Times have changed. Consumers demand simplicity, speed, and convenience when shopping online. They want their questions answered quickly. They expect personalized experiences and tailored product recommendations. In fact, 68% of consumers will choose a business that offers convenient communications.
Having great products isn’t enough. Brands who want to compete online need to engage consumers in real-time to convert them.
The problem is that many companies don’t deliver engaging and fun messaging experiences. Advertising is often one-to-many, causing a struggle to win and retain customers. If you want to accelerate time to purchase, increase trust, improve customer loyalty, and create a competitive advantage, seamless communication is essential.
This article outlines the benefits of improving your digital communication, highlights new opportunities, and how to implement them.
The rise of asynchronous chat and the marketing opportunity for brands
Consumers are everywhere. They are shopping and browsing from several different channels and devices at once. While they were already shopping online, 34% of consumers say they complete more transactions online than ever before.
According to this recent Forrester Consulting study, over half of consumers rank asynchronous chat in their top three preferred ways to communicate with brands.
Asynchronous chat is simply real-time conversations you have with customers that can be resumed later. These can be had across text, messaging apps, mobile applications, and third-party apps.
However, less than half of decision-makers report their brands are using their own or third-party apps. It’s a huge missed opportunity.
Over 50% of people increased their use of third-party messaging apps and chat through businesses’ mobile apps in the past year. 1 in 10 consumers tried using mobile chat for the first time. They want to feel safe. Shop from home. Get what they need without the hassle.
Other messaging app data that further points to the marketing potential of advanced communication includes:
- 260 million new Facebook Messenger conversations take place daily.
- Businesses and users exchange 20 billion messages every month on Messenger.
- Messaging apps can generate an average revenue per user of $15.
- 66% of consumers are more confident in buying from brands that are actively using messaging apps.
- 90% of messages are opened within 3 minutes.
Forrester Consulting’s study also found that brands with advanced communication have significantly higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS), Customer Satisfaction scores (CSAT) and are 3.4 more likely to drive significant revenue growth.
Benefits of advanced communications with customers by using one to one messaging
These are some of the main benefits your brand will experience by improving the way it communicates with customers and the channels it uses.
Benefits brands experience by using text and messaging to reach customers.
You’re more likely to experience significant revenue growth
Forrester’s study found that poor communication hurts a company’s bottom line. 42% of business leaders agree bad communication leads to worse services and drops customer loyalty and satisfaction by 39%. 25% said it causes a decrease in revenue. Customers don’t feel a genuine connection. They don’t get what they want when they need it.
It’s a costly mistake to think this is a customer service problem. Communication starts with marketing. Potential customers have lots of pre-purchase questions they want answered before they choose your brand over another. Real-time messaging increases trust and accelerates time to purchase.
Using conversational marketing chatbots to achieve asynchronous chat across many channels solves this. 47% of brands that use text or messaging to reach customers increased revenue.
Better communications mean more trust, happier customers, repeat purchases, and advocacy. They will tell their friends and families. Rave about you on social media. Come back to shop again and make bigger purchases.
Reach more customers through growing marketing channels
Businesses need to reach customers where they already are. This includes social media, messaging apps, websites, and mobile apps. Gen Z and Millennial consumers in particular prefer chat and messaging more than any other consumer group. Ignore that fact at your own peril.
The ability to ask questions is one of the most important features to consumers. They want to ask about sizing. Shipping and returns. What products you recommend based on their preferences. What differentiates you vs competitors.
People also want to contact businesses on their preferred messaging channels at their preferred time.
The two most common reasons consumers seek out asynchronous chat are because it is more convenient and because it is faster. People under 35 are twice as likely to prefer it because they like to pause and come back at a later time.
Messaging enables consumers to engage with your brand on their preferred channel at their preferred time. The result is greater trust, better customer experience and accelerated time to purchase.
Your brand can use asynchronous chat to reach 1.3 billion users on Facebook Messenger, 2 billion on WhatsApp, and 1.2 billion on Instagram.
