#conversational messaging

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect product-market fit than chatbots in the age of e-commerce. Live chat conversations — both real and automated, have become the preferred mode of communication with a brand for a whopping 73% of consumers according to research from the Digital Customer Service survey. Additionally, data from Invest shows that customers who use the live chat feature on average spend 60% more than those who don’t.

If you’re considering a viable live chat solution for your e-commerce business in 2021, WhatsApp Business is almost a no-brainer. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp offers a reach that other solutions struggle to match.

With that said, let’s look at the best ways to use the powerful WhatsApp Business API to build an audience, turn them into paying customers and then keep them coming back for more.

How to use WhatsApp Business for different stages in your user journey

1. Lead generation/ Customer Acquisition

Converting online prospects into subscribers and more is something WhatsApp is uniquely suited to. When a conversation moves from a browser on the prospect’s laptop to their phone, it automatically becomes more “real” and natural.

Since users actively opt-in to receive marketing communication from you, it automatically moves them further along in the customer journey.

Use chat bubbles on your website to invite visitors to move the conversation to WhatsApp for any queries or solutions they might need.

Make WhatsApp the CTA for your ad campaigns. Guide prospects that click on your Facebook or Google ad to a WhatsApp conversation instead of a landing page. This puts them in a familiar, safe space right from the get-go making it more likely that they will take the actions you want them to.

2. Engaging customers to drive sales

You can reignite your sales funnel within WhatsApp to target new or returning users.

Offer discounts within a WhatsApp chatbot conversation with an automated series of questions that will activate the voucher/discount.

This way, your leads will be able to bypass cumbersome processes like email verification and get straight to the good part — the discounts.

On the backend, you can use the bot to track the status of your vouchers and send reminders to customers who may not have redeemed their offers.

3. Provide a personalized experience for users

The WhatsApp API allows you to obtain the phone number, country code, and occasionally the WhatsApp name of anyone who agrees to receive communication from you.

You can use this data in your chatbots to provide region-specific options (such as in their local language) to users. If you want to provide them with more bespoke recommendations, you can ask them additional questions within the chatbot to suggest a specific product or service.

4. Cross-selling with product suggestions

Since you are already conversing with your prospect inside WhatsApp, you can simply use videos and images of the product you are discussing or suggesting. Send your users a mobile-optimized URL that they can go to if they are interested. You don’t need any fancy animation packages or complicated tech.

For example, if you have determined through your questioning that the prospect is interested in running, you can send them a quick video/image with a URL for some shoes you think they would like.

You can also create conversation automation that works as a product finder, guiding the user through a quiz-like series of questions and suggestions until they find something they like.

5. Help Guides/FAQs

According to research by Kinsta, 75% of online customers want to have their query addressed within 5 minutes. WhatsApp chatbots bring down this number significantly, with the ability to continue a conversation that was started on a desktop device on a mobile phone immediately.

Use WhatsApp to send product usage guides to your audience. Note that a usage guide isn’t just about answering FAQs — it can also showcase the benefits of your product.

FAQs are important, except no one likes going to the FAQ page on a website each time they have a query. Just create a WhatsApp bot that acts as an FAQ guide.

Occasionally, you can also send general advice about your niche to your audience. Maybe create a great guide that talks about maintenance or upkeep that your community will appreciate.

6. Abandoned cart recovery funnels

The most conservative estimates of the average all-sector shopping cart abandonment rate still put it at a staggering 70%. That means 7 out of every 10 transactions are not completed.

When you consider that only 41% of cart abandonment emails get opened, much less clicked through, the gravity of the situation becomes clear.

Interestingly, the open rate for SMS (82%, according to Shift) and Facebook Messenger (80%) remains high. When you consider the 1.5 billion user base, this trend makes WhatsApp a great solution for addressing the cart abandonment issue.

7. Purchase confirmations and invoices

WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption, which means it is secure to end sensitive information such as payment confirmations, billing problems, or invoices to your customers. Most people will prefer receiving these details on their phone where they are conveniently accessible whenever needed.

8. After-sale support

Once the order reaches your customer, you can check in with them to see if everything is going smoothly. Product-specific automated WhatsApp messages can go a long way toward fostering loyalty and improving the overall customer experience.

If a customer replies to one of these messages, you can either lead them through an automated funnel or transfer them to a live agent to continue the conversation.

9. Shipping updates

Everyone who has bought a product online has at some point or another found themselves on some strange website, frantically putting in tracking codes and hoping their purchase hasn’t disappeared off the face of the earth.

WhatsApp Business allows you to bypass this by sending shipping updates every time the status of the package changes.

Have you shipped the product your customer ordered? Let them know.

Is their product out for delivery? Let them know.

10. Loyalty programs

Research by Capgemini shows that 54% of loyalty programs are dormant, and more than a third of users never know about or redeem their rewards for being part of the program.

WhatsApp is a great platform to create and nurture customer loyalty.

For example, you can have your users solve quizzes or puzzles to earn loyalty points that they can exchange for discounts or rewards.

