How to Drive Conversions Without Spamming Customers on WhatsApp?

Promotional text messages are effective and interesting, but only as long as they do not invade a customer’s personal space. Put yourself in a customer’s shoes — imagine getting festive discount offers every half an hour while you are in the middle of something important. Irksome, isn’t it? 

Sending marketing messages to customers is a great way to grab their attention toward deals and offers, but there is a fine line between smart marketing and spamming. As per surveys conducted by Validity to find out consumers’ response towards receiving unsolicited SMS messages, about 78% of respondents feel annoyed when they receive untimely text messages from brands, which has prompted about 28% of people to shy away from purchasing from a brand any further. 

In recent times, the way customers communicate with brands has changed. They are looking for solutions that offer streamlined communication and prompt responses. Businesses, therefore, need to upgrade their digital marketing strategies to keep up with the customers’ expectations. 

In the changing landscape of transactional communications, businesses are becoming more inclined towards using platforms with feature-rich and interactive solutions like WhatsApp Business API. Let’s see how. 

Introducing WhatsApp Bot for Business Chats 

As per statista, WhatsApp has approximately two billion monthly users all across the globe. This huge user base makes it easier for businesses like yours to convey messages to customers via WhatsApp. 

Through the integration of conversational AI in the WA bot, businesses can offer customers a frictionless way to continue commerce within the chat media itself. 

However, you should try to figure out ways in which customers do not feel bothered by the message they are receiving. While you may be tempted to reach out to customers with lucrative deals and offers, you should not forget that WA is an individual’s private and personal space. 

Businesses that demand too much attention and send multiple marketing messages in a row may end up landing in the customers’ block list. 

How can businesses drive WA conversions without compromising user privacy? 

Let us have a look at how you can adhere to the best practices of using WhatsApp API send message option, and not bombard a customer’s chatbox with unnecessary messages.

How to Increase Sales Using WhatsApp Conversions?

WhatsApp users are likely to open 98% of messages sent to them. However, the chances of customers opening a marketing WhatsApp message are higher when the message aligns with their interests. 

The advent of WhatsApp Business and the integration of conversational AI has made it easy for businesses to streamline communication with their customers throughout their purchase journey. 

With the help of generative AI, you can create marketing campaigns specially designed to suit the needs of individual customers. You can also send notifications about offers, promotions, back-in-stock alerts, or even cart abandonment. 

However, all of this has to be done while respecting customers’ privacy. Let’s look at how you can use WhatsApp for conversions and improve customer engagement while ensuring customers do not feel nagged. 

Understanding Audience Segmentation

Sending the right message to the right person can reap immense benefits and drive conversions. Let’s say the ABC mobile store offers an early bird discount on its newly launched mobile phone. It is planning to send a WhatsApp message to its customers, stating: 

This message is more likely to interest a 21-year-old college goer or an IT professional fond of gadgets than a 56-year-old, who may not even open the chat. This is where the role of segmentation comes in.

Businesses are leveraging AI-powered tools for accurate audience segmentation. AI can process huge amounts of data extracted from messages sent via chatbots in little or no time. The data is then analyzed to identify the most accurate customer patterns, thereby improving customer experience.

Audience segmentation can be based on several factors. For the most accurate behavioral segmentation, the AI-based tool has to monitor the customer’s search history, abandoned cart items, and previous purchases. Demographic segmentation, on the other hand, helps classify customers based on their age group, income status, marital status, occupation, and so on. 

This helps businesses understand the preferences of customers better and curate marketing messages especially designed for them. 

Optimizing Timing and Frequency of Messages

After figuring out whom to send the message to, the next important aspect to be mindful of is when to send it. 

There is no “golden hour” to send a marketing message on WhatsApp when a business can be cent percent sure that the customer will read it. 

Businesses need to perform a great deal of permutation and combination to determine which time will be the best to gain the attention of which segment of the target audience. For this, they need to analyze the target audience’s persona, which includes online habits and schedules. 

