Are you tired of seeing your open rates fall flat?
Although your email marketing strategy is top-notch, customers are just not interested in opening emails that are irrelevant to them.
What do you think is the best way to engage with your customers?
The answer is simple. It is to have meaningful and relevant conversations.
And with WhatsApp, it is possible to have one on one conversations and there’s a 98% chance that your message will be seen.
You aren’t using your marketing funds right if WhatsApp marketing is not a part of your growth strategy. Although modern consumers are already using WhatsApp to communicate with their favorite brands, only 7% of professional marketers are using WhatsApp to promote businesses. In the following guide, we will tell you everything you need to know to get started with WhatsApp marketing.
WhatsApp marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy that involves promoting and engaging products/services via WhatsApp. You can use WhatsApp to collect user information and deliver personalized experiences based on user behavior. WhatsApp Marketing is an excellent way to acquire new customers, help customers discover new products, re-engage with promotional offers as well as offer support.
Before you get started with marketing on WhatsApp, here are some crucial steps to follow:
✅Setting up your WhatsApp Business API Account
✅Setting up your WhatsApp Catalog
✅Creating Click to WhatsApp Ads
✅Getting WhatsApp Opt-ins
✅Crafting WhatsApp Message Templates
✅Strategizing your WhatsApp Promotional Messages
The possibilities for marketing your products via WhatsApp are endless. Here are a few examples of WhatsApp messages you can send to generate leads and drive sales:
Using WhatsApp marketing you can send promotional offers to incentivize your customers to shop from your eCommerce or retail store. With API led Conversational AI solutions like Vizury:
a. You can connect WhatsApp to your discount management/couponing system
b. Segment high-intent shoppers who need the final nudge
c. Send them a discount coupon on newly released products or existing products in their carts.
You can send pre-approved WhatsApp template messages that are triggered when a customer abandons their digital cart on your eCommerce site. This automated feature is possible with Vizury’s conversational AI solutions.
Here’s an example
A prospective customer adds a red lipstick to her cart and abandons it thereafter. Vizury will automatically add that customer into the dynamic list and trigger a message to enquire about the issue. The message, for example, can be:
“Hey, Anne. Could you please take a minute to tell us if the red lipstick in your cart is fairly priced after your last visit to scarlet.com?”
The customer can answer either yes or no using the reply buttons feature on WhatsApp.
In case the customer answers yes, you can send a gentle reminder informing her that it’s still available for purchase and can be delivered to her at the earliest. In case the customer answers no, you can apologise for the inconvenience and offer a 10% discount coupon to win her back and convert this potential lead.
You can also send messages informing your customers about stocks running out or giving limited-period offers and creating a sense of urgency. It will help you recover the abandoned carts and ultimately incentivize the customers to complete the purchase.
You can leverage WhatsApp to run quick research and collect customer feedback. You can use quick reply buttons to give your customer different options to give their feedback. For instance, if a customer purchases a product you can give options like “I enjoyed the product”, “It could’ve been better”, or “I am not happy with the product”. You can also eventually converse with the customer to resolve your customer’s issue, if any.
Use this instant messaging platform to offer customer support seamlessly. Customers want to reach businesses and have real conversations. By using conversational AI solutions, you can resolve customer queries in real-time. You can also use it to send delivery alerts, order confirmations, and more.
Customer loyalty is an integral part of sustaining your business. You can send promotional messages such as early access to sales, new arrivals, loyalty benefits and more. Strategize your campaigns to boost your customer loyalty on WhatsApp. Here’s an example
In this case, loyal customers are notified about their latest collection.
The pandemic has made shoppers skeptical about visiting stores. In such cases, you can leverage WhatsApp to allow customers to book a time that is convenient for them to visit the store. You can use WhatsApp to send appointment reminders to customers too. They can either confirm or reschedule their appointments if need be. This makes it easier for customers to shop.
Reengagement alerts are a great way to revive dormant customers and nudge them to browse and purchase products. These customers can be segmented based on purchase history or intent of purchase.
Let’s explore 7 WhatsApp Marketing campaign examples that some brands used to boost their marketing game.
In 2017, Netflix launched a campaign that allowed users to stay in touch via WhatsApp. In case, a person clicks “I’m in”, they would receive movie recommendations or what to watch next. The main goal of releasing this WhatsApp marketing campaign is to keep interacting with customers even after they have canceled their subscriptions. They used it to send new show announcements and reminders to incentivize customers to resubscribe to their streaming platform.
Adidas used WhatsApp to promote their new shoe campaign. The campaign attempted to narrow its target audience and focus on amateur football players.
