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Exceptional Customer Service Starts With a Chat (App)
Enter the chatbot, which can be your customer service team’s next “new hire.”Capable of conversing with customers about simple queries 24/7, chatbot programs can provide the speedy, effective customer support responses that customers demand.It’s no wonder such chatbots are the fastest-growing channel in the Asia-Pacific, with nearly one-third of consumers using chatbots to interact with customer service!That said, there are plenty of chat app channels that you can build chatbots for on your communications platform. If you’re operating in Southeast Asia, you’ll want to prioritize offering support on the channels that customers in this region use.Don’t expect customers to sign up for a chat app channel just to contact your business, because they might not be willing to make the effort. Depending on the situation, they might find it easier to leave you a bad online review—which is something you definitely don’t want.In this article, we’ll explore the top chat app channels in Southeast Asia, plus what makes them worth providing customer support on. We’ll also share tips for improving the service experience on these channels so you keep customer goodwill in your business high, providing them with great customer service.What Are the Top Instant Messaging Apps for Customer Service in Southeast Asia?Check out the apps you’ve downloaded on your phone. Which instant messaging apps do you have on there? WhatsApp? And possibly Facebook Messenger too?You may not realize it, but you’re probably already using some of Southeast Asia’s top instant messaging apps to connect with loved ones and brands. Different chat apps enjoy differing levels of popularity in Southeast Asia, so let’s take a look at some of these apps in closer detail:WhatsAppOwned by Meta, WhatsApp is a highly popular chat app channel in Southeast Asia. Businesses in the region have tapped on WhatsApp Business to accept customer orders, provide quick services, offer customer support, and more.Facebook MessengerFacebook Messenger provides an avenue for Facebook users to chat with other Facebook users—including brands—even if they don’t have the recipient’s phone number. As of April 2022, Indonesia has at least 28.7 million active Facebook Messenger users, while this figure rises to at least 55.7 million for users of this messaging app in Vietnam.ViberMaintained by Rakuten, Viber enjoys an especially active user base in the Philippines. There, the service clocked an estimated 9.1 million active users from January to April 2022 (for Android devices alone!) The main Viber service is free, while users can also pay to make international calls through the app.TelegramBesides letting users send animated stickers and access chats across multiple devices, Telegram also sports a popular Channels feature. By setting up their own Telegram Channel, businesses such as Klook SG have cultivated a captive audience of Telegram users for pushing mass updates and promotions in Singapore.SMSSMS may seem old-fashioned, but it still enjoys a good amount of usage. And no, we aren’t referring to just the sending of one-time SMS passwords.Using an SMS API integration to scale their communications, businesses may also use SMS to send customers delivery alerts, appointment reminders, and other brief messages in real time.SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, so this is one chat channel not to be underestimated.Apple Messages for BusinessBusinesses can use Apple Messages for Business to communicate with iOS device users in various ways, such as scheduling appointments and providing customer support. However, this channel has limited effectiveness in helping businesses service non-iOS users.Pro Tips for Providing Customer Support on Chat App ChannelsYou’ve picked the chat app channels you’d like to add to your customer service processes. How can customer support agents make the most of them? Here are three pro tips that you can do to ensure good customer support:1. Make Your Chat App Channels AccessiblePublicize your chat app channels once you’ve set them up! Your customers need to know these channels exist before they can use them.Making your chat app channels accessible can be as straightforward as linking to them on your website. You can also add these links to your social media pages.But ensure the links are clickable, too, because having to manually type links—especially long ones—can be a major deterrent for customers.An alternative to links would be QR codes, where customers can scan these codes with their phone to launch your chat app channel. QR codes are especially useful if customers are interacting with your business offline, such as at your brick-and-mortar store, where link-clicking isn’t so convenient.2. Automate Chat Responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)As you attend to support queries from customers on live chat, you may notice customers asking certain questions again and again. For example, logistics businesses may regularly get questions on customers’ order statuses. Alternatively, e-commerce businesses may receive refund requests from customers.By adding a simple scripted FAQ chatbot to your support page, you’ll be able to automate instant replies to straightforward questions 24/7. You can also tap on an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot solution such as Conversational AI Cloud for next-level chatbot service. Compared to their scripted cousin, AI chatbots can better understand the context behind customers’ questions to enhance the appropriateness of their responses.Whether you opt for a scripted or AI chatbot, the result is that customers can obtain help quicker. You also free up manpower to address more complex queries that your chatbot refers to your customer service team.3. Manage Conversations in Various Chat App Channels in One PlaceAs you strive to provide support on as many chat app channels as possible, it can be a chore for your customer service team to log into different channels and navigate their respective interfaces. A customer service platform like Mobile Service Cloud eliminates such hassle by integrating chats from various chat app channels into one omnichannel Agent Inbox.To help your team get greater context on queries, the customer service platform may also integrate with your customer data platform to display your customers’ profiles next to support conversations.For example, Mobile Service Cloud integrates with our Mobile Marketing Cloud customer engagement solution to enrich support conversations with context on customers’ order histories and promotional campaigns received.Chatting with customers thus becomes effortless for your customer service team, who can deliver more personalized responses while exploring opportunities to boost sales. Meanwhile, customers receive support from their preferred chat app, enhancing customer satisfaction. It’s a win-win situation!Unlock New Customer Support Opportunities With Chat SupportOffering support on chat app channels is an investment that can significantly pay off if undertaken with the right strategy. For a business in Southeast Asia, this involves establishing a support presence on the most popular chat app channels in the region.But as maintaining a presence on more channels can lead to greater operational complexity, businesses should also take steps to streamline their support operations.LIKE.TG’s Mobile Service Cloud provides the essential chatbot and multi-channel conversational commerce infrastructure for integrating Southeast Asia’s top chat app channels in one place.Facilitating collaborative communication among your customer service team, Mobile Service Cloud allows the smooth and efficient management of support conversations across multiple channels and the delivery of outstanding customer service. It also empowers customers to communicate with your business via the channels of their choice and get the assistance they seek.The result is satisfied customers who may become loyal advocates for your brand, helping you raise brand awareness and attract new customers. You even stand to reap more sales from new and repeat customers alike!Explore Mobile Service Cloud to learn how it can help your business provide a seamless support experience on your customers’ preferred channels anytime and anywhere.
How to Increase Customer Retention on Service Delivery in Retail and eCommerce?
Retention is the new growth. Why? To begin with, acquiring customers is around 5 times more expensive than retaining customers. Moreover, data shows repeat purchases from only 8% of the customers can contribute up to 40% of your total sales.This means increased retention rates = an increase in Average Order Value and Customer Lifetime Value. Retained customers also buy more often and bring new prospects through word-of-mouth referrals.Now, that makes increasing customer retention sound like a solution—but how do you achieve it? Let us see how service delivery affects customer retention and how the top strategies retail and e-Commerce brands can leverage to boost customer retention.The First Step to Understand Customer Retention and Service Delivery in Retail and eCommerceThe first step to retaining customers is understanding and catering to the rising customer expectations. A PwC study found that more than 50% of customers will leave a brand they love after one bad experience, and 92% will do so after two to three. While 94% of today’s consumers will purchase more goods and services from a company after an excellent customer experience.If you are not providing an exceptional customer experience and engaging your customers through the (multiple) right channels at the right time—you’re going to hurt your customer retention. That’s how customer experience, service delivery, and retention are intertwined.We need to elevate the customer engagement and experience for increased retention. Where do we start? Let's understand the root of the problem first.The Main Root of the Problem: Why Customers Leave?Customers will stick to a brand that delivers a personalized and seamless experience across all touchpoints with minimum friction in this experience-driven world. And poor customer experience is one of the main reasons they leave. How can customer service teams be hyper-focused, boost customer satisfaction, manage high conversation volumes, prevent customer dropouts, and beat burnout in such a scenario?You start by being reachable and available on your customer’s most preferred messaging channels—24*7 availability, multi-channel messaging, omnichannel customer service, and personalized communication are a must. When you meet customers where they are, you exceed their expectations and increase the chances of them spending more.This means making sure your customers find what they are looking for, making it easy for agents to talk to customers, enabling customers to contact you via preferred channel while keeping an overview of all conversations.Strategies to Boost Customer Retention for eCommerce BusinessesHigh service delivery responsiveness, a multi-channel communication approach, leveraging customer data, delivering contextual support, and internal collaborations are some of the best ways to boost customer retention. Let’s dive deeper into them.Improve Employee Engagement for an Exceptional Customer ExperienceAn improved employee engagement is a prerequisite for an enhanced customer experience. As the company grows, the customer base also expands, thus increasing the touchpoints and pressure on your employees to deliver more. And without proper employee engagement, it can become increasingly difficult for you to address your customer’s needs.How do you improve employee engagement? The short answer is—by improving your systems, but here’s the long answer:Issuing tickets to resolve customers’ issues not only reduces customers to reference numbers—prioritizing processes over people and compromising the customer experience but also encourages agents to cherry-pick questions leaving tough ones to attend to later.Mobile Service Cloud, a next-gen conversational helpdesk system, replaces this impersonal way of treating customers and helps agents deliver relevant and personalized service experiences across all channels. It eliminates queues and not tickets while segmenting, prioritizing, and assigning issues as they arise to ensure quick resolution.Mobile Service Cloud makes this possible using -1. Advanced routingInstead of going the conventional way where workloads were evenly distributed between available team members, resulting in slower and inefficient service, Mobile Service Cloud gives the agent ownership of the conversation. Routing utilizes a combination of rule-based and skill-based elements.Rule-based routing passes queries to the agents only if pre-established criteria are met, moving unqualified conversations to Archive or Unwanted inbox without human intervention.Skill-based routing assigns conversations based on the agent’s skills and priorities. With Mobile Service Cloud, these triggers work on all incoming conversations across all channels.2. One Agent Inbox and Smart Inbox ManagementMobile Service Cloud's intuitive dashboard brings forth one agent inbox where agents have access to conversations with customers (across all channels), partners, and colleagues plus a 360-degree view of the customer’s profile on a single screen.Agents can then engage in every conversation regardless of the channel through one inbox. With smart inbox management, they can snooze, archive, or forward a conversation. This keeps their inbox clean, helps them focus on the next important conversation, saves costs, and improves service.All of this ramps up response and resolution time, skyrockets employee engagement, and improves customer experience and retention.Launch a Loyalty Program and InspireUsing a loyalty program is another excellent strategy to increase customer retention rates. The loyalty program rewards customers for their purchases and encourages repeat orders. You need capable customer service software with access to customer data to handle multi-channel communications and keep customers updated about their rewards points for an effective loyalty program.However, using a dedicated loyalty program is not the only way to inspire loyalty in your customers. For example, My Jewellery, a Netherlands-based jewelry company, found that directly communicating with their customers was key to retaining their loyalty and building trust.The company started implementing dedicated personal omnichannel communication to maintain consistency and quality of communication—not only on social media but also on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and wherever their customers can be. They leveraged Mobile Service Cloud’s ability to communicate via all channels in one inbox.The result? All the conversations were streamlined with a significant increase in quality and efficiency. And 89% of their customers are happy with the outcome of the conversations.Upsell and Cross-sell via Leveraging Customer DataEffective upselling and cross-selling will help you retain existing customers with an unforced, well-timed offer. Customer behavior speaks volumes about customers’ intent and is critical in helping your agents guide customers to their desired outcome. By leveraging customer data provided by Customer Data Platform (CDP), your agents will be able to make offers that feel like a natural extension of your existing customer relationship. A win-win situation there.Customer Data Platform centralizes customer data from multiple sources and shares this data with your existing systems. This helps you segment your customers better (at risk, high value, and more), get a complete view of customer behavior, and understand customers in real-time. It unifies and organizes the previously siloed data across various touchpoints thereby giving deeper insights into customer behavior and driving relevant and personalized campaigns.The right CDP recognizes that customer journeys are dynamic and ensures that your offers can change when there’s a change in customer behavior. You will now be able to deliver personalized customer experiences that gain trust and loyalty.Improve Customer Support and Be Available for your Customers on Their TermsCustomer support is not just about being helpful and answering your customer’s queries. Excellent customer support requires you to be available for your customers on their terms, on their channels, and with the speed and efficiency they expect.You need to provide service everywhere for improved customer support, especially on customers’ preferred messaging channels like Live Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and more. How do you achieve that?Mobile Service Cloud's agent inbox manages personal multi-channel conversations with customers, colleagues, and partners on a single interface with the ability to view or forward (share or assign) conversations is one way.There are features like a live chat web widget that customers can use to connect with agents immediately (using a name, logging in to chat live, or filling out an email form). Using internal live chat, teams can collaborate in real-time to improve customer issue and resolution time whereas external (email) collaboration involves external partners to support customer service conversations.Add to that—the Mobile Service Cloud’s potential to connect with the systems of your choice, and you’ll be able to deliver faster and more personal service experiences. One of the first steps is to enable your agents to instantly access a 360-degree customer profile in one view. How does Mobile Service Cloud give agents the contextual data they need to deliver improved support?Access to insights right next to the conversations (regardless of the channel) on one screen.Integrates data with an eCommerce system, CRM, ERP, or wherever customer’s data is stored.All of this helps you achieve enhanced collaboration, faster resolution, and improved customer support.Reward Your Most Valuable CustomersWhile loyalty programs focus more on exclusivity and additional perks, reward programs offer higher discount rates, free goodies, and other prizes. Having a good rewards program can accelerate the loyalty life-cycle of the customer.It also enables the company to pass on the benefits to the customers in proportion to the value that their loyalty creates for the company. However, it is essential that you continuously educate your customers about the program and promote the benefits.CDP helps here too. When reward programs work in tandem with the power of CDP, you’ll be able to tap into untouched customer data and reward customers with a more well-rounded and personalized approach.That means recognizing your customers for every action they take (captured via CDP) and rewarding them with omnichannel loyalty and reward programs. This will encourage your customers to spend more and more often, increase CLTV, and discourage them from going to your competitors.Assemble Your Tools to Boost Your Customer Retention RateOne of the more impressive stat is that just by increasing your customer retention rate by 5%, you can boost your revenue by a minimum of 25%. This statistic alone and the comprehensive strategies listed above are enough to never let your customer retention rates stagnate.However, knowing the strategies is one thing, but integrating them into your current systems, well, that’s where the issue begins. But, not with us.You need tools that help you communicate with customers on their favorite channels, increase customer loyalty, and drive personalized experiences that delight customers. And that’s precisely what our Mobile Service Cloud intends to do.Mobile Service Cloud recognizes that speed, convenience, expert advice, and friendly service are the essential elements of a positive customer experience. Enabling you to deliver frictionless experiences anytime, anywhere.With LIKE.TG’s Mobile Service Cloud, you’ll have access to -Live chat with customers,View of multi-channel customer conversations on a single interface,Internal and external collaboration on one agent inbox,Skill-based query routing,360-degree customer profile,24*7 availability on all customer-preferred channels,Personal and contextual conversations backed by data,Automated conversations at scale,and much more.The result? Exactly what you want—increased customer satisfaction, experience, and retention.
Why Do You Need a Customer Data Platform?
