The Customer Engagement Specialization
Customer Engagement is a 4-course specialization within the SMU Cox School of Business Marketing concentration. MBA candidates interested in marketing, business analytics, consulting, and other analytical areas of study are encouraged to explore these courses as elective offerings. Covering a spectrum from loyalty to analytics, the curriculum connects theory and practice, preparing you to be an influential player in a fast-growing field.
MKTG 6230 - Customer Engagement and Loyalty Management
Co-taught by Hal Brierley, institute benefactor and Executive in Residence, who is a pioneer in the customer engagement field, this course explores key principles, metrics, tactics, and strategies for engaging customers to drive loyalty and value. Balancing creative thinking with analytical competence, students identify opportunities to make existing customer relationships dramatically more profitable, aiming to engineer behavior change. Built on a model of customer engagement (CE), students learn to evaluate the effectiveness of CE programs across industries, promoting practices that build relationships, create the right incentives for desired behavior change, and employ optimal tactics and strategies to drive incremental profit from the customer base. The course includes case analyses, lectures, corporate speakers, and hands-on interactive exercises.
MKTG 6232 - Digital and Social Media Marketing
Digital and social media present managers and marketers with new tools for connecting with and building relationships with consumers. Developments over the last decade have transformed the practice of marketing more than any time since the advent of television. This course examines how corporations leverage these platforms to develop digital marketing and web branding strategies and identifies techniques and frameworks for generalizing from these practices. It covers strategies for building consumer relationships through social media that lead to strong financial performance while fostering brand trust. The course also explores how digital and social media are used as promotional tools and how these strategies integrate with key elements of the marketing mix: product, price, and placement. Students will engage with real-life business scenarios and case studies from marketing leaders and renowned brands.
MKTG 6236 - Practicum in Customer Engagement and Loyalty
This course provides hands-on experience in customer engagement through a consulting project for one or more corporations, applying concepts, metrics, strategies, and tactics of customer engagement to drive loyalty and profit. Students analyze real-time customer data using regression and summary statistics, calculate customer lifetime value (CLV) for individual customers, and segment customers based on CLVs. In a final group presentation to corporate sponsors, students draw insights from their analyses and propose strategic and tactical recommendations for profitable growth.
Benefiting from over 15 years of sponsorship by American AAdvantage® students learn to use data to drive customer engagement and loyalty, developing proficiency in analyzing customer data and interpreting results to enhance decision-making. This experience is relevant for careers in marketing, consulting, and business analytics.
MKTG 6238 - Advanced Customer Engagement Practicum
In this capstone course, Customer Engagement (CE) students work directly with a company to evaluate and redesign an existing CE program or to design and implement a new CE program. Students consider CE opportunities from both the company’s and the customer’s perspectives, articulate goals for desired customer behavior change, identify customer segments with the greatest profit potential, evaluate the competitive landscape, develop a preliminary CE program design, conduct qualitative and quantitative research to measure customer receptivity, quantify the financial impact, and build a business case—including a communications plan that features digital, social, and traditional media—for implementing the proposed CE program. This course is required to earn the specialization in Customer Engagement for those concentrating in Marketing.
For more information or to get involved, please contact Kerry Wright, Associate Director of Full-Time One-Year and Two-Year MBA Programs, or Brad Harraman, Director of the Brierley Institute for Customer Engagement.
MKTG 6230 - Customer Engagement and Loyalty Management
Co-taught by Hal Brierley, institute benefactor and Executive in Residence, who is a pioneer in the customer engagement field, this course explores key principles, metrics, tactics, and strategies for engaging customers to drive loyalty and value. Balancing creative thinking with analytical competence, students identify opportunities to make existing customer relationships dramatically more profitable, aiming to engineer behavior change. Built on a model of customer engagement (CE), students learn to evaluate the effectiveness of CE programs across industries, promoting practices that build relationships, create the right incentives for desired behavior change, and employ optimal tactics and strategies to drive incremental profit from the customer base. The course includes case analyses, lectures, corporate speakers, and hands-on interactive exercises.
MKTG 6232 - Digital and Social Media Marketing
Digital and social media present managers and marketers with new tools for connecting with and building relationships with consumers. Developments over the last decade have transformed the practice of marketing more than any time since the advent of television. This course examines how corporations leverage these platforms to develop digital marketing and web branding strategies and identifies techniques and frameworks for generalizing from these practices. It covers strategies for building consumer relationships through social media that lead to strong financial performance while fostering brand trust. The course also explores how digital and social media are used as promotional tools and how these strategies integrate with key elements of the marketing mix: product, price, and placement. Students will engage with real-life business scenarios and case studies from marketing leaders and renowned brands.
MKTG 6236 - Practicum in Customer Engagement and Loyalty
This course provides hands-on experience in customer engagement through a consulting project for one or more corporations, applying concepts, metrics, strategies, and tactics of customer engagement to drive loyalty and profit. Students analyze real-time customer data using regression and summary statistics, calculate customer lifetime value (CLV) for individual customers, and segment customers based on CLVs. In a final group presentation to corporate sponsors, students draw insights from their analyses and propose strategic and tactical recommendations for profitable growth.
Benefiting from over 15 years of sponsorship by American AAdvantage® students learn to use data to drive customer engagement and loyalty, developing proficiency in analyzing customer data and interpreting results to enhance decision-making. This experience is relevant for careers in marketing, consulting, and business analytics.
MKTG 6238 - Advanced Customer Engagement Practicum
In this capstone course, Customer Engagement (CE) students work directly with a company to evaluate and redesign an existing CE program or to design and implement a new CE program. Students consider CE opportunities from both the company’s and the customer’s perspectives, articulate goals for desired customer behavior change, identify customer segments with the greatest profit potential, evaluate the competitive landscape, develop a preliminary CE program design, conduct qualitative and quantitative research to measure customer receptivity, quantify the financial impact, and build a business case—including a communications plan that features digital, social, and traditional media—for implementing the proposed CE program. This course is required to earn the specialization in Customer Engagement for those concentrating in Marketing.
For more information or to get involved, please contact Kerry Wright, Associate Director of Full-Time One-Year and Two-Year MBA Programs, or Brad Harraman, Director of the Brierley Institute for Customer Engagement.