Conversational marketing is a term that you’ll likely often hear in relation to e-commerce marketing. It’s a specific concept involving real-time conversations with customers that occur across many platforms, creating numerous touchpoints for companies to interact with their customers. Ultimately, the benefit of this form of marketing is the creation of a personalized, memorable experience that makes customers feel valued.
There are multiple methods for developing conversation-based marketing, including the use of social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, chatbots on websites, and WhatsApp Business. This form of marketing starts the conversation between would-be buyers and your company, helping to push prospective customers through the sales funnel at a faster rate. To be successful, it has to be personalized, creating an opportunity for people to receive individualized product suggestions and solutions as they navigate the process of making a purchase.
The Benefits of This Form of Omnichannel Messaging For Your Sales Campaigns
How does conversational marketing deliver results and improve promotional campaign outcomes? Over 75 percent of businesses using SMS campaigns, for example, see increased revenue over and above what companies earn when they don’t use them. Why is this? Consumers expect—not just prefer—companies to have real-time interactions with them whenever and wherever they need it. To exceed customer expectations, a brand has to:
- Interact with consumers across multiple channels.
- Act quickly to respond to queries and needs right away (in real-time)
- Supply personalized information and insights, not just basic information
When your business creates this type of impactful experience, everyone benefits in multiple ways.
Memorable experiences happen
One of the services offered by Mitto is text marketing, a way to send text messages with specialized, personalized content to customers. Imagine being in the area near a certain store in a mall and receiving a personalized message from the retailer about something you need and want. This experience is not just helpful; it’s memorable, and that can help create a better overall experience over time.
Customer experience improves
This type of communication also helps companies provide better service to their customers. There’s no longer a need to wait in line, wait for a response on the phone, or become frustrated trying to navigate a website to find a small piece of information. It is fast, efficient, and simply provides better outcomes for the customer.
It builds your brand.
Conversational SMS campaigns can also help companies build their brands. Because this is a form of omnichannel messaging, it creates multiple touchpoints for your customers. Regardless of whether they interact with your website, text messages, social media pages, or email messages, the customer is getting the same quality of information about your company and product. This builds your brand over time, enabling you to get more of the benefit and ROI from these interactions.
Methods for Creating Connections and Personalized Marketing
Many tools exist to help businesses use this form of marketing. Some of the most impactful include the following:
- SMS messaging: Text messages have a nearly 98 percent open rate, which means that most people will open the message and read it. This is an excellent way to offer product suggestions, product information, or personalized discounts.
- Interactive chatbots:Using AI, it is possible to create interactive and highly personalized conversations with people that feel like real connections. This method allows for the retention of human qualities within conversations to make them seem authentic.
- Social and chat applications: Using chat features on social media pages can enable companies to create a more comprehensive omnichannel experience while also allowing customers to connect to payment solutions, facilitating a seamless experience.
For many companies, conversational marketing is an excellent investment of time for brand-building and revenue growth. The key is to maximize campaigns through proper target audience segmentation, create authentic experiences with personalized offers, and work to close sales in chat messages (instead of requiring another step in the process, like going to a website). By delivering this type of connection, companies see better results from their promotional campaigns.