If your users have collected loyalty points but haven’t taken advantage of them, send them a gentle reminder that encourages them to redeem those points.

11. Collect user reviews and feedback

Collecting genuine user reviews is a challenge. If you send emails asking people to send in their feedback, very few of them ever get opened.

Even people who would want to send in a review usually don’t because of the effort it usually takes. You can shortcut this process by just sending out an automated review request message that encourages the user to simply reply to it with their review.

Think about the sheer number of reviews you could generate if all your customers needed to do was reply to a simple message on their phone instead of the usual process of signups and inboxes.

12. User-generated content

User-generated content is proven to improve the trustworthiness of a brand online, but it is also a challenge to gather.

With WhatsApp, you can just have your users send in a picture or record a video of themselves using your product and send it in. Since they are already sharing media regularly on WhatsApp with their friends/family, it makes the process of collecting this kind of content is relatively pain-free.

You can showcase the best or most creative user submissions you find on your other social platforms and your website.

Digital marketing fatigue is real. Today’s consumers are constantly inundated with (mostly irrelevant) advertising, and they’re tuning out. Studies have estimated that the average person might see as many as 4,000 online ads per day!

Brands looking to find their niche in today’s environment must confront the marketing oversaturation problem head-on. Your customers want to feel heard and catered to on a 1:1 level. One-size-fits-all generic emails and SMS broadcasts don’t work anymore. Traditional marketing channels such as search, display, and social are incredibly competitive, and smaller brands find it difficult to fight the algorithms and make their USP stick.

In 2022, conversational messaging has emerged as the new paradigm for customer engagement for startups. Two-way conversations between brands and consumers, be it for marketing, commerce, sale, or servicing, have become significant drivers of ROI for MSMEs and large enterprises alike. Given the ease and frequency of usage, proximity to the users, and familiarity with messaging channels like WhatsApp and Instagram, it is now a default expectation of consumers to be able to initiate conversations with their preferred brands on these messaging channels directly. Data from Meta validates this, a whopping 175 million people message a business on WhatsApp every day!

Instant messaging and voice-over platforms are not just helping startups with one of their key pain areas — customer acquisition but also making them incredibly accessible as a business through easy-to-initiate conversations using branded QR codes, any digital or physical touchpoint such as the website, billboard, or the product packaging. Once a conversation has been initiated, brands can guide a prospect through the marketing funnel with personalized conversational experiences.

Third-party solutions can help brands deploy AI-powered chatbots on WhatsApp, Instagram, or other messaging channels to automate lead nurturing and conversion processes. Additionally, most of the popular and widely used messaging platforms can easily be integrated into existing CRMs or marketing automation systems to maximize the efficacy of their outreach.

Conversational marketing has become uniquely effective at helping startups boost their bottom line by crafting bespoke customer journeys from discovery to purchase on their favorite messaging apps. A recent encounter that I impressively recall is with a young D2C apparel brand that has deployed a mobile storefront on WhatsApp, I was able to access the multi-product catalog, initiate a conversation regarding the product and complete the payment without leaving the chat window within a span of few minutes. One of the primary reasons why conversational messaging has been so effective for conversion is because it can mimic the mental journey that people go through while buying and intuitively guides them towards desired decisions.

Startups are now deploying virtual shopping assistants that help prospects with real-time responses, product comparisons, and product recommendations. Such rich media capabilities of modern messaging apps allow brands to showcase their personality and a humanized side by creating quizzes, gratifying and gratifying interactions, and in the process gather meaningful data for lead generation and measuring campaign effectiveness.

Conversational messaging has enabled brands to offer a higher grade of customer experience than ever before. Studies from Oracle have shown that around 86% of consumers are willing to pay more if it means they receive a superior customer experience. On the flip side, 89% of consumers will switch to a competitor if they receive a poor customer experience.

The always-online nature of messaging chatbots has paved the way for 24/7 support channels that can instantaneously handle incoming user queries. With automated AI-driven chat flows, a large volume of user queries can be resolved without ever needing to involve live agents, dramatically improving the efficacy of customer service departments. Interestingly, conversational solutions are also helping businesses navigate seasonality, as they no longer need to plan for staff allotment around a customer support desk to deal with peaks and troughs in customer activity.

Since automation usually handles a lot of the common issues, live agents can be freed up to work on more complex and nuanced issues, leading to an overall reduction in query turnaround time and an increase in customer satisfaction.

Brands have been seen to use conversational messaging to offer their customers a robust post-sales experience. Whether they are buying a trip around the world or a dinner date reservation at a local restaurant, businesses are sending their customers, the booking confirmations, and invoices over chat windows where they are accessible at a moment’s notice. Shipping and delivery updates are being delivered instantaneously too. And to safeguard the user’s data and privacy, the end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms ensures that the confidentiality of sensitive customer information is maintained.

In an age where the barrage of traditional digital advertising is causing banner blindness en masse, brands that are offering the personal touch of a friendly conversational experience stand out noticeably. If you have been considering conversational messaging for your brand, now is the best time to hop off the fence and jump in with both feet.

