to open calls aimed at engaging on the creation of solutions and processes related to sustainability;
- Challenges on social media: linked to initiatives making one or more good behaviors go viral;
- Workshops for the development of urban and community regeneration projects;
- Gamifications and programs linked to platforms specialized in green engagement. We talked about it here;
- Narrative labels: to use a storytelling which talks to the emotional aspect of the product linked to the sustainable choice preferred by consumers;
- Impact reports which become transmedia storytelling products doing edutainment;
- Events such as festivals, volunteering happenings such as clean-ups of beaches, streams, woods
- Brand activism campaigns supporting environmental causes but also related to civil rights of ethnic minorities or gender gaps;
- As controversial, as well as effective, humanitarian donations per each purchase can become one of the possible engagement strategies, provided, however, that they are not used to compensate any lack of effective engagement, and that do not work as a greenwashing activator;
- Carbon footprint and CO2 computers linked to actions that consumers do together with the brand.
These are only some of the most effective strategies to make the link between consumers and brand engaging, a new level to be inserted into any customer experience funnel which knows how to look to the future in a responsible and engaging way.
How is it possible to measure consumer engagement in sustainability?
To understand if an engagement campaign has been effective it is necessary to know how to evaluate multiple indicators, relate each of them to each other, observe and analyze data and put them into context to draw a conclusion. During this step it is very important to consider the immateriality of these data and of the limited literature on the subject; they are such contemporary topics – and often even anticipatory of trends – that their objective measurement turns out to be difficult if confined inside conventional approaches such as the most known ROI (Return on Investment). The return to be measured should be investigated instead over time, within a range of observation capable of demonstrating consumer behavior based on their preferences and, obviously, consumer come-back frequency on the platforms from which the engagement campaign started. It might happen, for example, that a campaign resulted to be more engaging for a consumer target and not for another, or that an initiative had preference over the other, despite that could be – according to a first estimates – less performing.
And yet, during data reading and interpretation often happens that indicators show unexpected results and hold valuable information, named insight, able to reveal a much deeper and multifaceted overall view.
In the specific case of consumer engagement it is clear that one and only one metric, to show us the path to success or failure cannot exist.
To be able to properly read what is going on inside consumers’ heart and dictate their choices or is necessary first know how to set in advance which indicators to place.
In addition to calculated ROI of the economic performance, consumer engagement needs to be measured through factors such like sentiment and sensitivity analysis, to know what are the opinions and the level of emotional engagement or disengagement experienced by consumers towards the company after the campaign; another necessary piece of data concerns the analysis of buyer behavior to evaluate if there have been changes in consumption habits by consumers and, if so, which ones and where they are aiming at; the engagement on social media, then, can be measured not only through the number of interactions, but most importantly through the number of shares, which is the true indicator of success. A bit like a modern word of mouth that quantify the value of a content and makes it so necessary that it must be shared; call-to-action conversion rate, churn and retention rate and any other preference indicator you need to test, however always remembering that there can be no successful campaign without deep target analysis and hyper-clustering of our target audience. The first hurdle to overcome when dealing with engagement is always the certainty of having worked out a clear analysis of wishes, needs and wants of the audience to which you choose to target the campaign.
Only knowing very well the audience it is possible to plan effective engagement campaigns and strategies. It is a setting which allows you to assess multitrigger elements very useful to reach the audience from different vantage points, useful to give a broader, and so, more accurate view of those who belong to our customer basement.
AWorld role in Customer Engagement
Born out of the global urgency dictated by climate change and out of the needs of companies to find digital tools and solutions of individual empowerment, AWorld engages and educates its stakeholders to create a new sustainability culture.
Starting from theories of behavioral change and the search for and promotion of incentives that trigger people to act, AWorld provides an engagement tool that, thanks to gamification of green issues contributes to create and share culture about the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development and its 169 targets.
Action after action, users become part of the most active community of the moment and learn to reassess the emotional and environmental impact of their choices to redefine the shapes of the best future ever: conscious, ethical, sustainable. AWorld has become a catalyst of green culture globally and, until today, is the only official app chosen by the United Nations for the Act Now campaign and is partner of the European Green Deal.
Chosen by over 110 companies, it helps them to reach their sustainability goals and makes the employees real protagonists of change.
Through a number of “challenges”, AWorld engages the employees on sustainability issues and motivate them to act in order to reduce their own CO2 emissions.
Thanks to a system based on points and levels, it rewards the engagement of the most active users who, with a greater number of concrete actions done, contributed to their personal footprint reduction, and gratify them with real and digital rewards.
In order to promote a sustainability culture, AWorld use a positive storytelling and operates so that employees can challenge maintaining a constructive competition that engage them in the most important challenge ever: safeguarding the future of the Planet.
Nominated and awarded in 2023 as App of the Year by Google in section Best App for Good, it led users engagement to concrete results, influencing positively impact culture to change the way companies interacts with their stakeholders on sustainability issues. With the aim of including sustainability principles into each employee decision-making, AWorld aligns and promotes an active and sustainable lifestyle among the employees who use gamification to strengthen the sense of community and the spirit of healthy cooperation among employees.
AWorld effectively supports companies in the outreach and awareness of their workforce and in the internal sharing of ESG principles and practices.
Thanks to AWorld in just three years time more than 21,000,000 positive actions for the Planet have been carried out globally.
Find out how AWorld can help you to change your business into a sustainable company.
How AWorld helped Electrolux Group to effectively engage their consumers
In occasion of the Fuorisalone 2024, Electrolux Group – Swedish multinational founded in 1910 with headquarters in Stockholm, and today one of the biggest manufacturers of home and for professional use appliances and accessories globally – presented the Electrolux EcoLine Hub installation, where the aim of the collaboration with AWorld was to promote sustainable actions among consumers, to increase environmental, social and economic awareness.
Throughout the exhibition time period, visitors could calculate their own Carbon Footprint, having the opportunity to assess and reconsider their own daily habits with the aim to reduce their personal impact. Electrolux challenged its own consumers and visitors to carry out their daily, weekly or monthly mission assigned by entering Team Electrolux in the AWorld App.
The entire engagement experience was powered by the reward program linked to sustainable actions gamification, in order to support the positive competition spontaneously arisen among the user community: the first 10 classified have been given 10 Vacuum Fresh Kit Create 3 Electrolux, and through a prize lottery, a steam oven SteamBoost, flagship product of the brand Electrolux, was put in stakes.
Learn more about AWorld, the change starts here.