The reach of marketing channels has been expanding over time; starting with newspaper ads and local radio reaching a region to new ad networks such as Facebook and Google reaching half the globe. And not only the reach is expanding, the insights into the audience, as measured in actual data about the individuals, is growing. Using this information, you can create very specific segmentations that will allow marketers to target those profiles that are highly relevant and receptive to your information.Also read: What is a Customer Data Platform?6 Reasons Why You Need a Customer Data Platform (CDP)If you can build your database of individuals and keep learning to know these people, you will be able to create very focused segments. And when combined with real-time data about behavior, this could lead to the holy grail of a “segment of one”. Where every person will be treated as their segment, being informed with a completely personal message, at a personal place and time through a personal channel.A CDP Collects All Your DataThe amount of information all of us need to process is getting larger continuously. Martin Hilbert of the University of California estimated in 2010 that “in 1986 we received around 40 newspapers full of information every day but this had rocketed to 174 in 2007”. That is a growth of over 7% per year, so each year we process a few additional newspapers every day. Extrapolating this linearly to 2022 would mean we all process the equivalent of 492 newspapers each day.In their 2014 report “The digital universe of opportunities” IDC estimates that by 2020 [the digital universe] contain[s] nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the [physical] universe. It is doubling in size every two years, and by 2024 the digital universe – the data we create and copy annually – will reach 149 zettabytes. The amount of data in the world growing even faster than we can process it.A CDP Makes Personalization PossibleSo our brains are swamped with information every day, how do we manage to get by? That's because our brain incorporates some great attention filters. A good example of this was popularized by Colin Cherry’s “Cocktail Party Effect”; how can a partygoer focus on a single conversation in a noisy room? That is because your brain applies selective filtering to all information that your senses take in. And only the things that are relevant to you, because you care, or it threatens you, will be noted consciously.This filtering system also filters all the information that is presented to us in everyday life. Only the bits of information that mean something to us are kept, the others are ignored. To come full circle again, as a marketer, how can you increase the chance that your communications are not excluded by these filters? Make sure that your communication is relevant to the person that is receiving it. The more personalized the better.A CDP Activates All Your DataThe Customer Data Platform (CDP) brings all your marketing data together to build a full (360-degree) profile of the customers. This has been the promise of many marketing data solutions, but only recently using Big Data technology and open APIs, we are now able to deliver on this vision.With access to rich profiles, your CDP can orchestrate and automate communication with your customers or prospects. The finer-grained your understanding of a person is, the better you can target them with information that is relevant within the context they currently are in. Truly connecting over topics of interest. And it should be a conversation instead of a marketing push, there should be an opportunity to respond. This will help us to get to the promise of a segment of one, because every conversation can be geared towards every individual, on their terms.A CDP Is Not a CRM or DMPOften, people get confused within the large landscape of marketing tech and think their CRM or DMP can deliver on these promises. This is usually not the case. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software contains much fewer data from external sources than a CDP. They are much more geared towards sales and require sales reps to reach out to customers and prospects to take note of their conversations. A Data Management Platform (DMP) contains un-personalized data that is usually collected by large ad networks tracking online click behavior. A DMP is used to target online ads, as opposed to a CDP that contains personalized data and is used to target personal communication.Also read: CRM, CDP, and DMP Platforms: How Are They Different?A CDP Stores All Your DataTheoretically, everything that is personalized can be stored and added to specific customer profiles. If it cannot be tied to a person in any way, the data cannot be added to a profile and will not increase your effectiveness. We usually see data from one of the categories below:Personal information, for example, name, address, country of residence, date of birth.Contact information, such as e-mail address, mobile phone number, Facebook id (PSId), WhatsApp enabled? Consent management should be included as well.Transactional or eCommerce data, such as purchase value, products, sizes, shop location, customer value, basket abandonment, etc. But also using loyalty cards or coupons connecting the bricks visitor to her clicks online.Web and behavioral data, such as page views, clicks, apps used, and buttons clicked. Think of the Google Analytics of a single person.Satisfaction scores from reviews, inquiries, feedback forms, NPS, CSAT, etc.Contextual information, such as the weather, holidays, income based on postal codes, and credit risk scores are typically used to enrich the data events.In general, this data is called first-party data, or “your data”. High in value, real-time, and personalized. As opposed to second or third-party data, which is usually bought or accessed through data marketplaces or ad exchanges. Such data is not personalized and can only be used for the category or interest targeting.A CDP Automates WorkflowsImagine running a soccer team. You have two major revenue drivers: seats sponsoring. As a commercial director, you want to fill the stadium and get the most out of the sponsorship deals you set up. About 81% of your stadium is filled by seasonal ticket holders. How are you going to fill up the remaining seats?If you know who previously visited matches, and the conditions (weather, opponent, seat type, etc.) in which they visit, you can reach out to the audience that is most likely to repeat that visit. Perhaps we know a certain John who visited the same match last year, you know that game was won, and he stayed for the after-party as you can see in his bar purchases. In this case, we can reach out directly to John, informing him about the match coming up again and offering a small discount and a quick ticket purchase link. If you would also be able to persuade him to bring in a friend and/or come early, you can increase the financial value of his visit. And this can be automated to reach out to a large group of fans.This is a great innovation in a market where sports teams usually don’t even know who most of their fans are. And think of the possibilities where you can build with these types of solutions. And the benefits not only pertain to the sports industry, we see great examples in leisure and retail eCommerce.Why Is a Customer Data Platform Important?So to wrap up, we all have too much information to process. So our brains are in the heavy filter mode. To reach your audience, you need to pass through the filters by being very, very, very relevant. A Customer Data Platform is your tool to help you to achieve this. It stores all your marketing data into profiles, and you can use these profiles to orchestrate meaningful conversations with your customers.
Chat Apps - Choosing Between Messaging Channels
Decisions… Decisions…SMS used to be the standard to send mobile messages. Nowadays, you can also reach people via channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Telegram, and the list goes on. You can even extend traditional SMS with rich messages using solutions like Pages. There are so many options; the sky seems to be the limit.New messaging channels appear and each channel has its own characteristics. Different channels have different features, different regulations, they are governed by different legislation, use different keys to reach a specific phone.Some require you to pass a validation process while others are open to use for everyone. You can’t possibly invest in all channels that are out there. If you want to reach your (future) customers, you need to cater your solution specifically for your target audience.How Do I Choose the Right Channel?One of the biggest challenges in mobile marketing nowadays, is getting your message across to the right person at the right time. If you want your audience to notice your message and register it, ensure that the message is relevant to the recipient and is delivered via the channel the recipient prefers. Just sending loads of emails is not sufficient anymore.The chosen channel should be able to carry the information you want to share. Will text suffice, or do you need images and videos as well? Do you want to provide navigational directions? Are you sending one-off messages or are you broadcasting huge personalized campaigns?Do you want to start an in-channel conversation with your recipients? And would you like to even close a deal and perform a payment transaction without the end-user having to leave the conversation? The final and inarguably most important factor is whether your intended recipient is reachable via the channel.App availability differs wildly, based on geography and demographics. Older users tend to prefer traditional SMS, while the younger generations hardly ever leave their favorite messaging application. Viber is well adopted in Eastern Europe, yet hardly ever seen in China. There, WeChat is the dominant application, like Plus Message in Japan or Facebook Messenger in the USA.Incoming!Many channels have two-way capabilities. Even though SMS offers inbound possibilities, this often came at a price for the end-user and as such, the number of incoming messages stayed low. With most new channels, inbound messages are free for the end-user. Also, they are accustomed to using their apps for two-way communications. For some channels, companies are obligated to reply within 24 hours. Some channels can only be used when the end-user initiates the conversation. All these different streams of messages, all these different interfaces, how can you manage all that and still keep your end-users satisfied?The Power of OneLet’s face it. You can never find a single rich messaging channel guaranteed to reach all your intended recipients. There still are people who don’t have a smartphone or don’t have access to data.And what happens when you need two channels to reach the majority of your audience, want to expand your business, or need to reach out to another audience than before, maybe also into another geographical region? You will have to adapt to other channels as well.When you connect directly to one or two channels, you can develop the required software and connectors yourself. Yet, when you want to connect a new channel or need additional features, it’s back to the drawing board. A small addition could even require a complete overhaul of your entire codebase. Connecting to a well-catered CPaaS provider like LIKE.TG can help you simplify your connection process.The single web platform, offering multiple channels in a single environment, enables you to adapt your messages and marketing campaigns for specific situations, without the need of custom development. Using proven API solutions, you can connect your own CRM system. You can even take it a step further and add LIKE.TG’s Customer Data Platform for highly personalized campaigns. And when none of the available rich text channels are available or suitable for your recipient, LIKE.TG offers the ability to send end-users to a mobile-friendly landing page by sending a personalized link via an SMS message.Should I Choose At All?You might want to send a single type of message to a big group of recipients, spread over multiple channels. You could split your recipients into several groups, one for each channel.However, it could be much more convenient to use a supplier like LIKE.TG, which enables you to send a message to all your recipients via all available channels. Our system can determine which channel is available for each recipient and send the message via the most appropriate system, eventually falling back to a plain SMS message or even a text-to-speech voice call.SummaryThere are lots of messaging channels. Each channel has its own pros and cons, and each audience has a different channel preference. To select the correct channel, you have to evaluate your needs and decide what channel best matches their needs. When using a CPaaS provider like LIKE.TG, you can conveniently target many or even multiple channels at once and reach a bigger portion of your audience than when aiming for a single connection.Being a fully equipped CPaaS provider, LIKE.TG can help you with this as well. Mobile Service Cloud connects all applicable channels into one inbox for your support agents to communicate with your customers. By adding intelligent chatbots in the same application, and handing them over to human agents when needed, you can save costs on support personnel, stay compliant and still give your end-users a frictionless experience.
The Benefits of A2P Messaging for Business
Often using plain-old SMS as its medium, A2P provides a way for machines to message humans, organizations sending you texts directly from their platform or app. If you’ve stayed in a hotel or taken a flight recently, the text message you received from your mobile phone confirming your booking, came from an A2P messaging provider.What’s great about A2P is its lack of drama. It’s straightforward and cost effective, it reaches the device you’re always carrying, and it’s practically foolproof, making it a popular medium to receive relevant content.According to ReportLinker, the global A2P messaging market will reach $77.1 billion by 2026 as SMS is a universal method to reach its end-users without access to data services. Like most technologies that do something simple but useful, A2P has found utility far beyond its original purpose of just sending messages.From P2P to A2P: How Application-to-Person Messaging WorksYou already know P2P: it’s the messages you exchange with your friends and family, witha human being at each end of the conversation. A2P replaces one party (the sender) with software, often connected to company databases and marketing platforms.While some countries classify A2P as any messaging sent by a machine (which would include WhatsApp and email!) most people understand A2P as an application of SMS. And that’s the main reason it works so well.Decades-Old, Still Working: The Benefits of SMSSMS messaging works at the network level: the operator “knows” what’s happened to the message, with its status communicated back to the sender. There are four: SENT, DELIVERED, FAILED, and UNDELIVERED. Because of these standard responses, an A2P application can act on feedback and flag errors that keep the database of phone numbers fresh.SENT simply means the message is on its way. DELIVERED means the send was successful, with the message reaching the recipient’s phone; this helps to determine how many people were successfully reached (of course, that doesn’t mean they read it – but a very high number of texts are read within minutes).FAILED is equally obvious: something’s gone wrong on the network, and your message can’t continue. While UNDELIVERED indicates the fault is at your end: usually an incorrect phone number or format, which prompts you to correct it.SMS Use Cases for Business CommunicationSounds simple? It is. And that’s the main benefit of using SMS: it’s crystal clear how up-to-date your database is. Today, A2P messaging is suitable for a huge number of use cases as it's an effective business communication. Let’s look at a few:Notifications and Confirmations: Simple Updates, Sent Well.The majority of A2P messaging today involves travel and transport. What’s the common denominator? All of them rely on someone or something being in a certain place, at a certain time. Airline tickets, hotel bookings, and package deliveries: all benefit from customers being able to see timely updates, appointment reminders, and confirmations.The useful part is that A2P can include a response mechanism, providing (for example) a number to call if a reservation needs to change. This simple trick can reduce unexpected no-shows—which cost the hospitality industry a lot.Post-Job Surveys: Gathering Customer IntelligenceThe best time to survey someone about the service they received is straight after the job’s complete. Many service companies—from plumbers to delivery drivers—set up action pathways that send a survey SMS to a customer whenever the tradeperson leaves. Using A2P messaging means this happens automatically.Of course, SMS messages are simple and short, which boosts response rates. A popular survey method is the “Ultimate Question” of the Net Promoter Score, “Would you recommend us to friends and family?” The customer is asked to respond with a number from 1 (no) to 10 (definitely).One Time Passwords or OTPA huge and growing part of A2P text messaging involves security. Lost a password? The website will let you reset it—but you’ll need to enter a six-digit number texted to your phone first which is automatically generated. That message is generated by A2P.And if you make an unusual bank transaction, the bank will frequently ask you to confirm your identity by doing the same. These are called One Time Passwords, or OTPs.This is another reason A2P using SMS persists in a world of many communications channels. People tend to keep their phones close at hand, 24 hours a day, and most are used only by one person. So texting an OTP adds a strong layer of security. And A2P can send them out in seconds, millions of times a day, without wasting the customer’s time.Emergency AlertsOf course, A2P is timely. While at the network level SMS isn’t quite instant (and was never designed to be) it’s rare for one to take more than a minute; a few seconds is more normal. This means A2P has found great utility in emergency alerts of many kinds.In a hospital, emergency situations (such as a major car crash) have a prewritten response plan to bring the right people and resources together to meet and treat the arriving patients. This team effort is often coordinated by SMS; mobile users appreciate the short, sharp, automated messages telling them what’s happened and where to be.Similar procedures enable aircrews, warehouse workers, and building services to swing into action in defined circumstances. A2P provides the simple messaging underlay to their roles.One-to-One Marketing ChannelMarketers, of course, use A2P messaging to send promotional campaigns and special offers to thousands of people at a time. The application is linked to the marketer’s database or other software, like CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and can personalize and customize messages, too—like including the recipient’s first name.Most countries have strong regulations around SMS marketing, with many requiring double-opt-in before you’re allowed to send a consumer a text. Fortunately, most companies obey such rules.Competitions, Voting, and CharitiesMainstream “old media” like television has many uses for A2P messaging. Many talent shows, online competitions, and national events feature telephone voting; A2P lets viewers vote by sending an SMS, with the response recorded and a confirmatory SMS sent back.There’s another benefit of using A2P messaging, and it’s financial. Companies can charge consumers when they send an SMS, with the charge appearing on the consumer’s phone bill. It’s a simple way for users to pay small amounts and is heavily used in the world’s poorer regions for everyday payments.A2P Messaging Turns SMS Into Smart MessagingIf you see a role for timely, relevant, one-to-one messaging to customers in your business, why not explore what LIKE.TG could do for you?
How to Automate Marketing With Workflows
What Is Marketing Automation?Marketing automation makes a marketer's job a lot easier. It is an umbrella term for technology that automatically manages marketing processes and campaigns across multiple channels. This makes it easy to send automated emails, texts, social media posts, and messages in chat apps. Also, this ensures that you can implement a digital marketing strategy without manually having to press send on each and every email, text, social media post, or message in chat apps.To send these marketing messages automatically, a set of triggers and tasks must be defined. These triggers and tasks are referred to as workflows. Workflows can be drawn up from scratch, but marketing automation software usually contains certain templates to easily define workflows.What Are Automated Workflows?Broadly speaking, a workflow is perhaps best described as a sequence of steps or processes that a business takes to complete a task. That task can be of different types and range in terms of how long it takes to complete or complex it is. It can also span multiple departments within a company or across various channels.Within each workflow task, there is usually a varying quantity of other factors involved, such as timelines and approvals. However, to properly understand what workflows are and how they work within marketing automation, it’s best to use relevant examples:Welcome SubscribersEach time a customer signs up for your content, such as a newsletter, they’ll receive an email welcoming them to your services. This is a simple yet effective way to show your audience you care while laying the foundation for a lasting relationship.You can use these welcome workflows to build on your value proposition and what makes your business special, reasserting why being your customer is beneficial to them. You could even use it to surprise them with a bonus, such as a discount coupon (if you have a store) or an exclusive piece of content that only they can access.Personalized Birthday MessagePeople love to be remembered, so another great example of a workflow within marketing automation is by giving your customers VIP treatment and celebrating their birthdays or anniversary.This can be done by opting to automatically send them a discount or offer for their birthday or the anniversary of when they became your customer. All you need to do is create a workflow that automatically sends a pre-prepared message to subscribers on the same date each year.By personalizing your campaigns in this way, you can more easily build loyalty and keep your brand at the forefront of their minds, while incentivizing them to purchase from you again and again.Although it’s worth noting that for birthday messages, you’ll need to ask your customers for some personal information when they sign up, such as date of birth. The date the customer was added to your database can be used for the anniversary messaging.Reminder EmailsOne other example of a marketing automation workflow is a reminder email, such as following-up abandoned carts for retailers. These workflows are a must for any eCommerce sites as they not only give your customers a nudge about items left in their online shopping baskets but will send them a link to take them back to complete their purchase, therefore helping you to secure more sales and boost your conversion rate.If they’ve purposely abandoned their cart, you could also offer them a discount to encourage them to complete the purchase or provide details for contacting your customer service if there’s an issue they need to resolve before doing so.How to Store and Centralize Customer DataThe most important input for marketing automation is data. Without data, it is almost impossible to use marketing automation tools, or set up workflows.However, data centralization might be a challenge within the company you work for. Data is often stored in several systems that might contain duplicate customer profiles. How to centralize, enrich, and segment your data to make it ready to use for your marketing automation campaigns?To solve the problem of decentralized data, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the best solution. With a CDP, data from different sources can be enriched to create personalized campaigns. Marketing automation is a tool that both needs data and generates behavioral data of your customers to further enrich its customer profile. This enables you to start conversations with people, not profiles.Now you know how to centralize your data, you can start creating automated workflows.How to Create an Automated WorkflowAs mentioned above, workflows consist of triggers and tasks:A trigger is an action that a customer takes;A task is a task the system has to fulfill based on the trigger.So: if [trigger], then [task]. For example: if a customer subscribes to a newsletter, then the customer receives an email with a discount code for his or her next purchase.But also: if a customer clicks through in an email, then create an MQL, but if a customer does not click through, then send another email after 7 days with more informative content. This is an example of a so-called ‘branching workflow’: a workflow with multiple tasks originating from one trigger.After visualizing these flows, workflows are easily built in a marketing automation tool.How to Get Started With Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is the solution for all marketers that could use some more hours within a working day. It basically allows you to do more with less, how great is that? After reading this, you’re probably more than ready to set up your own workflows and enrich your customer data. But do you have the tooling to start right away?Well, we’ve got you covered! LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud is an omnichannel customer engagement solution build for B2C marketers. What makes this tool so special, is that it is specifically aimed at mobile marketing. All you need to do is create segments and workflows with an easy drag-and-drop editor. The Mobile Marketing Cloud helps you to collect data from multiple sources and build rich customer profiles with its own CDP. When your goal is to automate your mobile marketing activities, this is the tool to go for.