Football matches often face unforeseen circumstances. Sometimes players drop off at the last minute, some may get injured which is why they often need replacements. In the campaign, Adidas offered to help to find a substitute via WhatsApp. The team had to share essential information about the match via any Adidas WhatsApp hotline number and in return, they would send a player to your game.
Although this campaign lasted for 6 days, it still created a lot of buzz in the football media community and blogs.
WhatsApp seemed like a plausible option to Clarks, a shoe retail company, for creating brand awareness and showcasing how far they’ve come. The Rat to Rudeboys campaign allowed WhatsApp users to chat live with different characters from Clark’s history and receive images, videos, and messages that created a hands-on documentary. This playful and interactive campaign allowed Clarks to connect with consumers and collect data that eventually helped them reach potential customers in future campaigns.
The airline company KLM offered to send flight alerts and other related information to customers and their families via WhatsApp. When a customer books a flight with KLM, they can receive booking confirmations, boarding passes, flight alerts and more through WhatsApp. KLM also attempted to send alerts to friends and family of the participating passengers as soon as the flight departed. Family members could also get real-time updates on bookings once they opt into their WhatsApp Business number
Livon conducted a campaign for wild card entries on MTV’s famous show “India’s Next Top Model Season 2” in 2016. Models were required to send selfies via WhatsApp in order to participate. The concept went viral and models started to send their best selfies to participate in the show. This allowed Livon to create a huge customer database that they can use in their future campaigns.
ITC wanted to do something creative to boost their sales of Marie Light biscuits in India. They rolled out a campaign where a consumer could win a 42 inch LED TV if they sent a selfie to their WhatsApp number. In order to participate, the consumer had to purchase the biscuit, and send a selfie with the biscuit to the brand’s official WhatsApp Number. ITC ultimately boosted its Sunfeast Marie Light sales using WhatsApp as a marketing channel.
Wish used a WhatsApp chatbot to help customers with their Christmas shopping. Customers could text the chatbot, asking whose gift they are looking for and the conversational AI chatbot then sent matching gift ideas via WhatsApp. If the customer liked the ideas, the bot also sent a direct link to shop for the item from the Wish store.
The popular instant noodle brand, Maggi, wanted to increase brand awareness using WhatsApp. They wanted to have conversations with customers and build a connection. So in this campaign, Maggi challenged home chefs to whip up healthy delicious meals with Maggi’s instant packs. Customers sent the list of ingredients to the virtual assistant on WhatsApp and it would send cooking recipes and step-by-step instructions to cook healthy dishes. The results were astounding.
✅4.2 point increase in standard ad recall
✅3 point lift in campaign awareness
✅200,000 messages sent
The popular ecommerce store, Flipkart wanted to create buzz before the Big Billion Day Sale. They launched a chatbot that assisted people with their shopping experience but they personified it with Amitabh Bachchan, the famous Bollywood star. The bot was called the Big B Bot. Flipkart leveraged WhatsApp’s rich media features to make it more engaging for customers. The results of Flipkart’s WhatsApp marketing efforts were outstanding.
✅3.5x conversions in 2 weeks
✅7x high-quality visitors
✅$2.5 million USD revenue earned
Read full case study
Vizury’s Engage360 allows you to:
✅Capture consumer insights: Understand website visitor intent and preference by tracking 40+ attributes across different channels/touchpoints such as demographics, website/app behavior.
✅Create hyper-targeted segments: Identify the right segment that aligns with your campaign goals and objectives by slicing and dicing the first-party consumer data with more than 50+ parameters.
✅Launch personalized campaigns: Our platform’s core engine i.e, Recommendation engine, leverages real-time consumer data to re-target customers depending on where they are during their purchase journey, on their preferred channel of communication and enables you to personalize their experience.
✅Integrated conversational journey on WhatsApp: Our in-built flow builder (Vizury Commercebot builder) allow you to seamlessly extend and enhance the shopping experience as customers navigate from different touchpoints to WhatsApp, allowing them to pick up right where they left off.
✅Analyze and optimize for maximum results: One-of-a-kind custom dashboard designed for your business to help you track the performance and impact of your campaigns. We go above and beyond in tracking the impact of how each consumer interaction led to a purchase or moved down the funnel.
Thereby, allowing you to engage and convert high-intent traffic from your website/app directly on their preferred channel of messaging i.e WhatsApp.
WhatsApp marketing is the smartest way to increase your sales. One report found that adding your business phone number to your website may result in 27% more sales leads. Thus, adding WhatsApp to your marketing plan will give you ample opportunities to generate leads that convert.