For instance, if you wish to shoot promotional messages at working professionals, the hours between 9:00 am to 12:00 noon on weekdays may be a good time, because this is when people check messages and notifications on their devices. Some customers also prefer spending some time leisurely after they have reached home from work. Therefore, another good time to send messages so that customers click on them is between 7-9 pm. 

Creating Engaging and Relevant Content

As a business, you identify your target audience and determine when to send them promotional messages. Still, you send a message nowhere close to what a customer has been looking for. This affects all your efforts and brings you back to square one, unfortunately.  

One of the primary aims of using conversational AI in the retail and marketing sector is to drive personalization, thereby improving customer experience. Thanks to the incorporation of AI technology that can understand human intent and help the chatbots respond accordingly. 

Conversational AI harnesses the use of two main technologies — NLP and ML. 

The use of NLP or Natural Language Processing helps the system understand human language by analyzing it and identifying the intent behind the message. On the other hand, Machine Learning technology extracts information from past interactions. This way, you can leverage WhatsApp Business AI to understand user needs, resolve queries, and generate personalized conversations. 

Let us say that Sarah is willing to purchase a dress online for her college farewell. Here’s how her virtual AI chat assistant helps her pick the best dress:

Whatsbot for conversions are, therefore, able to keep the customers engaged while offering them solutions that almost feel human-like. This kind of personalization helps customers connect with the brands better. 

It is remarkable to note how Wow! Momo has been able to incorporate the use of WA to drive conversions by enabling direct food ordering. The brand sends hyper-localized advertisements to customers to show the offers available in outlets in their proximity. 

This way, customers are informed about the offers and can place orders, all on the same platform. As of today, Wow! Momo has about 2.9 million customers who are engaged via WhatsApp.

Interactive Messaging Features

By now, you must be clear that customers are no longer fond of bland text messages. Using interactive features helps your customers choose better what they are looking for from a business on WhatsApp. 

A great way to enable this is using Flows in WhatsApp Business AI. WhatsApp Flows help to enrich customer interaction by replacing lengthy text-based interactions with simple interactions through data exchange endpoints like multi-screen workflows or input forms. 

Lenovo, a leading tech brand, has increased conversion rates by 8.2 times by incorporating WhatsApp Flows compared to other traditional methods of customer communication. 

Moreover, WA promotional messages may also contain CTA links, therefore redirecting customers to authorized sources without much difficulty. All these techniques help streamline the communication between you and customers, thereby offering customers an easier way to connect, and drive conversions. 

Conclusion

Hope this gives you a complete idea about the importance of Whatsbot for conversions. As businesses are striving to improve customer engagement, it is important to adopt respectful customer-centric WhatsApp marketing practices. 

Gupshup, a leading conversational AI service provider, offers solutions to help businesses seamlessly integrate these practices into their WA marketing strategy. This way, businesses can not only personalize customer interactions, but also leave room for customer privacy. This way, they can deliver content that customers find the most useful, thereby fostering stronger bonds with customers. 

Businesses that incorporate these strategies effectively can enhance a brand’s reputation and increase conversion rates.  Therefore, take a step towards customer-centricity and change your WhatsApp marketing game with Gupshup. Contact us for more queries. 

FAQ’s

1. How do you drive customer conversion?

Ans: Businesses opt for techniques like sending personalized messages, including interactive elements in messages, and adding CTA buttons to enhance customer conversions. However, it is important to ensure they do not sound desperate. Although it is important to grab the customers’ attention, it is also important to respect their personal space.

2. How do I engage customers on WhatsApp?

Ans: The most effective way to engage customers on WhatsApp is to send them a message relevant to exactly what they are looking for.

3. How can I use WhatsApp business efficiently?

Ans: To use a WhatsApp business efficiently, businesses can optimize their profile, post a catalog of all their products, send automated welcome messages, have pre-set reply templates, send personalized messages, use interactive elements like CTA buttons, and so on.