Overview
Sona's Engagement Trends help you identify your hottest prospects by tracking visitors who demonstrate consistent, escalating interest in your products or services across multiple sessions. While single intent signals capture one-time behaviors like visiting a particular web page or downloading a whitepaper, Engagement Trends reveal visitors who repeatedly return and deepen their engagement over days or weeks, indicating they are actively researching and moving closer to a buying decision. This guide shows you how to configure Engagement Trends that automatically flag visitors when their cumulative activity crosses your defined thresholds, so your sales team can prioritize the prospects most likely to convert.
When to use Engagement Trends
Use Engagement Trends when you want to:
Identify prospects showing sustained interest over time.
Prioritize sales outreach based on engagement intensity.
Focus sales efforts on visitors most likely to convert.
Prerequisites:
Intent Signals already configured in your Sona workspace.
Access to Workspace Settings in Sona.
Knowledge of which intent signals indicate highest purchase readiness.
Step 1: access Engagement Trends configuration
Navigate to General in the main menu.
Under Workspace Settings, click Engagement Trends.
Click Create new trend to begin setting up your first trend.
Step 2: configure your Engagement Trend
In the Intent Signal dropdown, select the signal you want to track. Choose signals that indicate high purchase intent, like pricing page views or demo requests.
In the Occurrences field, enter the minimum number of times an intent signal needs to be triggered to qualify as a trend. For example, enter 3 if you want to catch visitors who trigger the signal 3 or more times.
In the Recency field, enter the lookback period in minutes to specify the timeframe. For example, 10080 minutes equals 1 week, and 43200 minutes equals 1 month.
Step 3: create additional engagement trends
Use the + button to add additional intent signals to this trend if needed.
Use the - button to remove any intent signals you do not want to include.
In the Engagement Trend name field, enter a clear, descriptive name for your trend, for example "High Intent: Repeated Pricing Research".
In the Description field, add a detailed explanation of what this trend identifies, for example "Visitors who viewed pricing pages 3+ times in the past week".
You have now created an Engagement Trend that will automatically identify your most engaged prospects.
Step 4: save and activate
Click Save to activate your Engagement Trend.
Repeat the process to create additional trends for different intent patterns.
Key concepts and best practices
Engagement Trends Versus Intent Signals: Intent Signals capture individual behaviors, like downloading a whitepaper or visiting a pricing page, while Engagement Trends identify patterns of sustained interest by tracking the recency, frequency, and intensity of multiple intent signals over time. Use Engagement Trends to find prospects who are actively in research mode and showing increasing purchase intent.
Threshold Setting: start with lower thresholds, 2 to 3 triggers, and adjust based on your results. Too high and you will miss engaged prospects; too low and you will get false positives.
Lookback Period Strategy: align your lookback periods with your typical sales cycle:
B2B software: 2 to 4 weeks.
High-ticket services: 1 to 2 months.
E-commerce: 1 to 7 days.
Complex enterprise sales: 2 to 3 months.
Signal Combination: combine complementary intent signals in a single trend. For example, pair "pricing page views" with "case study downloads" to identify prospects doing product and pricing research.
Naming Conventions: use descriptive names that clearly indicate the behavior pattern and urgency level. This helps your marketing and sales teams understand the context when they receive alerts.
FAQs
What is an Engagement Trend?
What is an Engagement Trend?
An Engagement Trend identifies visitors showing sustained, escalating interest by tracking how often one or more intent signals are triggered within a lookback period you define. Unlike a single intent signal, which captures a one-time behavior, an Engagement Trend surfaces prospects who repeatedly return and deepen their engagement over days or weeks.
How should I set the Occurrences threshold?
How should I set the Occurrences threshold?
Start with a lower threshold, around 2 to 3 triggers, and adjust based on your results. Setting the threshold too high means you will miss engaged prospects, while setting it too low will produce false positives. Review conversion outcomes and refine the threshold over time.
How long should my Recency lookback period be?
How long should my Recency lookback period be?
Align the lookback period with your typical sales cycle. As a guide, use 1 to 7 days for e-commerce, 2 to 4 weeks for B2B software, 1 to 2 months for high-ticket services, and 2 to 3 months for complex enterprise sales. Recency is entered in minutes, so 10080 minutes equals 1 week and 43200 minutes equals 1 month.