3 Ways of Enhancing CX With Conversational Commerce (And How to Get Started)
Conversational commerce is the phenomenon of customers interacting and shopping with brands through chat and social apps. Customers spend a good amount of time on these apps—and they spend a good amount of money on them too.According to Juniper Research, for example, global spending on conversational commerce channels grew by an incredible 63% from 2021 to 2022. And with this trend being projected to continue upward until at least 2025, it’s clear that conversational customer engagement is the future of commerce.Why do customers love conversational commerce? Their familiarity with their favorite chat apps is clearly one reason. But brands that prioritize a customer-centric business model have also found ways of leveraging these apps’ conversational nature to improve the eCommerce CX, and in turn increase customer goodwill and sales.Here are three ways in which conversational commerce can enhance CX and how you can implement it in your business.How Can Conversational Commerce Enhance CX?1. Let Customers Shop With You on Their Preferred ChannelsStart the customer journey on the right note by making it convenient for customers to shop with you. While customers can browse products on a website, they may not have a good CX if the website is difficult to navigate.In contrast, chat app channels provide a user interface that customers are already familiar with. By setting up a brand presence on chat apps popular with your customers, you empower customers to shop with you on whichever channel they prefer and know how to use like a pro.When you provide such enhanced customer touchpoints, the CX becomes effortless. You also pave the way for more customer interactions and purchases, word-of-mouth recommendations, and possibly even repeat orders!For example, let’s say you sell gift baskets for special occasions. Carrie texts Megan to invite her to her upcoming baby shower. Megan sends Carrie a quick congratulatory text, then seamlessly switches to a chat with your brand—in the same app—to order Carrie a gift basket.Your brand’s intelligent chatbot processes the order instantly and sends Megan a confirmation message. And just like that, her gift is on its way!Satisfied with such a smooth CX, Megan knows she can rely on your brand to fulfill her future gift basket needs—and that when such a time arises, you’re just a text away.2. Better Serve Customers With Personalized InteractionsWhile establishing a presence on your customers’ preferred channels is a good start for enhancing CX, take things further by personalizing the customer journey.Don’t forget that people typically use chat apps to interact with others who personally know them. To provide a warm and meaningful CX, you’ll likewise want to foster a sense of human interaction and personal touch when communicating with customers on chat apps.Look into customizing the marketing campaigns and support messages you send to customers via these apps. By now, addressing customers by their first name is standard practice. But apart from that, you can further tailor your communications based on your customers’ profiles and order history.For example, a customer, Calvin, may have previously indicated his interest in learning about your clothing store’s offers for shirts but not those for pants. This is your cue to:text him about upcoming discounts on shirts, andexclude him from texts promoting pants.By tailoring your customer interactions in this manner, you improve the relevance of your communications and keep customers interested in engaging with your brand for longer.3. Help Customers Get Quicker AnswersWhether they have a pre-sales question or need post-sales support, customers want answers fast—and they perceive email communication as being too slow. With customers used to quick replies via instant messaging apps, they may prefer to chat with your brand on such apps to enjoy shorter response times.And this is your brand’s chance to shine. By deploying chatbots, your customer service team can offer automated, self-service solutions for customers to resolve simple queries on their own. These chatbots can also be programmed to chat with customers using informal language—just like how friends talk to each other!—to maintain the personal touch.Chatbots also increase the speed advantage by being operational 24/7. Customers don’t need to wait to reach out during fixed support hours, but can get immediate assistance no matter the time of day. And nothing can be quicker than that!Implementing Conversational Commerce: Things to ConsiderOn Which Channels Will You Implement Conversational Commerce?Be strategic with the channels for which you implement conversational commerce.While you have no shortage of channels to choose from, shortlist only the ones popular among your customers. After all, if you’ll be expending resources to support certain channels, then it pays to focus on those that enjoy higher usage.Not only that: with customers comprising the “C” in “CX,” you’ll want to take the conversation to your customers rather than making them go through hoops to chat with you.When you do so, you stand to reach more customers—who may also feel more valued as you’ve made the effort to engage them on their preferred channels. In turn, they may be more inclined to shop with you instead of another brand that generically treats them as a faceless individual.If you are doing business in Southeast Asia, then WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Viber are just some of the popular chat app channels in the region worth implementing conversational commerce on.Learn more about these channels, and pro tips for offering customer support on them, in our guide to providing exceptional customer service on chat apps.Which Tools Will You Use?LIKE.TG develops a wide range of tools that make implementing conversational commerce a breeze.For example, Mobile Push provides a no-code solution for delivering personalized push notifications to customers. Integrable with a wide range of chat app channels, Mobile Push enhances the CX by helping you tailor marketing communications based on your customers’ profiles, location, order history, and more.As for enhancing support conversations, our Mobile Service Cloud customer service software offers a scripted chatbot that can instantly answer simple FAQs. Contributing to a convenient CX, these support chats will take place on your customers’ preferred chat apps, letting them chat with you as if they were talking to a family member or a friend.If you regularly receive more complex support questions, Conversational AI Cloud is a worthwhile investment. This AI chatbot harnesses natural language processing (NLP) to:capture and process user input, and thenprovide an appropriate response using friendly language for a humanized CX.Being capable of self-learning, Conversational AI Cloud helps deliver automated responses that only improve in quality over time. It also provides insights into customer intent that can prove valuable for refining the CX.Our AI chatbot solution can be implemented on any channel of choice as quickly as within a few weeks. For example, online insurer Onlia was able to get its AI chatbot up and running in just six weeks.Conversational AI Cloud is also undoubtedly effective: just take it from fashion retailer Missguided, which reported a high AI chatbot engagement rate of 80%. The brand also reduced its support contact and costs by 14%.Increase Conversions With Impactful Brand ConversationsWhether in sales, marketing, or customer support functions, conversational commerce has become the norm. And this is unsurprising, given its ability to enhance CX throughout the customer journey.To tap on the full potential of conversational commerce, brands will need to employ the right solutions that turn the humble chat app into a channel for customer engagement and conversions. We’ve covered a few of these solutions here, but especially recommend taking a look at Conversational AI Cloud if you’re keen to elevate CX with the power of AI.Explore Conversational AI Cloud in more detail here to learn how it can help you provide a seamless and delightful support experience on your customers’ preferred channels.
4 Digital Marketing Trends in the Financial Service Industry
The financial services industry has evolved; people can now conduct certain transactions entirely via online channels from a device that fits within their hand. And many of them do: in a study conducted by digital security platform Entrust, for example, 65% of Singapore respondents shared that they most often did their banking using their bank’s mobile or tablet app.As financial services go digital, so must your marketing efforts. Otherwise, you’re missing many opportunities to promote your offerings and provide the personalized service that customers want.Read on as we share four digital marketing trends that financial service businesses should leverage to facilitate an omnichannel presence and boost customer adoption.1. Content MarketingContent marketing is creating and distributing content to attract and nurture readers into customers.The content medium can range from blog posts to videos, podcasts, case studies, and more. What’s critical, however, is that your target audience should find your content valuable. Users who consume your content should go: “Wow, this was so helpful! I will keep an eye on more posts/videos/episodes from them.”Apart from posting your content on your channels, you can also promote it on social media to reach out to users unfamiliar with your brand—and potentially expand your customer base.When done consistently, content marketing offers opportunities to:position your brand as an expert in the field to boost user trust and confidence,educate users on your products and how they can address the user’s needs, andkeep your brand top of mind so that users will think of you as they search for solutions (and ideally buy your products afterward!)Digital wealth management platform StashAway has thoroughly covered its content marketing bases. It maintains a blog called Insights, which publishes investing tips and marketing opinions. The platform also provides free StashAway Academy courses for users who want a more structured approach to learning investing skills and strategies.Finally, StashAway invites financial leaders and bloggers to share their investment insights and experiences on a podcast titled In Your Best Interest to cater to auditory learners.2. ChatbotsChatbots are computer programs designed to converse with users and address their needs. Their features typically involve answering questions and assisting with simple customer service issues. (If the matter is trickier, a human support rep will take over.)Integrating chatbots into your customer support processes opens opportunities for you to:help customers get answers quicker as chatbots can operate round-the-clock,improve the customer experience by providing personalized chat interactions,free up your support representatives to focus on more complex customer support issues, thus cutting your operational and customer support costs, andserve customers on their preferred channels. For instance, our Mobile Service Cloud omnichannel scripted chatbot solution lets you set up a support presence on your website, plus popular chat apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram, andpromote your latest products, services, and offers across multiple channels.DBS Bank’s chatbot offers a comprehensive menu of customer services, such as:retrieving transaction details,assisting with card replacement requests,answering frequently asked questions, andsharing ongoing deals and promotions.For security reasons, users must first authenticate their login to DBS’s online banking services. After doing so, they can launch the chatbot and select the appropriate self-service menu option to get immediate assistance.If the user does need human support, however, they can select the “Contact Me” option to leave a message for a representative’s follow-up action.3. Email MarketingEmail marketing is a form of marketing that uses email to engage in targeted communications with segments of users. Emails have been around for a long time now, but still bring about marketing opportunities such as:direct communication with users to build trust and authority without finicky and ever-changing algorithms affecting your campaigns’ reach (social media algos, we’re talking about you here), andunifying your customer data through the use of powerful email marketing solutions. For example, LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud lets you build comprehensive customer profiles from data obtained via various platforms, then personalize your email campaigns for higher engagement and lower unsubscribe rates.Wise’s marketing strategy uses triggered email campaigns on their target market that promote its currency conversion service exceptionally well.The money transfer platform lets users sign up for exchange rate email alerts that will notify them when a specific currency reaches its target exchange rate. For example, a user might want to receive an email alert when 1 USD hits the SGD 1.44 mark.When this threshold is reached, Wise’s email marketing system is automatically triggered to send the user an email alert.Wise’s rate alerts also include a link to its currency conversion services—because when a user learns that the mid-market rate has reached their desired rate threshold, the natural next step is to use Wise to convert their funds!We also like how Wise’s email marketing strategy involves users setting up the alerts on the platform’s website themselves. This approach helps Wise precisely learn its users’ preferences, so it doesn’t send them irrelevant emails.4. WebinarsHave you been to a seminar in a physical venue? The webinar is the online equivalent, where businesses hold seminars using a virtual conferencing platform such as Zoom.Webinars exploded in popularity when organizing large gatherings became unfeasible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But even in the current endemic conditions, webinars appear here to stay due to opportunities for businesses to:position their brand as an authority by sharing knowledge with attendees or hosting experts in their fields to do the same,increase their brand awareness as users can join webinars from any location and device. This allows businesses to scale their attendance numbers with a marginal increase in cost, andproduce more content for marketing purposes because it’s easy to record webinars for splitting into bite-sized video segments later.Look no further than TD Ameritrade for an example of a well-oiled webinar strategy. The stock brokerage holds regular webinars on investment-related topics (sometimes even multiple sessions a day!)TD Ameritrade’s webinars are categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced topics to help users decide which webinar is right for them based on their level of investment experience. To increase the longevity of its webinar content, TD Ameritrade also records all its webinars and makes them available for viewing on demand.Riding the Digital WaveWhat’s the future of financial services? It’s reaching out to customers using digital marketing channels and helping to serve their needs via the online medium. At the same time, financial service businesses must consider using such technologies to provide a personalized customer experience.“As consumers’ uptake of digital channels increases, their expectations of customer experience are also rising,” writes global management consulting firm, McKinsey. “Digital technologies raise the bar in that respect because they are enabling easy-to-use and personalized services.”Despite the digital shift, physical services won’t become entirely obsolete. Due to security concerns, unfamiliarity with technology, or other reasons, some customers will still prefer completing transactions in person.Businesses in the financial services industry will hence need to create an omnichannel presence on both the physical and digital fronts, from which they can:market to customers,offer a seamless customer experience, andglean insights on customer behavior to guide their business strategy.In the digital realm, LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud provides an omnichannel customer engagement solution for financial service businesses to automate the delivery of tailored marketing campaigns on a wide range of digital channels.Explore Mobile Marketing Cloud here to learn how it can digitally transform your marketing tactics and deliver the personalized experience that your customers seek.
Guidelines for setting up WhatsApp Display Name
Each WhatsApp Business Account will relegate a showcase name to the telephone number and submit it for audit by the WhatsApp group from your Business Manager. Show Name will appear to the User dependent on your sort of record.
Guidelines for Display Name
All display names ought to have a relationship with your business and ought not to disregard WhatsApp Commerce and Business arrangements. Having show names consistent with our rules is a necessity to send messages utilizing the WhatsApp Business API or meet all requirements for WhatsApp official business accounts.
The following are five standards for show names and direction for best practices to abstain from arranging blunders.
Compliance
A display name ought not to disregard WhatsApp Commerce and Business arrangements. A model for a store that sells wine glasses:
Acknowledged: ABC Wine Glasses
Not acknowledged: ABC Wine
Inside your organization, you may have separate WhatsApp business represents various divisions; just those divisions that are consistent with WhatsApp’s Commerce Policy may have a WhatsApp business account.
The exact portrayal of your business
A showcase name ought to speak to:
A business or its administration, item, or division
A test account or a demo record and it must keep up a relationship to the business (e.g., Fresh Produce Test)
A presentation name ought not to be:
A person’s complete name
A conventional term (e.g., Fashion)
A conventional geographic area (e.g., New York)
A trademark or a long portrayal
An association with an administration connection needs the WhatsApp group’s endorsement
Clear relationship with your business
A display name must have an unmistakable relationship with your business (must be alluded to the business’ site or outer media references). For instance:
Acknowledged: Name of a cause referenced on a non-benefit association’s site
Not acknowledged: Name of a foundation not referenced on any outer sites
In the event that the connection between your organization and the brand isn’t self-evident, show the relationship utilizing “by [company name].”
Not acknowledged: Fruit Snacks (Fresh Produce possesses the Fruit Snacks brand however their affiliation isn’t referenced on any outer sites)
Acknowledged: Fruit Snacks by Fresh Produce
Try not to utilize the name of an administration organization or other outsider in your organization’s showcase name.
Not acknowledged: Alpha Agency for Fresh Produce
Consistency with outer marking
A display name must have predictable marking with outer sources (e.g., an organization’s site or promoting). A model for a product offering named “New Produce Cold Pressed Juices”:
Acknowledged: Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices (how it is marked on your site)
Not acknowledged: Fresh Produce Juices (you changed marking by eliminating “Cold Pressed”)
Not acknowledged: FP Cold Pressed Juices (you added a contraction to the organization name conflicting with outside marking
Top 5 WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategies For Businesses
Social media has become an integral part of our lives. On average, an individual spends at least 2 hours 24 minutes on social media platforms, and this duration is increasing year on year. As our engagement on social media increased day by day, it makes sense for businesses to devise a marketing strategy for social media platforms and see it as a potential channel to reach out to their audience. Of all social media platforms, WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms and has recently stepped into commercial space with the launch of WhatsApp Business.
WhatsApp Business is widely in use by businesses to reach out to their audience on a personal level and build a strong brand presence. WhatsApp Marketing Campaign is one such approach used by businesses to create a buzz among large audiences.
What is a WhatsApp Marketing Campaign?
WhatsApp marketing campaign is the strategy of using different WhatsApp features to optimize reach, generate leads, get conversions, or create a brand presence.
Being the most popular messaging app, WhatsApp acts as a powerful means of connecting, interacting, communicating with potential customers in the most convenient manner possible.
WhatsApp has various incorporated features such as text messaging, audio and video calling, file, image, and contact sharing, making it a viable campaign tool.
Why Businesses need WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategy
WhatsApp messaging app is one of the most widely used apps in the world and has over 1.5 bn active users. WhatsApp is also known to have the highest message open rates and 74% of people check their message within 30 seconds of receiving it.
WhatsApp gives businesses the advantage to reach out to people through a platform they are already active on. Through WhatsApp, businesses can connect with a large group of people quickly and engage with them on a personal level.
