A 2022 guide to marketing automation via social messaging

This post is sponsored by AiChat.

Social messaging goes beyond customer service. A chatbot can help marketing teams be flexible, efficient, and deliver engaging experiences that are both timely and helpful to the customer.

But what exactly is a chatbot? It’s all in the name. Chatbots are automated conversations facilitated by software, often over a chat function on a website or over social media.

And the importance of messaging technology has been growing at a significant pace for several years, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg calling messaging the future of commerce.

Private messaging channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messenger, Google’s Business Messages and Telegram are on the rise worldwide. These channels are popular for consumers, and more so for businesses, as they are growing in popularity in the mainstream for their conversational features that are agnostic to their cell phone or service provider.

WhatsApp, one of the largest messaging channels, has now grown to two billion users across 180 countries, sending 100 million messages a day.

The conversations happening on these apps are boasting 98% open rates, as opposed to email where the open rate is mostly in the 20% range.

It’s no wonder why conversational marketing has been the focus for many forward-thinking businesses. It helps increase their ROI, and to reach customers where they are already spending their time engaging in conversations with brands and friends.

In this guide, we’ll outline marketing automation and chatbot possibilities for your business in 2022 using social messaging channels. 

1. Pre-qualify and convert leads with automated conversations

Pre-qualify leads with automated conversations that can be set up in a conversational format via social messaging apps. Unlike traditional web lead forms, data provided by customers can be collected and stored as attributes even when they drop off halfway in the conversation. The bot will send a reminder if the user drops off, helping bring the lead back into the conversation and re-engaging them.

MR DIY – conversational lead Gen form via Google’s Business Messages 

2. Create a more personalised experience

Make the interaction with customers more personal by addressing them by their name, and make use of the information, for example, their recent purchases or orders, to create more personalised responses.

The more you know about your prospects and customers, the more you can qualify them and accurately place them in your sales funnel. By looking at the key customer attributes, you can segment the audience into meaningful groups to follow up with them by initiating a conversation on personalised products and promotions.

The data collected in your chat messages can be used to create customised audiences and can be used to sync up directly with Facebook or Google Ads managers to run an effective re-targeting campaign, thereby, optimising your ads to reach more relevant audiences.

3. A hybrid AI and human approach

A chatbot is good at deflecting low-value repetitive questions. For more complex questions, a live chat can be triggered, and the request can be routed to the correct specialist for a concern based on certain preset rules and parameters.

The chatbot is trained to detect sentiments and purchase intentions, and then direct a potential customer to the most suitable sales team to secure a conversion.

If the customer has a product issue, a similar process can also route them to the support department. This minimises time for the customer, as they don’t need to explain the concern or question to multiple agents, and they are assigned to the most qualified expert right away. This helps to increase customer satisfaction and trust.

Routing a live chat request to a relevant department 

4. Expand your community management and engagement on social media

Trigger an auto reply to a user’s comments on your brand’s Facebook post, and at the same time, send a private message to that user’s inbox which will be a way for brands to follow up with a user immediately.

Kia Motor – automated reply on Facebook Wall and routing request to Messenger inbox

The bot can also assist to automate a Facebook Live giveaway or raffle. A bot can validate and give away prizes in real-time based on comments and form fills. To drive further engagement with your audience, bots can also be designed for gamification and even run personality tests or send personalised greeting cards.

M1 automating giveaway contest via Facebook Messenger

5. Use chatbots for drip marketing and enrolments

After users initiate a chat, your brand can run drip marketing via chat to automate a series of follow-up messages with customers. Chatbots can drive two-way conversations with customers, guiding them along the “buyer’s journey”.

This can include personalised offers, discount coupons, and product recommendations. These messages can further decision making, steering consumers towards a path that results in higher conversion rates, helping you meet or exceed your marketing KPIs.

For example, Petron’s chatbot helps the brand segment the user into various groups by prompting a series of quick profiling questions to understand the membership status.

Leveraging the automation of a chatbot, various message journeys were designed to nurture the customer for the Petron Miles card activation by delivering a personalised experience for each of the segment groups. If the user was not yet registered, the bot would share a series of card benefits and bonus points to entice redemption.

Petron Malaysia’s personalised message journey

Marketing automation is not a one-size-fits-all process. Your social messaging and chatbot functions should focus on your consumers’ needs, using the above customisable options to suit your industry and brand.

Build a smart chatbot in 2022, not a clunky one that frustrates customers and ends up negatively impacting your brand.

Conversational marketing can transform and scale your digital operation and deliver real business value. With 3.09 billion monthly messaging app users worldwide, it’s time you take advantage of it and include chatbot and social messaging as part of your marketing automation strategy.

Want to learn how a chatbot drives marketing automation and creates more business impact? Have a chat with us at www.aichat.com.