Consumers today are inundated with marketing messages. So how are businesses rising above the noise? To stand out from the crowd, your brand needs to personalize your marketing content and send marketing messages on channels that customers prefer to use and engage with at high rates, like the WhatsApp Business Platform. In this blog post, we’ll share our best practices for how you can create engaging marketing campaigns with the WhatsApp Business Platform and Botsup.
Why WhatsApp for marketing
Put simply, it’s where your customers are. WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, with more than 2 billion monthly active users. In addition, it is the messaging platform of choice in many parts of the world, including Latin America, India, and parts of Europe. If your business operates in these markets or is a multinational company looking to expand to these regions, you need to be on WhatsApp to reach consumers there. Additionally, because consumers are frequently using WhatsApp for personal communications, they are engaging with it often and opening messages at high rates.
WhatsApp wasn’t always an option for marketers. Traditionally, it’s been used by businesses for notifications and customer service, but now marketing and promotional messaging use cases are on the rise after WhatsApp began to permit these use cases on their platform in 2021.
WhatsApp’s global popularity, high level of engagement, and new opportunities for promotional messaging present a new avenue for innovative marketers to engage with consumers over their preferred channel with targeted and relevant messages. This can help start a conversation with these consumers, build loyal relationships, and deliver measurable ROI. For example, use marketing messages as a starting point to engage your customers by sending them a personalized product recommendation or back-in-stock notification, prompting them to ask any follow-up questions, and then helping them complete the transaction over WhatsApp. In this way, you can drive greater conversion and revenue with WhatsApp marketing.
Types of marketing messages
Use WhatsApp throughout the customer journey to reach or re-engage customers with personalized and relevant marketing messages. There are many different types of marketing and promotional messages your business can send over WhatsApp, from new product updates and abandoned cart reminders to personalized discounts and seasonal campaigns.
Acquisition/initial outreach
Bring customers into the purchase funnel with messages sharing new product updates or seasonal or holiday campaigns.
Conversion
For those customers who may have engaged with previous marketing messages or added items to their cart on your website, reach out to them with abandoned cart reminders, back-in-stock alerts, or other re-engagement messages to bring them back to their purchase process.
Driving repeat purchases
Reach out to customers who have already made purchases by sending them suggested additional products or personalized discounts and offers for future purchases. Re-engaging with customers after they have made a purchase can help drive repeat purchase and loyalty.
With all of these types of marketing messages, drive greater engagement and ROI by personalizing them to the customers you are reaching out to.
Best practices for marketing on WhatsApp
When using WhatsApp for marketing, there are several considerations marketers need to take into account as they are moving through the stages of developing and launching a marketing campaign, from initial planning and developing creative to testing and iterating on a campaign after launch.
Getting ready to send on WhatsApp
If your brand is not already using WhatsApp to communicate with your customers, you will need to onboard your brand onto the Botsup platform before you begin sending messages. You also need to ensure that you have secured the proper opt-in from users to send them marketing messages. Following opt-in best practices will provide a better end-user experience while ensuring your business is able to deliver messages as expected.
Developing creative assets
When developing creative assets to use in WhatsApp marketing campaigns, consider the different rich messaging features WhatsApp offers. Features like Buttons enable consumers to take action based on your marketing messages - for example, include a few buttons with conversation starters (e.g., “check if my size is available” or “chat with an associate”). You can also create media message templates to make WhatsApp marketing messages more visually engaging, or include links within WhatsApp messages, such as a link to the product page to allow customers to learn more or complete a transaction. This enables you to gather data about what types of marketing messages are generating engagement and turn marketing messages into conversations with your customers.
Engaging with customers
Try out various WhatsApp entry points to include WhatsApp as part of a multi-channel marketing campaign. Ads that Click to WhatsApp on Facebook and Instagram enable a consumer to take immediate action when they see a business’s ad and allow marketers to increase the ROI of their digital ads. With ads that Click to WhatsApp, consumers can start a conversation with a brand by clicking through a Facebook or Instagram ad, and asking questions about the product or business.
Other entry points that businesses can use for WhatsApp range from deep links on websites, emails, and social media profiles to QR codes on billboards or physical product packaging. Building WhatsApp entry points into your various marketing materials help customers start conversations with a brand and enables businesses to learn which types of marketing tactics or assets are most engaging.
Additionally, as you are A/B testing various marketing templates over WhatsApp, sending messages that are personalized helps drive greater engagement with consumers. Beyond just including the consumer’s name in the message, personalized WhatsApp marketing messages can look like custom product recommendations based on previous purchases or tailored discounts for a product a consumer has in their cart. You may want to include links in your messages, such as to a product page or to the customer’s abandoned cart so they can complete a transaction.
Need help? Write to us at marketing@vfirst.com