WhatsApp marketing campaign makes it a two-way communication strategy. This gives businesses higher engagement from people and improves the chances of converting them to customers.
Methods of WhatsApp Marketing Campaign
WhatsApp offers diverse methods for carrying out marketing campaigns. Here are a few of them:
1. WhatsApp Integration with Websites
For any business, the website plays an essential role in sharing vital information with customers. It can also be used to carry out a WhatsApp campaign by integrating a click-to-chat widget. Through this widget, businesses can collect basic information about the customer, such as their name and contact number, and use it to invite them to the WhatsApp campaign.
2. WhatsApp Group Strategy
WhatsApp groups are one of the most widely used features in WhatsApp. Many users join groups related to friends, family, college, office, personal interests. This is the most effective way to build a community of like-minded people. Sharing relevant, useful, and engaging content with users is inevitable to make your WhatsApp campaigns productive. WhatsApp groups can be used to engage with prospects or customers faster and effectively.
3. WhatsApp Automation using API
WhatsApp offers a unique automation feature that allows businesses to WhatsApp messages to a large group of people automatically. This is a feature useful for big businesses that provide the latest updates and promotional messages to customers.
For example, E-commerce websites can use this API integration to update their customers about product status, shipping status and also post promotional messages to target customers.
4. WhatsApp Broadcast List
WhatsApp broadcast feature allows businesses to send messages to multiple contacts at once. By adding contacts to a broadcast list, businesses can send product updates or notifications to the entire list at once. Unlike group messaging, the broadcast feature keeps the identity of every member of the broadcast list hidden from each other.
Large businesses can use this feature to send recommendations or offers to customers and make them feel special.
5. WhatsApp Status Update Strategy
WhatsApp status update is a great way to share information with the entire contact list effortlessly. Businesses can use the status updates feature to promote offers and ask users to take a screenshot of the coupon code to avail the offer in-store. Businesses can generate traffic from WhatsApp by integrating links in status updates.
5 Best Whatsapp Marketing Campaign Strategies
Marketing campaigns are effective only when they are executed well. Using the right marketing strategies can help businesses gain a huge response in no time. Here are some of the best WhatsApp marketing campaign strategies to follow:
1. Create an Engaging Brand Persona for Whatsapp
The first step to create an engaging WhatsApp campaign is to create an engaging brand persona or character that represents your brand with its WhatsApp number. Customers do not like talking to automated machines. Having a real human engage with customers and be available at all times can help create a positive impact on customers.
2. Offer Great Value to build a phone database
In order to bring people to your business and build a strong user base, you as a business have to offer something of value like a promotional discount, free gifts, or similar benefits. By offering something that people might be interested in, businesses can build a strong phone database.
3. Offer Always On Relevant Content for Free
Post building a large phone database, businesses should aim to keep their members engaged with relevant information. Sharing useful information on the group can ensure that customers show involvement and maintain brand loyalty.
4. Deliver Speedy Customer Service
Good customer service can contribute a lot to building a positive brand image. Leaving them hanging on customer queries can cause businesses to lose valuable customers. WhatsApp enables businesses to deliver fast and effective customer service.
5. Consumer Research
Whatsapp has so far been used extensively for research and offers an easy-to-use, inexpensive, and quick platform to run some quick research. Businesses can ask consumers about flavors they like, ask them to choose between options the brand is proposing to launch among other things. Also, WhatsApp is highly relevant for conducting some quick discussion internally within your company.
5 Examples of Effective WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategy
Here are some of the best examples of effective WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategy:
Hellmann’s
Hellmann’s is a well-known name in mayonnaise brands but it earned a lot more popularity because of its unique campaign ‘WhatsCook’. Through this campaign, Hellmann’s invited people to send them a picture of the ingredients they have in their kitchen on WhatsApp and a chef would suggest them a recipe using Hellmann’s mayonnaise and also guide them with the process. This campaign turned out to be a huge success and got the brand global recognition.
This campaign generated 13,000 sign-ups and it got 99.5% of users’ approval that made it a huge success in Brazil and then was launched in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.
Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka created an exclusive party and had all tickets sold out except for two. It then announced that those who wish to join the party would have to come up with a convincing reason and send it to ‘Sven’- a virtual doorman via WhatsApp.
The campaign received a huge response and in just 3 days, Sven received over 600 contacts, generating more than 1000 multimedia content.
BuyaGift
Online gift retailer Buyagift launched a WhatsApp Marketing Campaign for informing its customers about deals and discounts on the site. The company started sending alerts direct to WhatsApp which was a way of prompting immediate responses from customers. Getting a personal message on mobile became more exclusive than an email.
It was a sales-driven campaign that was interesting and more interactive that customers also found highly useful in getting personalized services.
Banco Santander Bank
Banco Santander Bank created Open Bank, a WhatsApp customer service number where you can chat with the bank, post queries, solve issues. In a test pilot done with 17000 customers, 99% of consumers found the service very useful and 98% said they would continue to use it.
Reliance Brands
Reliance Brands, which handles luxury brands like Diesel, Kenneth Cole, and Zegna in India, offered customers the choice of remaining engaged with the brand via Whatsapp. Consumers lapped it up, finding out about promotions, new launches and getting brand information like pictures and video. In some cases, the conversion rate of consumers who were on the brands’ WhatsApp list was as high as 80%.
WhatsApp is a powerful social media tool and has huge capability in establishing a strong bond between brands and customers. WhatsApp can be used in multiple ways to carry out WhatsApp marketing and help businesses get leads and build a strong brand presence. WhatsApp when integrated with SCRM tools can help brands in providing effective customer care services and add value to WhatsApp campaigns.
WhatsApp Business: The New Age Of WhatsApp Based Customer Service
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Have you ever had an issue with the product you bought and tried reaching out to customer care? If yes, then you must be aware of how annoying it is to call up a customer care number numerous times. And talking to a customer care executive and get your issue resolved can be a struggle. Customer care service is a very important part of any business, I n many cases, can be a major contributor to the brand reputation.
For small businesses or early-stage startups, it can be quite challenging to provide a full-fledged customer support desk. WhatsApp Business comes to their rescue and provides them an easy way to communicate with their customers.
Why Customer Service is Important?
Many businesses focus entirely on selling their product or service and overlooks the importance of good customer service. While the reason behind doing so can be anything. From trying to avoid the additional cost in setting up customer service desks, or finding customer service a not so important aspect of their business. But the fact is that customer service is as important as the product itself and should not be seen otherwise.
Customer service is an essential post-sale activity that lets customers share their experience and feedback with their businesses. For instances where the customers did not have a very good experience with the product, excellent customer care gives businesses the second chance to win back the trust and confidence of their customers.
Providing good customer service can be challenging for many. It requires setting up the infrastructure and getting significant manpower involved. As it comes heavily on the pockets, not every business can afford it. The second best option that businesses have is deploying chatbots to handle customer queries. But chatbots are pre-programmed to handle specific types of queries only and cannot be useful to every customer.
WhatsApp Business allows businesses to have a one-to-one interaction with their customers through their personal WhatsApp messenger. This helps brands in building trust among their customers and understand their needs better. With WhatsApp Business messenger, businesses no longer need to set up exclusive customer service desks. They can take care of all their marketing, branding, and customer services needs all in one place and save a lot on cost as well.
How to use WhatsApp Business as customer service?
WhatsApp Business is an easy tool and is suitable for all business types. There are two ways in which you can use WhatsApp Business as customer service for your business.
Website Chatbox:
If you feel that your business is doing good on its own and you do not have an extensive need for WhatsApp Business. You can use it exclusively as a customer care tool for your website. All you need to do is implement the WhatsHelp widget button on your website. WhatsHelp widget lets you communicate with your website visitors using any of your social networking tools WhatsApp being one of them.
While it will look like any other chatbot for your visitors, you can surprise them with personal greetings like “Hi, I am Stephan at your service. Is there anything I can help you with?” using your WhatsApp Business messenger. This will give your conversation a human touch and get your visitor involved in an interesting conversation.
WhatsApp Business Messenger:
WhatsApp Business app is a great tool for WhatsApp based customer care services. Packed with high-end features such as business profile, automated messages, quick reply, labels, and message statistics, WhatsApp Business makes interacting with a large customer base quite manageable.
When Integrated with Social CRM tools , WhatsApp Business can be used for interacting in multiple languages for individual customers by selecting the recipient’s language for their messages. Now, that would definitely give your WhatsApp customer care an edge among your business competitors.
7 Good Etiquettes of WhatsApp Customer Service
WhatsApp is a personal communication space, and Whatsapp Customer Service requires a personal tone too. However, there are a few etiquettes to be followed for good customer service:
1. Make all your conversations sound human by adding your personal touch. Introduce yourself and address the other person with their name.
2. Make certain to end every discussion pleasantly even if the other person is being unruly. Shifting the conversation to a common point of interest or coming to an agreeable term can be a good practice.
3. Mirror the other individual’s style. Many times, speaking in a similar manner as the other person makes them more interested in the conversation. But you have to be careful as not everyone might take it well.
4. Show genuine interest in the conversation and try to figure out the problem. Avoid fillers like “Hm”, “Ok”, “K” in the conversation.
5. Avoid monologues and don’t be the only one talking. You must hold your customer’s attention to the conversation and asking them frequent questions can help you do that.
6. Never blame the customer. There can be instances where the customer is wrong, but it’s never wise to say it away on their face. It can piss them off and end the conversation on a bad note. Rather, focus on how the problem can be solved.
7. Be a good listener.
A good deed goes a long way so does good customer service. One good customer service can help you get several more customers, and a single bad experience gets you into trouble. So, what’s holding you back? Ensure that your customers get the best customer service by using WhatsApp Business for connecting with them. All you have to do is to download the app from Android PlayStore or IOs App Store
7 Effective WhatsApp Marketing Tips For Small Business
In the world of digital marketing, trends change every day. Techniques that got you leads today might not prove very effective in the days to come. For this reason, it becomes necessary that businesses keep a track of the latest trends in marketing and update their marketing techniques accordingly. In this age of digital marketing, hitting the right cords in marketing can make your business a huge success in no time.
While there are several marketing platforms that have helped businesses in their growth, WhatsApp marketing is one of the most effective among them. The reason being that WhatsApp messages have the highest open rate as compared to all its counterparts. Taking this into consideration, several big businesses are using it to influence their audiences. Let’s take a look at the most popular WhatsApp Marketing strategies in the past years and also learn about some useful WhatsApp marketing tips.
5 Top Brands and Their WhatsApp Marketing Strategies
Getting personal offers on WhatsApp from brands can help influence customers’ choices to a great extent. Here are a few examples of international brands winning at the WhatsApp Marketing game and earning their customers’ love and appreciation.
1. Netflix
NetFlix is one of the most popular online movie streaming platform known for its exclusive collections. What makes it a favorite among its users is that it suggests shows and movies based on previous watch histories. Users visiting their platform need not dig for movies of their interest. They can simply go through the suggested list and pick the movie of their choice.
The latest development in its marketing technique is its WhatsApp notification system wherein, it sends out a WhatsApp notification every time a new show or movie is added to the platform based on the users’ interest.
2. OYO
OYO is one of the largest hotel booking platforms offering hotels with all price ranges. OYO helps in finding hotels near you. Users can see what their hotel room looks like, its user review ratings, and more such information through its app. Recently it has come one step ahead. It introduced WhatsApp as a means to update their customers about their booking confirmations and well as directions to the hotel.
This makes it easy for customers as they need not call up the hotel for their booking inquiries. They can easily get all important information through their WhatsApp chat.
3. BookMyShow
BookMyShow is a platform where you can book movie tickets online. Users can download their tickets from the website to be shown at the multiplex of their choice. BookMyShow has made the entire process even more simple by sending out confirmation messages and updates to their users directly on their WhatsApp numbers.
4. Hellmanns’
HellManns’ which sells mayo products, has found the most unique way to use WhatsApp marketing to promote their brand and ensure higher brand engagement. Through its latest campaign ‘WhatsCook’, it had asked its customers to simply send a picture of the ingredients they have in their refrigerator through WhatsApp, and HellManns’ suggested recipes that could be made from them. This campaign was a huge success and saw 13 thousand user registrations and 4 million website hits.
5. Cred
Cred is an online credit card bill payment app that has used WhatsApp notification as one of its features. Cred keeps track of multiple credit cards and sends a timely reminder when payments are due, making sure its customers never miss a due date. To encourage timely payments, it also offers cashback and discounts on each payment.
7 WhatsApp Marketing Tips for Ecommerce Business
If you are a WhatsApp marketer or a business looking for WhatsApp marketing tips for your business, here are a few points that you may find useful:
1. Build a brand persona
WhatsApp can be a great place to build up a brand persona, especially for small brands by setting a tone for your communication with your customers. Making them feel special or coming up with ways to help them out can give a big boost to your brand image.
2. Provide client assistance
Don’t use WhatsApp just to push your product information down your customer’s throat. Participate in meaningful interactions and assist them in every way possible. This can be one of the most useful Whatsapp marketing tips if you are a small business and wish to make a strong brand image.
3. Don’t simply sell
Selling your product through WhatsApp marketing can be the motive, but it should not be your sole purpose. Use the platform to establish a strong personal bond with customers.
4. Influence your customers with choices
Not every customer may be planning to use your service or product, but when they are offered interesting choices or offers, they can be inclined to try your product.
5. Create broadcast lists
Creating broadcast lists and using WhatsApp bulk sender opinions can help your business reach out to a bigger audience and make WhatsApp marketing faster and convenient.
6. Make creative offers and promotions
Never overlook the power of creativity. A simple and creative ad copy or creative promotion can help you garner more attention from customers as well as the media. Several businesses have shifted from large budget advertisements to simple yet creative ads.
Example:
Burger King had released an ad asking its customers to eat at its rival food chains such as Mc Donalds, Subway, KFC, etc. Not only was this move largely appreciated by all, but it also gained huge media attention.
7. Engage directly with phone calls
For small businesses, there may be times when your client needs customization in your product or need assistance over a call. WhatsApp calling feature makes it easy for you to call them up in any corner of the world free of cost. This can be one of the biggest advantages of using WhatsApp for customer services. Additional features such as voice messages, sharing docs, and multimedia content can be easily done through WhatsApp.
Now, that you know about all the latest tips and tricks of WhatsApp marketing, try implementing them in your own business as well. WhatsApp marketing can be quite simple when done using the right tools. WhatsApp Business when integrated with several advanced tools such as WhatsApp link generator and Social CRM tools can help boost your WhatsApp marketing capabilities.
WhatsApp Privacy Policy And Role Of Data Analytics In E-commerce
Demand for WhatsApp marketing is growing each day, with more businesses joining this platform to reach out to its users. E-commerce through platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, isn’t new. You can find this practice to be as old as these services themselves. Social media platforms generate useful data and can be used for data analytics in e-commerce to help in improving user experience.
So, what makes marketing through SNS (Social networking services) so effective?
Social Networking Platforms are equally popular among all age groups. It’s also the place where most people spend their leisure time. This means ads and content floated on these platforms will get more attention as compared to any other marketing approach. Individuals coming across an ad on social media are highly likely to click on the link or place an order. This approach faster and effective, and it also makes it easy to find interested customers through data analytics. Once businesses have data from interested customers, they can pursue them further.
WhatsApp in particular is one of the most popular marketing platforms and has been known to have the highest open rate of 98% and up to 40% response rate. Since WhatsApp is easy to use and is suitable for all businesses big and small, businesses prefer it to create a more personal relationship with their customers. Moreover, the cost involved in marketing through WhatsApp is nominal as compared to television or newspaper ads.
But will WhatsApp’s new privacy policy have a negative impact on the business on WhatsApp?
The latest privacy policy update released by WhatsApp owned Facebook, has caused quite a stir among its users. Here is what the new privacy policy looks like:
The Myth
1 . With the implementation of the new privacy policy, WhatsApp will share all their account information with Facebook.
2. Users personal chats will no longer be personal and Facebook will be able to read them.
The Fact
WhatsApp is very protective of its users and is highly committed to its user’s privacy. All chats on the platform are end-to-end encrypted. Which means that no one can read them except the sender and the receiver. Hence, the updated privacy policy does not change anything and works completely outside the boundaries of its user’s privacy.
WhatsApp consistently strives towards improving its user experience and work on understanding its user behavior, their interests, likes/dislikes, and more. For this, they require some basic information such as IP address, mobile device information, service-related information, how its users interact with others, service-related information, transaction data, hardware information, and account registration details. These details help them identify issues that its users may be facing and come up with appropriate solutions.
The updated privacy policy is an attempt to ensure better security to your account. It also helps in fighting against spam, fraud, or any unauthorized practices on its platform. Once this new policy is implemented, WhatsApp users can use the platform more securely.
