When year end is around the corner, every marketer is busy with planning or refining their marketing strategies in order to take one step ahead of the competition.
Many have forecasted that ‘Conversational Commerce’ is one of the top marketing emerging trends in 2022, because customers are looking for a more customised shopping experience. The prediction was accurate. ‘Chat Commerce’ has empowered brands to get the ‘Golden Eggs’, and therefore more and more companies are willing to invest more in WhatsApp marketing.
So what will be the next focus in 2023?
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World-Class Customer Experience
Personalisation
Digital marketing has become a necessity for every business after the pandemic. From social media platforms to data analytics tools, we are looking for the best strategies to outbid our competitors, and overtake the market share. In fact, all the tools go for the same thing: Personalisation.
The need for tailored customer journeys is growing in importance. According to the Meta Foresight, Generation Z would like to have instant chats with brands, and more than a quarter of those surveyed want to ask questions directly through social media. Not just Generation Z, with the rising popularity of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger , Instagram Direct and LINE, other generations are also used to seek information, make enquiries and place orders via messaging apps because of COVID-19.
This explains why more and more businesses have already started adopting social commerce solutions. There is an increasing number of downloads of WhatsApp Business App in recent years, but for some brands, WhatsApp Business API is a better fit with the advanced business features such as Multiple users login, Broadcast, Coupons, Chat & Buy and OMO (online-merge-offline) sales.
Sending bulk messages in one go via Broadcast, brands can promote the latest deals and offers based on customer segmentation; WhatsApp coupons can be used online and offline stores to drive higher conversions; Connecting with product catalogue, customers can make the purchases in chats through Chat & Buy; OMO sales feature can easily divert online visitors to salespersons at physical stores for following up, and offline customers can contact salespersons via online channels anytime after binding.
Multiple customer touch points
Customers have shifted heavily to online shopping since the epidemic began. It is expected there will be a stronger return to the physical stores as the epidemic trend continues to be stabilised. Developing multiple customer touchpoints allows consumers to interact with brands smoothly and seamlessly, which brings convenience and efficiency and thus optimises customer experience.
The best businesses meet their customers where they are.
– Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Meta
With more than 1 billion users worldwide, instant messaging is definitely one of the key touchpoints shaping the customer journey. Brands can engage with online or offline customers easily through conversations in different stages of the customer buying journey.
Buy online, Pick up in-store(BOPIS)
Many retail stores in Hong Kong have already adopted the BOPIS business model, allowing customers to enjoy the convenience and special offers of shopping online and pick the products up at the store. With the integration of online shopping and in-person pick up, shoppers can avoid additional shipping costs, long delivery time, and troublesome handling of returns; retailers are able to drive foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores, as well as strengthening omnichannel customer experience.
Omnichat supports businesses to use BOPIS for selling across online and offline. Through 1-on-1 conversations, customers can purchase the items and choose to pick up in store with a few clicks.
First Party Data
After Apple rolled out App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which allows customers to choose whether an iOS app can track the activity across other companies’ apps and websites for advertising or sharing with data brokers, the online advertising performance has been negatively affected. With the decreasing accuracy of the target audience, and the increasing cost of advertising, First Party Data has become the new solution for brands to build their own Customer Relationship Management system(CRM), Customer Data Platform(CDP) and Data Management Platform(DMP).
How can marketers fully utilise the collected data, creating a tailored customer experience?
Steps to unlock the power of Smart Data:
1. Integrate all customer communication channels
2. Use Open Source API that supports auto-fill parameters to connect with different systems and tools
3. Analyse all the collected data to personalise marketing strategies
Through Omnichat, First Party Data such as browsing behaviour, customer ID, WhatsApp / Facebook / Instagram / LINE account and order information can be captured through conversations. Businesses can then categorise and segment customers through tagging, which is useful for building customer relationships and future tailor-made remarketing campaigns.
Social Commerce Sales
Global sales through social media platforms were estimated at 992 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, according to Statista. Evolving from a community platform to a business tool, social media is now the one-stop shop and also revenue booster.
Imagine: You were seeing your friends’ Facebook updates and suddenly discovered a bracelet from a sponsored ad which was perfect for a birthday gift. You sent the business a message for enquiries on the size information, however, you could not receive any responses. Would you abandon the shopping cart, and turn to another similar business?
The answer is obvious. Removing obstacles to customers’ buying decisions, social commerce is all about convenience. Customers can browse the products, ask for the details and finish the purchases simply in the chats, making the checkout process faster and easier. Without leaving the app, social media helps create the flawless customer experience.
The digital world is constantly evolving, and so are we. ‘Chat Commerce’ may be new, but it is actually from what we have already known – customer-centric culture. Check out our success stories here to have a better understanding!
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Related articles:
Chat Commerce: The Rising Customer-Centric Strategy
Gear up for the next retail trend: OMO Chat Commerce