For More Info:

https://www.karix.com/products/sms-solutions/

Reference Article:

How The Biggest Secret Weapon for Start-ups In 2022 Is Conversational Messaging

Trending Article:

The WhatsApp Business Platform has been a game-changer for businesses worldwide. The ability to tap into WhatsApp’s potential audience of over 2 billion people, most of whom use the app daily, has opened up a whole new universe of possibilities for brands who want to reach out and engage their customers, offer real-time support, and sell products and services.

But while getting a WhatsApp account for your business might be a straightforward process, the dynamics of succeeding on the platform require a lot of planning and attention to detail.

Today, we will talk about some of the most common pitfalls of using WhatsApp for your business. As you will come to see, offering a great customer experience over WhatsApp is often a question of what NOT to do.

·       What not to do on the WhatsApp Business Platform

1. Don’t spam people

This is the prime directive of WhatsApp Quality Based Marketing – do not send people information or offers they don’t need or didn’t ask for. If they initiate a conversation with you, you can use the 24-hour conversation window to share any relevant offers, or promotional content or cross-sell something they may be interested in.

WhatsApp’s Quality-Based Marketing guidelines clearly state that it is a good practice to make users go through an unambiguous opt-in process where they explicitly agree to receive marketing communication from your business.

If you start sending unsolicited promotional messages en masse, you will most likely get marked as spam by a significant portion of your potential audience. This will reduce the quality score of your account, leading to issues with the deliverability of your messages and in some cases, getting your account banned altogether. Make sure you also use your WhatsApp channel to send important notifications, and updates and initiate conversations with your customers to provide some actual value.

You should also have a clear way for people to opt out from some or all messaging from your business and honor opt-out requests when you receive them.

2. Don’t set the wrong expectations

While the option to reach your business over WhatsApp is a great value-add for your customers, make sure that you communicate clearly what your WhatsApp channel is going to be used for.

Are you going to use the channel as a 24/7 hotline? Can customers expect to receive any special coupon codes or discounts over WhatsApp? Can customers find and buy products you are selling over a chat conversation? Can customers call your WhatsApp number if they have any support queries? Will they occasionally receive promotional offers from you if they opt-in?

Map out your use cases beforehand and make sure you don’t overpromise and underdeliver.

3. Promote gambling, drugs, adult, or other restricted products

WhatsApp has strict content guidelines that are aimed at making the overall experience of using the app better for all its users. One of the main ways this is enforced is by disallowing certain business verticals from using the WhatsApp Business platform.

 Verticals that are prohibited include

Adult content

 Alcohol products

Tobacco and its derivatives

Dating or relationship offers

Animal sales

Any type of weapons/ammo or defense-related content

4. Don’t send too many emojis

Emojis are like hot sauce – they are best used in moderation and only when they enhance the impact of the message you want to send out.

It is fine to use the odd emoji to convey a tone (happy/excited) or underscore a call to action (e.g., call/email emojis). Just make sure you don’t go overboard. Our rule of thumb recommendation would be to use 4 or fewer emojis if possible.

5. Don’t make spelling and grammatical mistakes

Let’s say you were reading the brochure for a financial advisory business, but the whole text was formatted in a weird way. Or maybe you receive a free-form message from the business that wants you to entrust them with your finances, but every paragraph is filled with glaring spelling mistakes. Would the grammatical snafus make you more likely to sign on as a customer of the said business? Probably not.

Bad grammar and spelling can get your message templates rejected by WhatsApp outright. But even if they aren’t, it will definitely hurt your chances of being taken seriously by the people you reach out to.

Make sure you double and triple-check for any grammatical issues before you send out any messages.

6. Don’t make it unclear what the user needs to do next after reading your message

So, let’s say you have crafted the perfect promotional message that both represent an emotion you’re going for and aligns with your brand voice. However, if you don’t include a clear call-to-action (or include too many) you are going to dramatically reduce your chances of conversion.

Do you want your users to call you after they read the message? Is there a PDF you would like them to download? Should they visit a certain page on your website? Let them know.

Always include a clear call-to-action at the end of your messages when appropriate and include Quick Reply buttons to enhance the overall customer experience.

7. Don’t misuse user data

As we have established, you need to comply with WhatsApp guidelines and other regulations that may be applicable according to the law of the land when you are collecting user data such as phone numbers, addresses, behavioral data etc. Don’t ask people to share other sensitive information such as account numbers, social security information or card details.

Make sure the only time you use this data is when you are providing contextual support to them within the context of your WhatsApp conversation. You are not allowed to share information that one customer may have divulged to you with a different customer you are chatting with.

The WhatsApp Business Platform is meant to drive higher quality conversations between businesses and their customers. By steering clear of the mistakes, we have outlined above, you will automatically set yourself way ahead of most of your peers.

If you would like to improve your WhatsApp marketing even further and learn some more insider tips, make sure you bookmark the Karix blog and read through the other detailed articles we have on this topic!

For More Info:

https://www.karix.com/products/whatsapp-business-api/

Reference URL:

https://www.karix.com/blogs/what-not-to-do-on-the-whatsapp-business-platform/

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