Impact of Updated Privacy Policy on Businesses
The new update will help businesses with data analytics. This in turn will help them in understanding their audience better and ensure better user engagement. For businesses that run entirely on WhatsApp or WhatsApp business, this update will provide them better insights about its customers. It will also ensure that they carry out all their business transactions safely.
So, the new privacy policy update works in favor of its users. Small and medium businesses can find it to be useful in more ways imagiable.
How Data Analytics in e-commerce plays an important role
E-commerce is mainly driven by customer demand and user experience. For businesses, it becomes vital to know what customers expect from them and how to improve the user experience and engagement.
Let’s take the example of Meesho:
Meesho is a social commerce platform that allows individuals and small businesses to start their online store. Users can further sell those products through SNS such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
Once you register on the Meesho app, you can see a wide variety of products from various whole sellers. Users can share the product catalog of that particular seller on their social media profile. As soon as you get an order, you can send a request for the product to the seller. The seller then delivers the product directly to the end buyer. This earns the individual or business a certain share of the profit.
Role of data analytics
Now, if we bring data analytics into the picture things become much simpler.
For example, if the seller knows which type of product is most in demand, which will be their peak season, what are the prices that their competitors are offering, which region generates maximum demand, wich user brings them maximum orders and more, it will become so much easier for sellers on Meesho to plan their production and meet their customer demands faster.
Data analytics can also be used by e-commerce sites in determining user behavior on the business website. Information like how much time they spend on the website, which are the links they clicked, the kind of products they were interested in, and the price range they were looking for, all these data can help the business sites improve their user experience by suggesting the user the handpicked items that fit the users choice and price range.
Data analytics is extensively used on social media platforms as well. It figures out which type of content you are interested in and suggest similar content so that you enjoy spending more time on the platform. Facebook uses a high level of data analytics to identify the likes, dislikes, interests, activity, social network, jobs, and much more so that that can target you with custom ads that fit perfectly to your taste and requirements.
So, the next time you see a pop-up ad for a product that you were interested in buying, don’t be surprised. You are seeing the ad because you have shown interest in similar products in some way or the other.
WhatsApp- A new era e-commerce platform
WhatsApp which was invented to create a platform for personal conversations has completely transformed the e-commerce space. From having one to one communication with customers to completely shifting their businesses to WhatsApp’s business app WhatsApp Business, we have seen all businesses small and big embrace WhatsApp marketing. It has also opened new opportunities to SMEs and craftsmen to sell their products anywhere across the globe through their simple app.
WhatsApp encouraged this huge shift in marketing through its platform by introducing features such as WhatsApp pay which allows sending and receiving money through WhatsApp just like we send or receive text messages. Every other day, this social messaging platform adds more and more features to its app, which makes it extremely easy for everyone to run their business hassle-free.
LIKE.TG, which provides an added layer of high-end customer relationship management features to WhatsApp can help businesses in engaging with their users better through WhatsApp and establish a strong personal relationship through personal interactions.
Just by looking at the pace at which WhatsApp is digging its roots deep into the e-commerce space, it can be safely said that WhatsApp marketing is the future of e-commerce and social e-commerce being the future of marketing is inevitable.
WhatsApp Guidelines: 10 Tips On How To Not Get Blocked By Clients
WhatsApp is one of the best platforms for advertisements. Not just because it’s fast or cost-effective, but also because WhatsApp is one of the most widely used applications which allows businesses to reach out to a wider customer base.
But WhatsApp is a personal messaging app where people like to have close conversations with their family and friends. Invading their personal space with unsolicited advertisements may not be received very well in many cases. But not all hope is lost yet. There are certain guidelines that businesses can follow for their advertising and avoid WhatsApp ban by their clients.
Tips on WhatsApp Marketing to avoid WhatsApp block
Here are some of the WhatsApp anti-ban guidelines to consider for your WhatsApp marketing and :
1. Get consent from your audience
One of the most important tips is to get consent from your target audience before sending them Whatsapp notifications. Unlike other platforms, WhatsApp follows strict measures to protect its users from unwanted spam and junk messages. So it’s advisable for businesses by taking consent from their customers before sending them WhatsApp notifications either through SMS link or via website or app.
2. Don’t sound like a bot
Make sure your messages sound human. Making it sound like a robot might give an impression to your audience that you are a bot or the message is spam. If possible, try communicating with your audience in their local language or tone to make them feel more special and interested in the conversation.
“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people”– William Butler Yeats
3. Save the contact numbers of your customers before sending them messages
Having all the numbers saved in your phonebook will help you identify each one of your customers individually. It will also help WhatsApp AI to identify you as a genuine person instead of a spamming bot.
4. Use your business account for all WhatsApp conversations
Using a professional WhatsApp account with a brand logo as the display picture and all business-related information in its bio can help audiences identify the business uniquely. Using this guideline for WhatsApp marketing also eliminates the risk of being marked as spam.
5. Address each contact by their names
Addressing each individual by their names makes the person feel special and gives them the impression that the message is exclusively for them. Adding elements that invite their response can also ensure better engagement and help in building the brand image.
6. Send out meaningful content
Make sure that the content you share with your audience is useful for them. It could be anything from a new product update, a new tutorial video, or a promotional advertisement. Sending useless ‘Good morning’ messages or seasonal greetings can annoy your audience and send you to their block list.
7. Schedule your messages appropriately
When it comes to advertising, timing is everything. Sending messages at wrong times of the day like early mornings or late at night can result in messages being ignored. Also applies for days such as Saturday nights or Monday early mornings. These are the times when people prefer not to be disturbed. So plan your content schedule accordingly.
8. Try sending short messages
Reading long text messages can be a little overwhelming for your audience. Sending shorter messages will make them more readable. For situations where long text messages are unavoidable, adding an intuitive headline that describes the whole text can help get your readers’ attention to the message. This WhatsApp guideline can be useful for both text messages as well as promotional content.
9. Avoid sending forwarded messages to a large group of people
Messages that have been forwarded on WhatsApp are labeled as “Forwarded”. Sending an already forwarded message to a large group of people will mark the message as “Forwarded many times”. This looks like spam and results in your reader ignoring it or blocking you all together. It’s always advisable to always verify the authenticity of the message before forwarding it to anyone.
10. Always prefer using WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp over the same network
WhatsApp AI keeps track of the network used to check if a message is spam. Using the different networks/ hosted networks for both Web and App may appear as spam and may even result in your WhatsApp account being deactivated.
Using these anti-ban WhatsApp guidelines religiously, you can ensure that your WhatsApp messages reach your audience and are read. However, it does not always guarantee that your number will not be muted or blocked by your customer as it always depends on person to person how they see your marketing approach and if they are interested in engaging in any kind of conversation.
Do Don’ts of WhatsApp Marketing
Apart from suggested guidelines, there are also some do’s and don’ts that has to be kept in mind at all times for effective WhatsApp marketing:
Do’s
1 . Do engage with your audience’s group chats, feedbacks, and grievances. It helps in building a strong bond.
2. Do make your content interesting and engaging for a better response from your audience.
3. Do turn on your “Read” receipts to know if your messages have been read by your audience, If your audience is not reading or responding to your messages consistently, avoid sending them messages in the future.
4. Do make sure that the audience that you are trying to send a WhatsApp message to is available on the platform before you send out any specific information.
Don’ts
1 . Don’t send messages to individuals who have blocked you. As it may result in your number being blocked permanently or worse marked as spam.
2. Don’t send multiple messages all at the same time. Sending messages with a gap of a minute or two gives the recipient time to read the messages and reply accordingly.
3. Don’t send random messages to random people as there is a high chance that the person can report you as spam. As per WhatsApp policy, if any number is marked as spam by 5-10 people, your number can be banned.
4. Don’ forward unknown links or URLs to a large number of people. Many times it can be malicious content or a harmful virus and can cause a lot of damage to you as well as its recipients.
WhatsApp marketing can be easy if we know exactly what to avoid in our marketing approach. Though there are no fixed rules for it, these guidelines can be of great help for businesses that are just starting with their WhatsApp marketing. You can also enhance your WhatsApp Business features by integrating them with other tools such as SCRM and WhatsApp Link Generator for a more holistic experience.
Top 5 WhatsApp Marketing Tools And Service Providers in 2021
Our addiction to social media is increasing each day. But of all social media platforms, WhatsApp has found significant popularity among users of all age groups. This has led brands to use it as a means to promote their businesses, and Whatsapp marketing has become the latest digital marketing trend. WhatsApp allows businesses to come up close and personal with their audiences. This helps businesses identify leads, pursue them effectively and convert them into loyal customers through time.
But WhatsApp marketing requires several tools to enhance the marketing capabilities and make the process effective. There are several WhatsApp Marketing service providers in the market, which offer high-end WhatsApp Marketing tools for all kinds of businesses. But before we discuss about it, let’s first learn about WhatsApp marketing and its advantages.
What is WhatsApp Marketing?
WhatsApp marketing is a messenger marketing technique, which implies promoting a brand through WhatsApp. WhatsApp marketing involves using the messaging platform to reach out to people, find leads, educating customers about products and services, and providing customer care.
WhatsApp is the most widely used social platform and has the highest message open rate. This gives businesses the leverage of getting higher customer attention and in-time response and makes marketing through the platform more effective.
Businesses are using the WhatsApp platform for connecting with customers on a personal level, sharing product or service updates, carrying out customer care services, and building a positive brand image with instant responses.
5 Best WhatsApp Marketing Service Providers
Here are some of the best WhatsApp Marketing service providers in the market
1. Sirena. app
Serina.app helps businesses engage with their customers through WhatsApp and bring their online and offline worlds together. It provides a centralized communications channel and helps in keeping track of communications within the organization. Through Serina.app, businesses can have new clients automatically and exclusively assigned to the sales team.
Key features of Serina.app
1 . Through Serina.app, different members of the organization can share their WhatsApp screens. This ensures transparency and consistency between teams of the organization.
2. Serina.app provides a shared Facebook and WhatsApp inbox that allows users or agents to work collaboratively as they respond to clients
3. Serina.app allows automated Serina bots to take care of all customer queries and provide instant responses.
4. Website Visitor Tracking feature helps Serina.app users to identify potential leads and send them follow-up emails for further communications.
2. LIKE.TG
Social Epoch is a CRM integration software particularly built for business via WhatsApp that offers features like contact management, tags, sales funnel, polls, or build your e-commerce store on WhatsApp. It finds its application in industries such as e-commerce, retail, education, public services, and automotive. Businesses can use the platform on any device and target a large number of customers through a platform they are familiar with. Through LIKE.TG, businesses can approach leads on a personal level and offer customized services and boost customer experience.
Key features of LIKE.TG:
1 . LIKE.TG provides cloud document storage which keeps all your essential documents and data safe.
2. The internal Chat Integration feature of LIKE.TG allows marketing admin to run multiple WhatsApp accounts simultaneously and integrate chats between different departments or processes on the same tool.
3. Marketing Automation Integration through LIKE.TG allows businesses to run marketing campaigns, share advertisements and product updates, and carry out CRM processes using the same tool.
4. The best feature of LIKE.TG is that it can run entirely on mobile and makes it easy for marketers to manage customer notifications on the go. This also allows businesses to provide services in real-time.
5. LIKE.TG also works as a task management tool and can help big enterprises manage tasks between teams and keep all processes in sync.
3. WhatsHash
WhatsHash is one of the WhatsApp marketing platforms that act as a CRM tool and enables sales, support marketing services. Using WhatsHash, businesses can share files and access each other’s contacts within the organization. Whatshash offers a group polling feature that helps businesses get useful feedback from customers and ensure high engagement.
Key features of WhatsHash:
1 . WhatsHash offers a document storage feature where you can save all text messages, photos videos sent by customers. It also allows retrieving and filtering them using a powerful dashboard.
2. WhatsHash allows businesses to build customer profiles and save customer information like Name, Email, etc. This helps in managing long contact lists and identifying each one of them uniquely.
3. With WhatsHash users can create tags that are similar to folders making contacts, messages, and media more manageable.
4. With Auto-Sync Chat, users can easily sync the conversation of any contact, group, or broadcast list
4. AMOcrm
AMOcrm is a multi-channel communication tool that works across multiple messaging platforms. AMOcrm lets you converse through messengers, emails, and calls from a single app. It provides businesses a robust CRM platform to connect with their customers on a personal level. AMOcrm is a cloud-based platform and provides businesses a secure and easy to use API to manage their daily tasks.
Key features of AMOcrm:
1 . AMOcrm allows contacts management by assigning tags which makes it easy to differentiate among contacts.
2. AMOcrm offers task management features that make it easy for marketing teams to coordinate with each other.
3. To make managing large contact lists on messaging apps, AMOcrm includes an import/and export feature. Through this feature marketing person can add multiple contacts across various messaging platforms easily.
4. The biggest advantage of using messaging platforms is that it makes lead management easy and effective. AMOcrm helps businesses approach leads on a personal level and convert leads into customers.
5. Respond.io
It is a cloud-based software company that offers relationship management services. It focuses mainly on customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.Respond.io uses self-learning AI to help agents manage, respond to and automate conversations.
Key features of Respond.io:
1 . Respond.io offers unified messaging, which helps teams get a holistic view of the ongoing activities and communicate at a scale.
2. It offers powerful broadcast and survey features that help users keep their audiences engaged and updated about the latest notifications.
3. Respond.io has chat automation tools that allow businesses to respond to a large group of people instantly using pre-curated templates.
4. The respond.io platform uses self-learning AI to help agents manage, respond to and automate conversations.
Advantages of WhatsApp Marketing Software
WhatsApp marketing software helps extend the capabilities of the WhatsApp messaging app and use it as a full-fledged marketing software. Here are some of the main advantages of WhatsApp marketing software:
1 . WhatsApp marketing software provides a centralized channel for multiple teams in an organization and brings transparency between teams.
2 . It offers automated tools that enable instant responses to a large group of customers without any manual intervention.
3 . It helps in collecting, processing, and storing all critical data to improve customer engagement and overall experience.
4 . It provides features to customize contact details and helps in identifying each member of the contact list easily.
5 . It allows creating broadcast lists and share regular updates to a large number of people easily.
WhatsApp marketing tools and help businesses have a clear picture of how well their marketing strategy is performing and bring transparency between teams as well as clients. Irrespective of how big your organization is or the type of product you are offering, WhatsApp marketing automation tools and SCRM help in keeping a constant track of all important aspects of the business and bring more efficiency into the system.
Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools and Software in 2021
In a time when speed and efficiency mean everything, marketing automation has become the need of every business. Marketing automation helps businesses to organize, automate, and track their marketing workflows and increase the efficiency of the sales funnel. Marketing Automation tools are used extensively in both B2B and B2C businesses and help them automate their email marketing, social media marketing online-campaign and lead generation processes.
Marketing automation and CRM tools go hand-in-hand are usually used as a combination to achieve better marketing efficiency and accelerate marketing efforts. While marketing automation tools help in making marketing processes easier and faster, CRM tools work towards offering a focused and personalized touch to customers.
Common Marketing Automation Features
Based on their features, marketing automation can be classified into these five categories:
1. Email marketing automation
Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing techniques. It allows businesses to target a mass audience and channel it to lead generation. Email marketing is also used to collect customer feedback, and updating them with the latest offers and products. Using e-mail marketing automation, you can send emails to prospects that visit your website and show some form of engagement. Email automation tools can be tuned to automatically send a cold email to the masses or target a segmented group and boost lead generation.
2. Lead nurturing
Finding a lead and understanding their browsing behavior can help in providing more focused product recommendations. This can lead to a higher chance of converting them to paying customers. Marketing automation tools can help you in tracking the activities of customers visiting your site and understand their behavior to approach them accordingly. Advanced automation tools can then be used to further provide customized notifications, categorize them and rate them based on their buying probability.
3. Social media automation
In today’s time, building a strong social media presence is vital to attract leads and build a relationship with customers. But managing several social media platforms, planning marketing approaches, and interacting with customers can be daunting tasks for marketing teams. Social media automation can take care of all planning and implementation processes of social media marketing. Social media automation can further be used to engage with customers for one-on-one interactions using chatbots.
4. Analytics and reporting
Marketing automation tools can have an advantageous role in tracking the performance of marketing campaigns and advertising and can help in planning for further strategies accordingly. Advanced marketing tools can also help in collecting critical customer data which can be used to improve customer experience and ensure retention.
5. SEO, and paid media advertising
Social media marketing tools help in running SEO and digital media advertising through a centralized system and manage paid social media campaigns and ads effectively. Having a centralized system can help in personalizing marketing approaches and run account-based marketing.
Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools
Here are some of the top marketing automation tools available for small and large enterprises :
1. Salesforce
Salesforce is a well-known name among marketing automation tools. Pardot is a Salesforce marketing automation tool built on a CRM platform. It helps businesses streamline their marketing efforts and sales approaches. By bringing marketing automation tools and CRM on a single platform, businesses enjoy the seamless experience of managing and executing the entire business lifecycle efficiently.