Establish a clear competitive advantage
One of the greatest benefits of improving your digital communication across all channels is establishing a clear competitive advantage. Many brands are still using outdated strategies and systems. They don’t take advantage of conversational marketing chatbots. They send out the same messaging and offers to every single customer using traditional advertising channels. People can’t continue conversations where they left off.
Businesses who use live chat to engage consumers miss the point. For conversational marketing to be effective it needs to be instantaneous, available 24/7 and insightful. Live chat does not enable you to leverage actionable insights on what your customers want at scale and in real-time.
Offering a delightful customer experience with marketing chatbots will set your brand apart. It will cut through banner fatigue and the one-to-many advertisements consumers are used to seeing. Consumers will recognize and remember your business more easily.
Ford, the American multinational automaker, needed an efficient way to increase purchase intent and boost favorability with their new Ford Ranger model with increased competition in Thailand. Ford created the first conversational display ad campaign that engaged prospects to learn about the Ranger in a personalized way at scale.
The assistant, built with Spectrm, customized conversation flow based on user’s preferences in real time. Ford achieved a 54% relative left in consideration and a 38%relative lift in purchase intent. Both were higher than the automotive industry benchmark. Finally, Ford reduced its cost per micro-conversion by 40% compared to its own benchmark. Read the full case study here.
How your brand can improve its digital communication with marketing chatbots
The best way to take advantage of asynchronous chat is through conversational marketing chatbots. Chatbots built with Spectrm are designed to offer each customer a unique and delightful experience. They integrate with the most popular messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. You can offer personalized product recommendations, collect deep insights, improve lead generation, and more.
$4.5 billion will be invested in chatbot technology during 2021. Chatbots streamline customer communication. Make it easy for customers to connect with their favorite brands.
Foster trust by making it easy to get the information consumers want immediately to inform their purchasing decisions. Offer a channel to meaningfully re-engage. Marketing chatbots are the future of marketing and offer massive potential for growth.
Marketing chatbots are bots that streamline the marketing funnel into automated conversations that promote more meaningful engagement and accelerate customers to action.
It can increase customer’s purchase intent by learning their individual preferences and customizing the journey in real-time. They enable marketers to collect actionable insights at scale that enable you to personalize retargeting directly in chat. All within a persistent messaging thread that creates a lasting connection with your brand.
You can engage them at scale in a personalized way on their preferred channel at any time. You don’t need a developer. You don’t need to code anything. You can customize templates to get started fast.
Most importantly, you can build truly unique conversational experiences that communicate your value props and build trust with customers. Leverage artificial intelligence and insights to continually improve the performance and ROI of your custom chatbot.
The bottom line on advanced communication with customers
Consumers are shopping and browsing from more devices and channels than ever before. They demand personalized recommendations and seamless experiences. Conversations that start on one platform and end on another. People like to return back to conversations on their own schedule as well. Messaging at scale enables all of these.
Many brands haven’t kept up with this important development in the market. They still use one-to-many advertising and offers made for everyone. It’s difficult to increase customer retention and improve acquisition funnels by doing this. However, people love to shop from brands that deliver delightful customer experiences and fun conversations.
Taking advantage of an asynchronous chat can help your business generate more revenue. You will engage customers across more channels and increase the number of touchpoints and opportunities to convert. Offering personalized recommendations and being able to continue conversations across channels creates a clear competitive advantage. Your business will stand out from the competition and leave a lasting impression.
The best way to implement asynchronous chat is with a conversational marketing chatbot. These are chatbots designed to align with your marketing goals and streamline your marketing funnel. Offer tailored product recommendations, generate leads, and keep in touch with customers no matter where they engage you.
Chatbots built with Spectrm get smarter with every message, continually enhancing the experience and generating insights that can be leveraged across multiple marketing channels.
Want to learn more about how your brand can drive growth with asynchronous chat and conversational marketing? Get in touch with one of our conversational experts.
