Improving Customer Touchpoints in 2020

Part 1: Chatbots & Chat Marketing 

When looking to enhance your customer lifecycle, there are so many things to consider. In today’s exploration, we wanted to focus on meeting your customers where they are and personalizing your message as much as you can for your audience. We have found a great way to do this is with chatbots and chat marketing. 

Let’s dive in.

The big news surrounding Facebook for 2019 was the shift in focus from “digital town squares” to “digital living rooms.” This represents a decrease in usage of Facebook’s public features such as wall posts, public group posts, etc., and an increase in usage of its most personalized feature: Messenger, the Facebook user messaging app platform. 

And with Facebook’s recent acquisition of the WhatsApp messaging app, it’s clear to see that direct messaging is a priority for the company. 

So, what does this mean now for 2020? It means that businesses have to incorporate a new, more personalized strategy to communicate with users where they most prefer to be: their Messenger apps. And, businesses need a channel that is manageable to design and execute: chatbots. Thus, the relevance of chat marketing.

What makes chat marketing an important and worthwhile part of the customer lifecycle?

Reach

First and foremost, let’s talk about usage. According to ManyChat, one of the leading chat marketing platform companies, “7 billion conversations take place on Messenger every day!”

Furthermore, open and click-through rates are impressive; ManyChat reports click-through rates of 30 to 40%. 

We are not suggesting that email is dead by any means. And for many companies, even with lower open and click-through rates, email likely still provides a valuable funnel for communicating with customers thanks to the power of its sheer volume. We are looking to illustrate the importance of adding chat marketing within messenger platforms to your overall marketing strategy. In fact, a great conversation to create in your chatbot is an invitation for people to join or subscribe to your email list. 

Personalization

Chat marketing also provides a unique opportunity to learn more about your customers. You can program your chatbot to take your audience through a series of questions to help you tag and segment them based on their interests. This allows you to better personalize future messages to them. 

Additionally, when advertising your ‘bot, you’ll have all the useful audience selection features with Facebook ads. So, you can customize your target audience for your “Send Message” promotion to reach people with specific interests listed on their Facebook profiles. 

Generating Leads

You can also design a chatbot to serve as a lead generator. Essentially, you can have your basic lead forms (sign up forms, registration forms, etc.) live within the more interactive and unique setting of Messenger. Chat marketing platforms can connect to a variety of other systems, so getting this information into your customer relationship management (CRM) tool of choice is easy. 

Want to see an example of chat marketing on Facebook Messenger for yourself? Try interacting with our RewardBee Bot via Facebook Messenger here.   

Sources: 
https://manychat.com/blog/does-your-business-need-messenger-marketing/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/
https://m.me/RewardBee