Key features of Pardot:
1 . It offers personalized campaigns that can be scaled easily and lead to powerful lead generation
2. By combining marketing automation tools with CRM, Pardot has aligned sales with marketing. This ensures that there are no disconnections between teams.
3. Pardot offers real-time engagement alerts and helps businesses keep track of active leads and engage with them further.
4. Pardot supports in-depth analytics and reporting and helps businesses identify what’s working and what’s not in their marketing approaches.
2. LIKE.TG
LIKE.TG is a CRM based marketing automation tool that is based on WhatsApp and allows enterprises to manage and execute marketing and sales processes through the messaging app. Businesses can use the platform on any device and target a large number of customers through a platform they are familiar with. WhatsApp is the most widely used social platform and has the highest message open rate. Through LIKE.TG, businesses can approach leads on a personal level and offer customized services and boost customer experience.
Key features of LIKE.TG:
1 . LIKE.TG provides cloud document storage which keeps all your essential documents and data safe.
2. The internal Chat Integration feature of LIKE.TG allows marketing admin to run multiple WhatsApp accounts simultaneously and integrate chats between different departments or processes on the same tool.
3. Marketing Automation Integration through LIKE.TG allows businesses to run marketing campaigns, share advertisements and product updates, and carry out CRM processes using the same tool.
4. The best feature of LIKE.TG is that it can run entirely on mobile and makes it easy for marketers to manage customer notifications on the go. This also allows businesses to provide services in real-time.
5. LIKE.TG also works as a task management tool and can help big enterprises manage tasks between teams and keep all processes in sync.
3. AMOcrm
AMOcrm is a marketing automation tool that works across multiple messaging platforms. AMOcrm lets you converse through messengers, emails, and calls from a single app. It provides businesses a robust CRM platform to connect with their customers on a personal level. AMOcrm is a cloud-based platform and provides businesses a secure and easy to use API to manage their daily tasks.
Key features of AMOcrm:
1 . AMOcrm allows contacts management by assigning tags which makes it easy to differentiate among contacts.
2. AMOcrm offers task management features that make it easy for marketing teams to coordinate with each other.
3. To make managing large contact lists on messaging apps, AMOcrm includes an import/and export feature. Through this feature marketing person can add multiple contacts across various messaging platforms easily.
4. The biggest advantage of using messaging platforms is that it makes lead management easy and effective. AMOcrm helps businesses approach leads on a personal level and convert leads into customers.
4. ZOHO
ZOHO MarketingHub is a marketing automation software that brings e-mail marketing, marketing automation, and phone integration under the same roof. ZOHO solutions help businesses to understand their customer behavior better through in-depth analytics and streamline marketing approaches accordingly.
Key features of ZOHO MarketingHub:
1 . Autoresponders feature of ZOHO helps in scheduling various marketing activities such as social media posts, e-mails, and replies to customer responses. These scheduled tasks can be automatically executed without human intervention.
2. Multi-channel marketing helps businesses to reach out to their customers on multiple channels simultaneously.
3. In large organizations, workflow management can be an issue. ZOHO MarketingHub helps by providing a visual dashboard to keep track of all workflows.
4. BI-based analytics helps in understanding customers’ web behavior more closely and curate personalized marketing messages for each of its customers.
5. Verloop.io
Verloop.io is a customer support automation platform that helps improve customer experience and generate leads from landing pages. It also provides customer support on websites and messaging platforms through AI-based messaging bots. Verloop.io aims at improving customer engagement across various platforms generate more leads on landing pages.
Key features of Verloop.io
App integration feature allows businesses to manage multiple marketing channels effortlessly. Verloop.io helps in targeted e-mailing and improve e-mail marketing effectiveness. One of the biggest advantages of using Verloop.io in enterprises is that it provides a team inbox feature. This allows multiple teams to communicate among themselves easily. Verloop.io enables pop-up chat windows on websites to encourage customer engagement and help businesses improve customer experience.
Benefits of using Marketing automation tools
Here are some of the primary benefits of using marketing automation tools and softwares in an organization.
Lower operating costs
Automation takes care of all repetitive manual tasks and makes computers responsible for them. This reduces the role of humans while improving speed and efficiency in processes. Computers complete triggered actions efficiently; they can send a set email in response to form fill, alert a team member to a change in lead status, or send social posts at a scheduled time. With the reduced role of humans and more efficient processes, businesses can earn better ROI and reduce operating costs.
More data
Marketing automation systems produce granular, customer-focused data that can help teams segment customers, build better nurture campaigns, and close more sales. All of this new data can be analyzed right in the marketing automation tool or fed into business intelligence (BI) software to view its impact on the company’s overall ROI.
Analytics and reporting
The best marketing automation software includes analytics and reporting features that track and illuminate your campaigns. Using these features can help your team build better campaigns with more personalization and better customer targeting. While BI software brings together data from all across the company, marketing automation analytics focuses on marketing and sales campaigns, giving you better insights and preparing your company for growth.
Centralized marketing tool
Marketing automation software can provide centralizing control over email, content marketing, contact forms and downloads, social media, and even direct mail and traditional media channels. This depends on the scope and price of the software, so check feature lists carefully before you buy to make sure you don’t pay for features you won’t use.
Improved ROI
Expect marketing automation software to increase your team’s efficiency, bring in more qualified leads, and target the perfect customers at the right time. These improvements should increase your overall revenue.
Digital Marketing is an ever-evolving marketing technique and varies significantly based on the type of business or organization. Marketing automation tools such as Salesforce, ZOHO, AMOcrm, and Verloop.io are best suited for medium to large organizations whereas LIKE.TG can find its use in small as well as large organizations as it is a WhatsApp based tool. Get to know more about it here.
Everything About WhatsApp CRM
Almost a year in the wake of reporting that organizations would be charged for utilizing their informing talk stage, WhatsApp has introduced their eagerly awaited business API. This will permit a business to send messages to their clients utilizing mixes with CRM frameworks.
The Power for Businesses
Recently WhatsApp started to collaborate with some popular brands for integrating API with their applications for sending information about products and services with customers. This also includes updates and service request support information, as well as video, audio, and image files. The New API also empowers businesses to include their contact details, website links, store, or office location. As the API offers two-way chat, customers can now get help from the business being in a comfortable environment without using the telephone.
At present, the WhatsApp business API won’t profoundly be changing the way a business connects with its audience. how organizations associate with their target audience. As the API lacks integration of CRM, communication via WhatsApp API is more like email and SMS. To ensure businesses can take advantage of WhatsApp, Social Epoch has launched the next generation of WhatsApp CRM tool.
Benefits of WhatsApp CRM
1. Know what your customers really want
Since all the client-related information can be put away in WhatsApp CRM, it enables sales reps to examine the requirements of clients and even envisions their issues – all at the perfect time. This expands consumer loyalty and guarantees loyalty, as well as higher profit margins.
2. Show up in time for the new sale
By following all correspondence with the clients, WhatsApp CRM helps sales reps to know precisely when clients should be reached; for example, for product replacement, contract renewal, or for an upsell to a new product or service. This all increases your chances of closing a sale.
3. Plan and time-manage like a pro
WhatsApp CRM enables sales reps to easily prioritize their daily schedules, to ensure customers are not ignored and are contacted on time. In fact, WhatsApp CRM allows sales people to spend more time with customers, which leads to more deals closed and a stronger customer base.
Using the WhatsApp API will require some investment to get up and running, and to also ensure that it’s scalable and robust. This is where partnering with Social Epoch can take the stress out of the implementation.
To register your interest, businesses should contact their account managers or contact our sales team. We’ll then work with you to set up WhatsApp rich messaging.
LIKE.TG Traffic Bypass: A Function Beyond WhatsApp Link Generator
LIKE.TG is a social CRM tool integrated on WhatsApp that has empowered many businesses to manage their entire sales funnel effortlessly and provide their customers fast and efficient customer care services.
Social Epoch offers several features such as quick reply, auto-reply, WhatsApp translator, WhatsApp link generator, group joiner, user analytics, group joiner, and many more features which makes it a robust and effective SCRM as well as WhatsApp Marketing tool.
What is the LIKE.TG Traffic bypass Function?
WhatsApp is one of the most secure messaging platforms with end-to-end encryption and has a strict anti-spamming policy. WhatsApp keeps a track of every account activity to ensure that users do not spam others. It has certain algorithms in place to check if any account behaves like spam and automatically blocks the account. However, these algorithms do not differentiate between an individual account and a business account, and in many cases, genuine business accounts get blocked.
LIKE.TG Traffic Bypass is a feature that allows WhatsApp admins to overcome stringent WhatsApp scrutiny and manage their large customer base effortlessly.
Here is how it works:
LIKE.TG Bypass feature enables businesses to create a unique link which when shared with customers links the customer to multiple accounts which are assigned randomly. This mechanism allows each account to be treated uniquely and helps in avoiding getting blocked by WhatsApp.
Say you have Account A, Account B, Account C, Account D, and Account E as your customer service accounts, The admin can use the Traffic bypass feature to generate a unique link that can be shared with customers. This link will redirect the customers to one of the accounts.
This feature ensures that no single account gets a high influx and eliminates the risk of being blocked by WhatsApp security policy.
Why is the Traffic Bypass function important for businesses?
WhatsApp Traffic Bypass function is a powerful function and finds its use in all kinds of businesses. Here are some of the reasons which prove that the LIKE.TG Bypass feature is a true essential for any business:
1 . Helps businesses stay connected with customers without facing the risk of losing contact with customers in case their account gets blocked.
2. Businesses can use a single WhatsApp link to link customers with multiple WhatsApp accounts
3. Easily manage customers between sales, customer service, and relationship maintenance groups automatically.
4. You can divert different groups and monitor the number of people in the group, and then drain to a new group
5. Distribute customers to different customer services automatically, avoiding assign sales leads manually
Traffic bypass feature allows businesses to keep track of the analytics such as number of shunting links, number of clicks in a week, and total clicks so far. This helps in tracking lead conversions easily.
WhatsApp Link Generator v/s Traffic Bypass
LIKE.TG Traffic Bypass feature may seem closely identical to WhatsApp Link generator as in both cases, we generate a WhatsApp link and share it with prospect clients through social media handles or text messages. However, here are the main points that differentiate the two.
How Traffic Bypass Function works
1 . Login to LIKE.TG WhatsApp Marketing web admin console after purchasing the service.
2. Go to Shunting Tools, choose the type of shunting link( Shunting2Account for customer service and Shunting2Group for WhatsApp Group) you want to create.
3. Here you have two options. Either you can select the account or the group depending on where you want to redirect your customer. Here let’s take the case of Shunting2Account and click the respective option.
Traffic Bypass to Account
4. Here you can see all existing links. To create a new link click the ‘Add’ button
5. Fill in the shunt name, phone numbers of target customers, their status, and a remark if necessary, and click on the ‘Submit’ button. You can create multiple customer lists and custom messages for each contact as well
6. In case you need to add more contact numbers to a particular shunt in the future, you can do so by clicking on the ‘Details’ button.
7. On the following screen, click on the ‘Add phone number’ button to add the phone number and other details of customers.
8. Once the details are filled in, click on the ‘Submit button to return back to the list of customer contact details. At this point, you can enable or disable particular contact by selecting the opinion from the ‘Expand’ dropdown list.
9. Once done, copy the link and share it with your customers through your WhatsApp chatbox.
Apart from this, the Traffic bypass feature can be used in two different ways. The first one being as a CTA on your social media pages like facebook, Linked, Instagram , etc. By clicking on the CTA, the user will be redirected to your WhatsApp chat box. The generated link can also be shared in the user bio as well.
If your website sees maximum traffic, you can use the feature on your website in the form of a clickable button as your contact option. By clicking on the link, your visitor can directly be connected with your helpline group.
Traffic Bypass to Group
4. To create a new Shunt2Group link, click the ‘Add’ button
5. Create your Group shunt name and add links to your groups.
6. To add more links in the future, click on the ‘Details’ button
7. Next click on the ‘Add Group link’ button to fill in the group link information
8. Once the information is filled in, click on the ‘Submit’ button to complete the process.
9. Now your group link is ready to be shared. Copy the link and share it across social media handles or your website for your customers to reach out to you easily.
Apart from this, the Traffic bypass feature can be used in two different ways. The first one being as a CTA on your social media pages like facebook, Linked, Instagram , etc. By clicking on the CTA, the user will be redirected to your WhatsApp chat box. The generated link can also be shared in the user bio as well.
If your website sees maximum traffic, you can use the feature on your website in the form of a clickable button as your contact option. By clicking on the link, your visitor can directly be connected with your helpline group.
Here is an example:
Features of LIKE.TG Traffic Bypass
LIKE.TG Traffic Bypass function offers the following unique features which make it stand out among any other CRM tools in the market:
1. Account enable/disable
When an account gets blocked or a group is fully reaching 256 members, the traffic bypass feature automatically disables the account/group access accordingly and makes it easy for admins to manage large contact lists.
2. Traceability
LIKE.TG lets you create a unique name for every shunt link. This helps in viewing and keeping track of the total number of links, no. of clicks for each link, and the total overall clicks of the links making it easily traceable
3. Group management
The traffic bypass feature monitors the number of people in the group, and then drains to a new group once a group reaches 256 members. This is an automatic feature aimed at reducing the overhead of admins who manage multiple accounts and groups.
4. Allows to add multiple numbers/ groups within one link
With more and more businesses joining WhatsApp for their marketing strategy and reaching out to their audience, LIKE.TG has become an indispensable part of their daily lives. LIKE.TG traffic bypass feature allows businesses to overcome the prudish policies of WhatsApp and stay connected with their valuable customers and clients. Make sure to check out more such amazing features offered by LIKE.TG.
9 Ways To Use WhatsApp To Boost Sales For Your Business
WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app that allows users to chat, call, video call, and share data with one another for free. WhatsApp user base has just crossed 1.6 billion in 2021 making it one of the most popular messaging app in the world. It has a diverse user base with users of different age groups, geographic locations, ethnicity, and community.
WhatsApp is mostly seen as a personal space where people connect with their close contacts. But businesses have lately started using WhatsApp to boost sales for their business. WhatsApp can be an unconventional marketing tool but it has a proven advantage when it comes to building strong relationships with customers and promoting a business.
9 Techniques of Using WhatsApp To Boost Sales
Here are 9 creative ways through which you can boost sales using WhatsApp and turn your business around easily:
1. Broadcast Lists
Broadcast Lists are a one-way messaging system that is similar to groups. In the broadcast list, the admin can create a list of contacts to send messages and alerts to members of the list individually. The recipients can neither reply to the message nor check the status of other members of the list.
Broadcast lists can be a great medium to send out important alerts and messages to your list of active clients. Since it worlds similar to Twitter, it can be used to increase engagements or share invitation links to your product pages or social handles.
2. Group Chats
Group chats are one of the best places to increase engagement from members of the group and make the conversations exciting. Use groups for discussions on certain topics, play fun games, take polls, do a survey or just have some fun conversation with your customers.
Group chats are particularly useful to create focus groups or performing market studies before launching a product.
3. Specialized Customer Support
Happy customers lead to higher retention and better customer lifetime value. But to ensure this, customers’ queries and concerns must be attended to well. WhatsApp is the best medium for customer service as it allows personal one-on-one conversation with customers and provides instant response. Giving customers to contact the business through WhatsApp and get instant responses from them gives them a sense of trust for the brand and its products.
4. Creative Offers and Promotions
Launched a new product or rolled out a new offer? Share all the latest updates with your customers through personal WhatsApp messages. Sharing creative offers and promotions can help build excitement around your products and bring more customers to your shopping site. By including clickable links, you can make it more simple for your customers to complete the checkout process and boosting sales.
5. Engage Directly with Phone Calls
WhatsApp allows you to make phone calls to any part of the world absolutely free. You can use this feature to stay connected with your customers and help them out with their queries and concerns. Calling up your customers to confirm their orders can speed up the sales process. For many businesses, calling regular customers to check on them and get their feedback is a usual practice.
6. Be Inclusive and Share Quality Content
Your WhatsApp conversations with customers should not be all about you. Keep your customers at the center of everything and give them a feeling of being special. Sharing quality content and keeping your customers and leads into the heart of everything can improve their engagement and builds a healthy rapport with them. It’s a proven fact that people prefer to buy from brands that they engage with regularly. Boost your sales using WhatsApp and stay connected with your customers always.
7. Product Catalog
Don’t make your customers go to and fro between WhatsApp messages and your website to check out every product you recommend or share. You can create your product catalog on WhatsApp Business and share it with your customers. This makes it easy for your customers to view the product and make payment for it all in the same place. You can also ask your customers to share your product catalog with their friends and family and grow your sales through their personal networks.
