What to keep in mind while connecting with customers via conversational marketing

Engaging with customers isn’t new and marketers have been trying to make their interactions with customers seamless and easy for decades. While email and messaging had been the go-to methods for brands for years, Meta has now changed the game.

Conversational marketing was seen as a ‘pull’ channel where brands would talk to customers if they reached out to them. But Meta – the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram – launched outbound messaging capabilities for marketers, turning it into a ‘push’ channel as well. This means marketers could contact customers on their own with fresh content like newsletters and offers on messaging platforms of their choice.

A leader in conversational marketing, CM.com has been partnering with these platforms for years to help brands leverage them and connect with their audience. Drawing on years of experience, the team has shared some tips brands must keep in mind to reach their customers better:

1.Opt for future-ready conversational solutions 

Marketers have innumerable options to reach customers today, yet there is a greater demand to connect via messaging platforms. Emails, social media, and pay-per-click advertising used to be all the rage a few years ago, but these are quickly declining. 

Here’s why:

1. Emails largely end up in a customer’s spam folder. Alongside this, the engagement rates are low: in 2023, only around 21% of emails even get opened. 

2. Social media’s organic reach is on the decline. Currently the average organic reach rate on Facebook is 8.60%. 

3. Pay-per-click prices are rising. With market intelligence allowing competitors all over the world to target the same customer, marketers are spending more for just a single click.

4. Data for identifying site visitors is moving server-side. This means that it is becoming harder to get customer insights that would make your marketing better.

In contrast to this, messaging on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram is slowly becoming vital and leads to increased engagement and a personalised experience. Unlike the others, customers actually open these chats. The open rate in some cases is 100% and they have high click-through rates. Marketers also face less competition in the space as these channels aren’t that popular yet with other brands. But the most important thing is that through these, brands give customers what they seek the most - one-on-one conversations. 

WhatsApp: The platform is great for conversational commerce. Marketers use it to send marketing messages and start conversations. With over two billion people on the platform, marketers are unlocking a huge marketing potential on WhatsApp.

Facebook Messenger: Marketers use the platform to send recurring notifications to customers such as product announcements, order updates, and offers.

Instagram: While Instagram can be used to send notifications as well, its potential is a lot bigger. As a platform with over 25 million business accounts, it is a great place to start and continue conversations.

2. Scale with CM.com’s Mobile Marketing Cloud

The Mobile Marketing Cloud includes all mobile messaging channels like SMS and WhatsApp, to give marketers an omnichannel customer engagement solution.

Through it, brands can manage their personal conversations at scale. It helps them reach customers where they spend most of their time - on their mobile phones - and lets them save time and work more efficiently with CM.com's marketing automation tooling.

Their Customer Data Platform unifies all data sources, eliminating the common issue of fragmented data, and makes data actionable for marketing. 

The Mobile Marketing Cloud lets people personalise conversations by collecting data events and using real-time Smart Segments.

The solution lets brands create omnichannel marketing campaigns and create superior experiences that increase engagement and conversion. Email, SMS, RCS, Push, WhatsApp, Viber, and Voice are all built-in and can be used immediately.

And finally, brands can automate their customer journeys. The solution lets brands create workflows for every customer journey with a visual drag-and-drop editor. 

3. Communication is key, not over-communication 

While it is great to converse and know about your customer’s demands, it isn’t ideal to keep messaging them. Brands must avoid sending an endless stream of offers and turn each conversation into a genuine feedback exchange. 

It is important to wait for the customer to make the first move, and once they do, brands must respond within 24 hours. As per a report, 30% of consumers will buy from a competitor if the responses from their desired brand are too slow. 

Marketers should also vary their messaging. Sending the same message every week will only irritate the customer, and push them away from the brand. If that happens and the customer ends up blocking/reporting the brand, brands must use that as learning opportunities for their next marketing moves.

4. Let the conversations begin

With CM.com, brands can leverage all messaging channels to provide a personalised and consistent experience to their customers. The company has been working with the largest brands globally to elevate their customer experience for years, and this time, you can benefit from it. 

To learn more about CM.com’s Mobile Marketing Cloud,