8. Offer easy payment through WhatsApp Pay
A large number of people leave products in their cart and never come back to them. Most of the time it’s because the checkout process may be too complicated or time-consuming. With WhatsApp, you can give your customers the option to pay using WhatsApp Pay. It’s completely hassle-free and the process is completed instantly making it a pleasurable experience.
9. Advertising through status
WhatsApp status can be a great feature for advertising to a large group of people for free. The fact that it lasts for 24 hrs makes it great for sharing informational videos, demos, flash sale information, and more. Another benefit of using WhatsApp status for advertising is that you can check the response statistics and see how a particular advertising strategy is working.
And that was 9 creative ways you can use WhatsApp to boost sales for your business. If you know of more ways, let us know!. Also, learn more about WhatsApp SCRM and WhatsApp Marketing, its usage, its advantages in e-commerce to learn how it can help you grow your business.
Manipulating 10 WhatsApp Accounts on one phone is easy! And it’s Free!
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world with its user base tipping 1.5 bn and growing each day. WhatsApp allows you to connect with people from any corner of the world instantly. You can exchange images, videos, documents, contacts, live locations, and even connect through audio and video calls.
WhatsApp is used as a personal space and is widely used by people to stay connected with friends, family, and colleagues. But in recent times, businesses have come to see it as a viable channel to connect with their customers on a personal level.
10 WhatsApp Accounts Feature
WhatsApp is becoming more important in digital marketing nowadays. Many own more than one WhatsApp accounts for various purposes but usually are bound by the limitation of “one device one WhatsApp”. For example, A WhatsApp Influencer may need to interact with different types of contacts such as personal contacts, fans, teams, fellow influencers, clients, and big brands. Managing such a large contact list may not be possible using a single WhatsApp account. It can be much easier maintaining separate accounts for each type of contact.
Similarly for e-commerce businesses, maintaining separate accounts for each team, distributor, or business process can help in keeping the system organized and improve efficiency. Being able to manipulate multiple WhatsApp accounts upon the same device is vital for boosting productivity. The bar is high but we made it possible. LIKE.TG enables you to log in to 10 WhatsApp accounts simultaneously on your mobile and it is completely free of charge!
9 Power-packed Features of LIKE.TG
There are many more power-packed features that I bet will hit a value bomb on your business.
1. Data Synchronization
We live in a fast-paced world where we cannot afford to lose time building a new contact list every time an account gets blocked. LIKE.TG allows users to immediately sync the data to another account in case one of the accounts gets blocked. Data synchronization also allows using the platform across multiple devices seamlessly.
2. Automate User Avatar
With LIKE.TG, you can create unique user avatars by assigning characteristic tags as per user behaviors and interests. This helpful feature allows admins to easily identify each user uniquely from the group and engage with them accordingly.
3. Smart chat-bot
From providing in-time customer care services, answering FAQs to getting user feedback, chat-bots form an important part of CRM. Using LIKE.TG’s smart chat-bot you can give your customers supreme customer care and gain maximum retention and lifetime customer loyalty. WhatsApp chatbots can help businesses engage in personal one-to-one conversations and understand them better and provide a much better customer experience.
You can use the smart chatbot to set the auto-reply from the admin console by using one or several keywords. Go to Auto-reply Settings, input your keywords relevant to the answer, choose the match type, input your auto-reply message content.
4. Smart Task Management
The best thing about LIKE.TG is that it is not just limited to just CRM features but goes beyond that to provide corporate-level assistance as well. It allows smart task management where you can instantly import tasks, provide customized assignment requirements, achieve task distribution as well as reassignments. Through this, organizations can have a centralized system where they can create, manage and track their daily tasks. It brings more transparency into the system and helps them sync their daily activities with other business components.
5. Visualized Data Board
In any organization, a lot of user data comes in on a daily basis. This data helps in user analytics, product, and marketing strategy planning. LIKE.TG helps in managing all the data and present in the form of visual data boards which makes it a lot easier for the management to monitor and analyze.
6. Account Activity Monitoring
Since LIKE.TG allows multi-account login, it becomes necessary to keep a track of all activities going on in all the accounts to keep everyone on the same page. To tackle this problem, it provides activity logs that reflect all the latest activities and help team members avoid repeating the same tasks. Team managers can also use this feature to keep track of all activities of their team members and monitor the progress of the tasks assigned.
7. Keyword Detect and Alarm
LIKE.TG has a unique keyword detection feature that identifies predefined keywords every time you receive a WhatsApp message from your customers. If the message requires immediate attention, it will raise an alarm and you can attend to the message immediately. This feature ensures that you do not have to check out each and every message manually and attend to only those messages that require your immediate action. For all other messages, you can use the auto-reply feature to ensure that no customer query is left unattended.
8. Multilingual Translator
In your pursuit to take your business global, you will need to interact with international clients who speak their native languages. You can overcome the language barrier in such cases using LIKE.TG’s multilingual translator feature. This feature allows you to select the target language for your communication and gives you the choice of selecting the native language for your clients.
Communicating with your client in their native language will help you gain a better response. You can also automatically translate all incoming messages to your preferred language and connect with all your international clients easily.
9. Data masking and Encryption
Organizations face a constant threat of being a victim of data leaks or losing all data due to data theft. With LIKE.TG, you can put such fears at rest because LIKE.TG provides data masking and end-to-end encryption which ensures that your data remains secure at all times. The masking and encryption security allow only the sender and the receiver to view the message. Other than that, no third party can view or track any of the WhatsApp data exchanged on the platform.
Advantages of being a LIKE.TG User
LIKE.TG is a solution that is suitable for all kinds of businesses big and small. If you wish to be one of the users, here are the advantages you get:
1 . It’s free. LIKE.TG solution is absolutely free for its users. However, there are some features that are available on subscription.
2. It’s fast. Setting up a LIKE.TG account takes less time than downloading any software. The entire setup process is simple and user-friendly.
3. It’s secure. You can always be sure that all your data and personal conversations are secure. Data synchronization and encryption mechanisms ensure that you never lose your data to anyone.
4. Allows multiple accounts simultaneously. You can use separate user accounts for your different business requirements or groups and keep all WhatsApp workplaces well organized.
5. Traffic bypass. Considering that WhatsApp has stringent algorithms in place which keep track of all account activities and blocks those user accounts that it might find suspicious. LIKE.TG saves you from the risk of getting blocked by ensuring that no single account of yours gets a high influx which might trigger the algorithm.
Currently, LIKE.TG is available for download on Windows for desktop versions and Androids for mobile versions.
You can also check out video tutorials and User guides to get more insight into the product.
How to Detect and Reduce Customer Churn Rate With LIKE.TG
No matter how good you are at your business or how well you treat your customers, there will be times when you have to face customer churn. And no matter how outstanding your customer service is, you cannot avoid it completely.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t reduce customer churn. Customer churn is a common phenomenon and can be minimized if you have the right tools and efficient techniques at your disposal. WhatsApp Business API-based LIKE.TG ticks the right boxes when it comes to an effective customer service tool. It connects businesses with customers through WhatsApp messaging platform and encourages two-way communication. This helps in building a stable relationship with customers, build brand loyalty and offer a superior customer experience to customers.
LIKE.TG helps in keeping a track of customer interactions and sales analytics that aids in the early detection of customer churn and can help you prevent it. But before we get to the how of it, let’s understand the basics of customer churn.
What is customer churn and why do customers do it?
Customer churn is the phenomenon where the customer or a subscriber stops doing business with you.
A customer may have several reasons for doing so. The most common reasons are not finding the product or service as per their expectations, lack of appropriate knowledge base for customers to refer, no option to exit a service, or bad customer service experience.
How do you identify customer churns?
Customer churn can be identified in one or more of the following ways:
o The total number of customers lost during a specific period.
o Percentage of customers lost during a specific period.
o Recurring business value lost.
o Percentage of recurring value lost.
How is the churn rate calculated?
The churn rate can be calculated as follows:
For a business, it crucial to have a low churn rate as it can negatively affect the ROI of the business and lead to high loss.
Why is having a low churn rate necessary?
Businesses invest a lot of money in finding leads and nurturing them to make them a customer. This cost adds to the cost of sales and marketing also known as the customer acquisition cost. High churn leads to higher CAC reduced revenue.
A consistently high churn rate will require a business to pump more money towards CAC. This will lead to a loss in revenue and even earn a bad reputation for the business. The more customers you churn, the more money you must spend to recoup the loss of business by finding new ones.
7 Tips On How to Reduce Customer Churn With LIKE.TG
LIKE.TG, as a WhatsApp-based CRM tool, can help you connect with your customers closely to identify the cause of customer churn and work towards improving the churn rate. Here are 7 tips to do so:
1. Understand the reasons for customer churn
The foremost important step to reduce customer churn is to identify the reason behind it. LIKE.TG helps you keep a track of your sales analytics and identify customers who have churned. You can connect with your customers and have frequent follow-ups to learn their reason for churn. Once you have identified the most common reason for customer churn, you can work on resolving it.
Read more: 5 Ways To Nurture Sales Leads Into Clients Using WhatsApp Business
2. Engage with your customers proactively
The worst mistake that you can make as a business is to not engage with your customers. Your customers may have expectations from you. By engaging with them, you can get a clear idea of what they expect from your business. You can on fulfilling their expectations and lower the churn rate.
Read more: 4 Ways To Boost Customer Engagement Marketing ROI Through LIKE.TG
3. Educate your customer
One of the many reasons for customers to churn is the lack of proper knowledge about your product or service. For many customers, having a comprehensive self-service knowledge base can disentangle stuck users prevent them from churning. With LIKE.TG, you can share detailed knowledge bases with your customers and provide them any additional knowledge through the messenger tool.
Read more: 6 Ways Retail Businesses Can Be More Customer-Centric With WhatsApp
4. Keep them updated with new offers and updates
There are thousands of businesses that are competing for your customer’s attention every single day. In order to beat the competition and hold a prominent place in your customers’ minds, you need to keep them engaged with frequent product updates and the latest offers.
Read more: 7 Ways To Get New Customers For Your Business Using LIKE.TG
5. Lean into your best customers
Your best customers are your true assets and to keep them loyal requires more than frequent engagements and good customer service. Loyalty comes from persistence in quality service and a committed relationship. Never fail to make your best customers feel special. Small gestures such as greetings on special occasions, loyalty rewards, and personalized notifications may not hurt your business but will help you win your best customer’s heart and retain them for a long time and keep your churn rates to a minimum.
Read more: 8 Ways To Boost Customer Lifetime Value via LIKE.TG WhatsApp SCRM
6. Target the right audience
Randomly targeting large audiences may lead to investing a lot of CAC on people who may be our ideal customers and thus lead to high customer churn rates. In order to have a high retention rate, you must identify your ideal customers and target them accordingly. Using LIKE.TG’s link generation feature, you can have your probable customers connect with you. This will reduce the effort and customer acquisition cost and increases the chance of converting them to customers.
Read more: 5 Supreme Customer Acquisition Approaches for Businesses
7. Stay competitive with customer service
The importance of good customer service can never be overlooked. Great customer service helps in gaining the customers’ trust and leads to long-term retention. WhatsApp-based CRM like LIKE.TG allows your customers to reach out to you through WhatsApp in case of any customer grievance or help. By providing in-time response using Quick reply or automated response feature, you can stay ahead of the competition and manage to keep your customer churn rates at a minimum.
Also read: How To Survive Market Competition and Earn Loyal Customers With Dark Social WhatsApp
Conclusion
Customer churn may be a part of the business. But it can be reduced to a minimum if businesses focus on higher customer engagement and track any reason that may contribute to customer churning. The above-mentioned tips can prove to be useful for businesses that are engaged in WhatsApp Commerce and aim to improve their ROI with reduced customer crunch. Especially with LIKE.TG which can be a game-changer and help them get an edge among competitors.
To learn more about LIKE.TG, click here or drop us a mail at [email protected].
8 Ways To Boost Customer Lifetime Value via LIKE.TG WhatsApp SCRM
In traditional systems, earning loyal customers would take years of excellent service, good product, and trust-based relationship. But ever since businesses shifted to online platforms, the paradigm of gaining loyal customers and ensuring customer lifetime value has changed greatly.
In today’s time, there is a lot of competition among businesses. Brands try every trick in the market to attract customers such as heavy discounts, aggressive marketing, one-day deliveries, etc. This practice does get customers, but it affects customer loyalty and brings customer lifetime value to a minimum.
LIKE.TG is a WhatsApp CRM that is helping businesses gain customer loyalty and increase their customer lifetime value. But before we get to the how of it, let’s first understand more about customer lifetime value.
What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
A customer lifetime value is a value that the customer brings to the business throughout his/her lifetime. It takes into consideration the entire log of the customer, starting from the first purchase to the last.
Here is how it is calculated.
CLTV = (Average Order Value) x (Total Number of Repeat Sales) x (Average Retention Time)
Average Order Value: The average value of the purchase that the customer makes.
Total no of repeat sales: The total number of times the customer has placed an order.
Average Retention Time: The average duration the customer stays with your brand.
A low CLTV means that your business is spending more than it earns per customer, while a high CLTV means that the business has earned more than what it had spent on acquiring holding on to the customer throughout their lifetime.
Why Businesses Need To Improve Customer Lifetime Value
In order to acquire a customer, a business has to spend a certain amount on lead identification, lead nurturing, and conversion of lead to customer. They continue to spend on marketing and customer service in order to retain them for a long time and get more business from them in the future.
By investing in multiple ways to acquire and hold a customer, a business aims to recover the amount and gain profit from the customer’s lifetime value. A retained customer has a much higher chance of making purchases in the future as compared to a customer with a one-time purchase. Moreover, acquiring a new customer costs up to 5 times more than retaining an existing one.
So, by retaining a customer for a long time, a business can gain more value from it. It will reduce overall acquisition costs and increase long-term profitability.
8 Points on how to boost Customer Lifetime Value via LIKE.TG
WhatsApp proves to be one of the most convenient ways to reach out to customers. The reason being, most users are already available on the platform and it allows businesses to connect with them. Using this as an advantage, LIKE.TG provides a WhatsApp API-based SCRM which makes it easy for your business to manage day-to-day customer interactions as well as carry marketing and sales promotions through it.
Here are some of the ways LIKE.TG helps in boosting customer lifetime value through WhatsApp:
1. Personalized customer experience
Engagement on a one-to-one basis is a great way to increase customer lifetime value. With LIKE.TG, you can engage in personal conversations with your customer to understand their needs and expectations. Based on the input, you can work on improving customer experience which will help you in increasing customer lifetime value.
2. Updates and Notifications
Sending frequent updates about your product or service will help in keeping your brand and your products fresh in the mind of your customers. By regularly sharing the latest product updates and discount offers, you can increase the chance of convincing them into buying your product. This will help in customer retention and increase customer lifetime value.
3. In-time response
With LIKE.TG, you can let your customers directly contact your customer care via WhatsApp texts or voice calls. This will allow you to provide in-time responses and resolve issues quickly. For many customers, their customer care experience helps them decide whether they would like to make future purchases from a brand or not.
4. Two-way communication
WhatsApp-based LIKE.TG allows two-way communication between businesses and customers. This builds trust among customers that they can reach out to the business in case of any query or product issue. It gives customers a medium through which they can get all their queries and concerns addressed immediately. As a result, it leads to better sales and longer customer retention.
5. Higher engagement
By sharing personalized and high-quality content, you can ensure higher engagement from your customers. From informational posts, fun games, discussions regarding an upcoming product, or a fun group chat. LIKE.TG can ensure that your customers love to hand around with your brand and establish a long-term relationship.
6. User Persona Based marketing
With LIKE.TG, you can create unique user personas for each customer and base your marketing approach for each customer accordingly. This will help in targeting your customer’s buying decision more precisely. Regular updates on a new arrival or and offers that they might show interest in can help in getting them to stay with your brand for a longer time.
7. Post-sale services and feedback surveys
For a business, their role does not end with selling a product. They need to handle post-purchase order anxiety upfront to make the customers feel that their purchasing decision was right and that you would take care of the issue in case things go wrong. With WhatsApp, you can easily collect post-sale feedbacks and provide further assistance in the form of product setup, demonstrations, etc. This can give a major boost to your customer loyalty and customers would love to make future purchases with your business.
8. Encouraging Customer loyalty
If customers are rewarded for being loyal customers, they will stay with the brand or business longer. Using LIKE.TG, you can reward your loyal customers with a shout-out on your official WhatsApp status. This makes your customers feel appreciated and will encourage them to stay with you for longer. You can also make them feel special by sending them personalized gifts or offering special discounts. time
Conclusion
As a business, one should never overlook the sentiments of their customers. By addressing their concerns, interests, and needs, businesses can find a loyal customer base and can retain them for a very long time. LIKE.TG can play a vital role in boosting customer lifetime value and can help in providing supreme customer care services and beyond!
To learn more about it, click here or contact us at [email protected]
9 Mistakes To Avoid While Dealing With Customers On WhatsApp Business
Thanks to WhatsApp Business, now for a business, customers are just a message away. WhatsApp Business has closed a huge gap between customers and businesses and provides a medium for direct and instant communication.
Personal interactions with customers have really helped turn things around for many businesses. But many times, things can go utterly wrong and lead to a bad business reputation. As a business, it can lead to the loss of new as well as existing customers. And may take months or even years to recover from the damage. It necessary for businesses to be thoughtful with the context and approach while dealing with customers. As not every customer may see or feel things the way you do.
Though there is no holy grail for the perfect customer business conversation, there are certain mistakes that should be avoided at all costs.
9 Common Mistakes to Avoid on WhatsApp Business
Here are certain mistakes to avoid on WhatsApp Business while you interact with your customers as a part of customer relationship management:
1. Failing to listen
A customer’s experience, opinion, and feedback can be very important for businesses. As it can contribute greatly to improving the overall user experience and shaping the future of upcoming products and services. By not listening to what they got to say, you can miss out on the basics of a good customerexperience. It could result in a bad customer experience and may even lead to the loss of valuable customers.
So, if a customer reaches out to you and shares their point of view, listen to it attentively. It can help you in many ways.
2. Not respecting personal boundaries
Everybody is protective of their personal boundaries. By being ‘extra friendly’ or too casual with your conversations, you can make your customers feel intimidated. Also when it comes to sharing any personal information. Not everyone would not be willing to share every piece of information with you. As a business, you need to respect their personal boundaries. Be it while interacting with them or while collecting any information for your business.
3. Reacting negatively to customer feedback
Once in a while, it may happen that your customers may not be happy with your product or service and may express it in their feedback. Never act defensive or getting into any kind of argument. One should focus on fixing the issue and compensate the customer in some form so as win their trust back. By doing so, you can show your customers that you care about them. And this would build a positive brand image for your business.
4. Not giving customers the option to opt-out of service
One of the most annoying experiences that a customer has to go through is not having the option to opt-out. Be it from a service, a group, or an event. Especially in the case of WhatsApp marketing, it is important that you give them the option to opt-out of the service any time they wish to. Doing this, you can eliminate the risk of getting blocked by clients and get better engagement from them.
5. Sending irrelevant notification and updates
A common mistake that most businesses make is sending the same notification updates to every customer. Though the notification may be useful to a few, for others it can be totally irrelevant. And through a period of time, it can seem annoying and lead to your customers losing interest in your business.
Rather, sending creative, meaningful, and personalized content can help in increasing their engagement with your brand.
6. Censoring
The disadvantage of online communication is that it gives people a sense of freedom of speech and in many cases, people end up disrespecting or trolling others. The same may happen with you or your business. But getting back at them or blocking them is never a good solution for a business. Rather, you can act responsibly in your response turn things around.
7. Use of insensitive marketing
When marketing to a large audience, a business has to be extra careful. Careful so as not to step on the toes of a certain community, race, religion, or group. Using insensitive content to promote your brand or business can soon turn into a nightmare. Especially, if a certain group of your customers feels it offending or disrespectful.
The best idea is to keep all your marketing content generic. Do not touch any aspect that your customers can find racist or bigotry.
8. Shifting blame
The worst thing that a business can do is to ignore its own shortcomings. And its a disaster if you shift the blame to someone else, especially the customers. In case, a customer comes to you and reports an issue in your service, or staff behavior, listen to them. Never ever brush them away by shifting the blame on them. It’s of the mistakes to avoid at all cost. The reason the customer comes to you to report the issue is that they trust your brand. And they believe that you can help them find relief. By shifting the blame on them, you instantly lose the trust and respect they have for you. This can badly impact your reputation among other customers as well.
9. Keeping customers waiting
We live in a time where customers have multiple options to choose from for the product or service. Keeping your customers waiting can really hurt your business. Especially if your customer is reaching out on WhatsApp, they would expect sooner responses to their queries. Make sure to send instant responses, greetings and acknowledge the receipt of their query. You can boost your customer experience to a great extent.
Concluding Words
Winning a customer’s trust may not be the easiest task but it is totally worth the effort. By being open to meaningful conversations and respecting your customer’s opinions, you can avoid losing your customers. You simply have to keep in mind the above-mentioned mistakes to avoid while dealing with customers on WhatsApp Business. And you can establish a strong and healthy relationship with them.
You can also read about ways to get customers to opt-in on WhatsApp Business and the role of WhatsApp SCRM tool LIKE.TG in customer management.
6 Ways Retail Businesses Can Be More Customer-Centric With WhatsApp
As the world is shifting to complete digitization, the ongoing pandemic has accelerated it and proved it to be the only way of survival in the coming time. The COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide have been nothing less than a massive jolt to both businesses and individuals and have left us staring at uncertainty.
In the midst of all this, WhatsApp has been a constant support in keeping individuals connected with their near and dear ones. But its role does not limit to just that!
WhatsApp has now become an online store for many and where they interact with customers, provide them services, and even close sales deals. Businesses are now readily accepting WhatsApp as a channel through which they can reach out to their customers from any corner of the world. A platform that allows them to interact, engage with customers and sell their products.
With WhatsApp, businesses all over the world are seeing hope of revival. WhatsApp brings businesses and customers to a common platform. A platform where businesses can use customer-centric approaches to find, retain, and engage customers.
What is Customer Centricity?
Customer-centricity is an approach in which businesses focus on customer experience and makes all possible efforts to improve it. When many people think of customer-centricity, their mind goes automatically to customer service. Customer service is an important element of building a customer-centric business, but it’s not the whole picture.
How a business interacts with its customers, how convenient it is for the customer to make a purchase, request a return or refund, or reach out to customer service. All are a part of customer-centricity. So, the processes and procedures in a business and the daily actions and decisions of employees equally important. It contributes to a good customer experience and makes a business customer-centric.
Why is Customer Centricity Important?
In a time where customers have hundreds of brands and businesses to choose from, focusing on customer-centricity helps in finding new customers and retaining existing customers for a long time. Especially in a time where social media is prevalent, and consumers are talking to each other like they never have in the past. Customer-centricity has a direct impact on brand value as customers act like marketers. Social media and review sites have allowed consumers to share every detail of their experience with a company in a matter of minutes.
At its most basic level, it comes down to acquiring and retaining customers. Businesses need to do these two things if they are to survive.
6 Ways You Can Make Your Business More Customer-Centric With WhatsApp
Here are 6 effective methods to make your business more customer-centric and drive better sales using WhatsApp:
1. Interact with your customers
Interacting with customers can help a business improve its customer experience in many ways. Personal one-to-one interactions can help businesses build trust among customers and establish a strong relationship that they will wish to keep for long.
Another benefit of personal interactions is that it helps you gather all information about your customer’s likes, dislikes, preferences, experiences, and expectations. With this information, you can make sure your customers get exactly what they hope for. This approach helps businesses with being customer-centric not just with immediate actions but also plan products and services in the future accordingly.
Read more: 10 Ways To Get Customers To Opt-In On WhatsApp Business
2. Easy customer policies and procedures
Your customers should feel convenient shopping with you. Be it going through the product catalog, picking an item, making payments to return, or cancellation policies. More than 69% of customers abandon items in the cart never to come back to them. This is because they find the checkout process or the entire buying process to time consuming or difficult. Your customers should never feel that your policies or procedures are difficult or time-consuming for them to follow.
Using WhatsApp Business or WhatsApp Business API-based tools like LIKE.TG can make the entire process quite simple. WhatsApp Business allows catalog sharing, placing orders, and making payments. It can also be used for getting refunds, and other services all using the WhatsApp interface.
Read more: 4 Ways To Boost Customer Engagement Marketing ROI Through LIKE.TG
3. Include automation for efficiency
Automation saves a lot of time, effort, and resources for a business. As for customers, it helps in get instant responses and useful information. They no longer have to dial up a sales executive or drop a query mail. Nobody likes to wait and keeping customers waiting for a response to their query can leave a bad impression. Instead, you can use automation bots trained to perform activities such as sending greetings, instant responses, and sharing shipping and delivery updates. This can improve the customer-centricity of your business to a great extent.
By using the Quick reply and Automated Response features of LIKE.TG, you can ensure instant response to thousands of customers.
Read more: Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools and Software in 2021
4. Forward-thinking
Customer-centricity isn’t something that you draw up a plan for once and then use this plan for the decades to come. Customer expectations are shifting constantly. New technology comes to the market all the time, and this technology has the potential to set a new bar for customers. To continuously be a customer-centric business, you need to adapt as customers adapt. Don’t be afraid of experimenting with new ways of improving the customer experience.
Read more: Top 5 WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategies For Businesses
5. Empathize with Your Customers
Your customers may have several questions and opinions about your business or product. Or at times, they may express extreme dissatisfaction with your services. You need to show empathy and treat your customers with love and attention. In doing so, you will instantly earn their love and loyalty and can retain them longer. Showing empathy to customers in their time of need can help you build an impressive rapport. It can make them feel that you are customer-centric and care for them.
Engage with them personally through WhatsApp chats, and try to resolve their problems or at least make them feel better with promising words.
Read more: WhatsApp SCRM: The Best Way to Carry Out Customer Service
6. Include your customers in your decisions
One of the wisest things you can do as a business is to get your customers involved in your decision-making process. This can be done in the form of group chats on WhatsApp-based polls. Getting your customer’s opinions for your products will make them feel important and will improve your customer-centricity. Moreover, customers participating in decision-making usually receive new product launches well and become natural marketers for your brand.
Also read: How to Build Customer Relationship During Critical Situations with CRM?
What happens when you improve the customer experience?
o Customer retention is improved.
o Customer satisfaction goes up – This leads to positive reviews online and a positive reputation on social media. It also encourages customers to spend more money or spend more often.
o It improves the success of cross-selling and up-selling.
o It attracts more new consumers and converts them into customers.
Conclusion
Customers hold the power to make or break a brand. Keeping them at the center of your marketing and product planning decisions can help you gain their loyalty. You can build trust among your customers and earn you a name among customer-centric brands. WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business APIs can play a major role in keeping your customers a the helm of your business and marketing approaches.
To know more about LIKE.TG click here or drop a mail at [email protected]
5 Supreme Customer Acquisition Approaches for Businesses
Customers are the heart and soul of a business. Continuously finding new customers and retaining existing ones is seen as the growth metric for the business. But finding new customers and retaining them for a long time can be a challenging task. Customer acquisition is a multi-step process that starts with making the audience aware of your product or service and continues as a life long process of building customer retention.
Customer acquisition is necessary to prevent stagnation and regression in business. All businesses have natural churn rates, even if your product is excellent and your customers are happy.
What is customer acquisition?
Customer acquisition is the process of reaching out to audiences to identify potential leads, nurturing them, and converting them to paying customers. Customer acquisition is an on-going process and involves systematic acquisition strategies that keep changing with the latest marketing trends.
The goal of customer acquisition should be creating product awareness, providing a good customer experience, improve retention rate, and not focused entirely on profitability.
Stages of Customer Acquisition
Here are the 6 stages of the customer acquisition process:
1. Awareness
The first and foremost step of customer acquisition is to create awareness about the product or service that you are offering. This can be done through any channel such as e-mail marketing, social media campaigns, print media, direct advertisements, or in-person marketing.
The awareness stage helps in brand positioning and help the brand create a unique identity for itself. Social media can help brands in creating a buzz about their products, and if done right, it can make the following steps of customer acquisition effortless.
2. Interest
Just letting the audience know about the product is not enough to convert them into a customer. It requires further convincing and building their interests around the product.
Customers don’t associate products with brands, they associate them with the emotions that connect them with the product.
So, rather than directly telling them what you sell, sharing it in the form of a story that audiences can connect with emotionally will help them build interest in your product.
3. Consideration
At this stage, the potential customer is interested in your product but hasn’t made up their mind yet. For customers at this stage, sharing information about your product in the form of short videos, and demos can help them in making up their minds.
4. Intent
It’s the stage when people visiting your website to browse for the products and get more information about them. By this time, they are sure of what they want but ready yet for the purchase.
The best way to convince them is by offering them free trials or sample products so that they can experience the product first hand and be sure about their opinion.
5. Evaluation
By now, the person is fully convinced with the product and have even added the product to the shopping cart. This is a crucial stage for businesses as 65% of shoppers add items to their cart but never make it to final checkout.
Offering small discounts, promotional offers, or cash backs can help businesses close deals and ensure the customers come back for more purchases in the future.
6. Purchase
It’s the final stage of customer acquisition where customers actually complete the checkout process to make the purchase. Beyond the sale, companies can look for opportunities to cross-sell, upsell, and reward customer loyalty.
Core Marketing Elements for Customer Acquisition
Just like there are several steps involved in converting an audience into a customer, there are few core marketing elements that correspond to the process.
1. Content
Content is the most effective and cost-efficient marketing approach which helps businesses create brand awareness and build their interest in their products. The content that goes out to the audience must reflect the unique identity of the brand and the value that it creates for its audience.
Creative content has the potential to gain maximum attention from its audience in a short span of time and generate maximum leads for the business.
2. Leads Generation
Lead generation is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. It helps businesses identify individuals from the crowd who might be interested in their product or service. Once the leads are identified, businesses can pursue them further through personal contact.
3. Clue nurturing
Businesses need to engage in constant follow-ups with leads to ensure that they continue their vested interest in the brand and become a customer sometime soon. By engaging in regular offer updates through email, pop-up reminders, or one-on-one interaction through any of the messaging platforms can help businesses convert more leads into paying customers.
4. Sales follow-up (using SCRM)
The responsibility of the business does not end customer checkout. To build trust with customers and ensure retention, businesses should focus on sales follow-up and after-sales services. Using SCRM tools such as WhatsApp SCRM, businesses can provide in-time customer care services and build a strong brand reputation.
SCRM also allows businesses to interact with customers on a personal level to understand them better and improve customer experiences.
8 Successful Customer Acquisition Methods
Here are some of the successful customer acquisition methods that can help your business acquire customers organically:
1. Social media marketing
Social media marketing involves promoting your brand or its product on social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more. Social media platforms are extensively used and on average, an individual spends at least 2 hrs 33 minutes on social media platforms.
It only makes sense for businesses to reach out to their audience through social platforms where they can promote, sell and get feedback from a large scale of audiences at the same place.
2. Video promotions
When it comes to sharing your message shortly and effectively, video promotions is your solution. Most people prefer videos over blogs or written content. More than 80% of businesses use video marketing to attract, inform, and entertain customers and prospects.
Videos are a great way to educate viewers about your product through a short demonstration.
3. Giveaways
Giveaways help gain large media attention in a short span of time and can be a great way to create a buzz for an upcoming product. Giveaways as a lucky draw rewards in exchange for referrals, or more such giveaways can help you gain more followers which means a more dedicated audience. In many cases, it also helps in getting paid customers.
4. Content marketing
Keep your potential customers engaged and informed about all that you have to offer with creative content marketing. Content marketing helps customers know you better and build interest in your products.
Innovation and creativity in content marketing can help create a huge impact on the audience and improve likeability for your brand.
5. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important customer acquisition methods. This strategy helps you boost your website’s traffic to obtain more leads and conversions for your business. It’s a fact that maximum leads come from websites. SEO can help your website rank on the first page of Google search and get high visibility for people trying to find you.
SEO helps find a precise target that may be interested in your business based on keyword search analysis.
6. Referral program
Rather than going to each individual and telling them about your business, you tell it to one person and ask them to share it with the next person. In this way, you use minimum effort, yet manage to reach out to a large number of people easily. Referral program works in a similar manner in which one user refers your business to other people in their network, and like a chain reaction, you can a large number of people subscribed to your business in no time.
Referral program benefits both referrer and referee and is the reason it acts as a viable medium for customer acquisition.
7. Landing pages
Landing pages of your website is the place where new visitors spend maximum time learning more about you. By adding useful CTAs or actionable buttons such as an introduction video button, a demo or a free trial button, or a direct button to begin WhatsApp interaction can help visitors higher engagement.
8. Email marketing
Email marketing is the most cliche method to acquire customers. From sending cold emails to a large group of people to sending follow-up emails to potential leads, e-mail marketing has always proved to be an effective approach. Email marketing can also be used to keep leads and customers updated about all the latest products or offers that you have to offer.
Adding clickable CTAs to emails can help guide your audience to your website or shopping page and improve your chances of converting them to customers.
Now, with that, you know everything you should about customer acquisition and how it should be approached for businesses. Make sure to stay updated about the latest marketing tools and community marketing strategies to make your marketing and customer acquisition strategies more effective.