In this guest post, Pete Boyle, Head of Content at jumper.ai, explores the live chat support trend, dives deep into industry-leading examples and shows how you can use conversational marketing to promote your loyalty program.
Brands are built on their ability to form trusting relationships with their users.
Their growth (or lack thereof) is often directly linked to customer loyalty, a direct result of how well they’re communicating.
You might think it’s easier than ever to achieve this, however technology has proved to be something of a double-edged sword.
While it’s easier to communicate with your customers, every other brand is also trying to do the same.
This challenge has created a very noisy world that’s difficult to compete in.
If you want to keep customers coming back, you’ve got to stand out and do something different.
Thankfully, there’s a short cut to building relationships that last. One which is proving, time and again, to be more effective at resolving issues, generating positive feedback, and making sales.
That short cut is conversational marketing.
Simply put, it works.
Conversational marketing can take many forms. It’s most often associated with live chat that – unsurprisingly – offers the closest thing to a real conversation through digital channels.
In fact, 41% of consumers say that they prefer live chat over any other channel.
Not only do customers prefer it, but it also generates a much higher satisfaction rating.
And it leads to a healthy increase in the number of leads and sales you’ll generate.
Conversational marketing works because it’s more closely aligned with the one on one service customers expect.
Why? Because it offers help, service, and answers immediately. Something which, in the modern impatient world, is incredibly important.
There’s a number of different ways you can employ conversational marketing and commerce with your business.
To help you discover what might be the best option for you, we cover a few examples below:
Marvel needs no introduction. I’m sure you’ve heard of “End Game” – potentially the most successful movie of all time.
However, Marvel isn’t sitting back and resting on their laurels. They’re constantly looking to implement new, effective, and innovative ways of engaging their audience.
To promote two of their recent movies (“Infinity War” and “Ant-man and the Wasp”) Marvel implemented a social commerce checkout.
They added automated, conversational checkouts to their usual promotional social media posts. With Jumper’s help, engagements on those posts allowed users to buy tickets then and there.
Here’s a quick look at how it appeared to customers.
This approach provided a more streamlined purchase journey that allowed users to check out when their anticipation was at its highest.
Marvel smartly used content associated with the movies to increase excitement and asked questions that helped customers get their perfect ticket.
The streamlined, 1:1, conversational method achieved an overall conversion rate of 68% and generated 15X more in season engagement than other campaigns.
Personalisation and speed are two of the most important elements for modern consumers.
Spring attempted to hit both of these key service differentiators with an automated chatbot.
The bot doesn’t just promote products but asks leading questions to understand the customers’ needs before recommending potential products.
It’s incredibly effective because it mimics a real conversation, offers instant communication, and helps the user quickly find what’s best suited for them.
The bot makes the shopping process easier than it ever has been.
This is a little bit of an odd one to include, but it definitely bears mentioning simply for the scope of the solution.
Senior employees at Domino’s have been recorded saying that they’re as much a tech company as they are a food chain. And this proves it.
With Domino’s Anywhere, you’re able to order through a conversational chat on multiple platforms.
The bot is pretty simple. It asks you questions about what you’d like to order and where to send it.
Some are still a little buggy, but hopefully, as time goes by they’ll be able to iron out the kinks.
Hipmunk’s bot is one of the better ones I’ve seen.
After interacting with it it’ll ask for your location and then recommend a couple of deals and ideas for vacations leaving from where you are.
It’s super simple to interact with and even allows user input to direct where it should be looking.
With this, your usual Google search of 20+ sites for the best deal is cut down to a couple of minutes of chatting. It’s so easy to find something that works for you.
Conversational marketing, whether it’s through an established messenger platform, an on-site widget, handled by a real person or bot, is a great way to make an initial sale.
However, one sale does not a business make.
The most successful commerce businesses out there focus just as much on retention and repeat business as acquiring new customers.
And the smartest way to do this is with a well-devised loyalty program.
In fact, customers who join a loyalty program are 68% more likely to buy from you multiple times.
Whilst conversational marketing is a great way to get people invested in your business, loyalty programs are what keep them coming back.
The great news though, is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, you’ll get the best results when linking the two together. Here’s how.
Brands often take an almost segmented approach to their loyalty programs.
They run their processes through something like LoyaltyLion but have several different, often uncoupled, channels to help promote and communicate.
What you’ll often see is something like the below.
An image or video that advertises the program, published across social media accounts.
However, that will lead to a landing page for the user to sign up. After signing up, the user will need to sign in to the loyalty program’s site and will expect to be communicated through email.
You could streamline this process by promoting and communicating with your users through Messenger.
By integrating a conversational solution into the mix you could highlight the benefits of your loyalty program on social and have people opt-in for communications through the channel they’re most engaged in.
Taking this approach avoids the spam and promotions folder in email inboxes and uses what is, currently, the highest engagement channel.
Once you’ve got opt-in you could remind users of how close they are to getting their next discount, send small incentives to get them back on the store, or simply keep them updated about company news.
Don’t think of it as a replacement for the processes you already have in place though. Think of it more as an addition that can be used to increase engagement.
Above we’ve outlined just a few of the potential uses of conversational marketing.
There are many tools, services, and solutions out there today that you can turn a conversational approach to any business in any niche.
And, thanks to the modern users’ lack of attention and need for more “authentic” experiences, approaching them in a genuine manner through conversations is a great way to quickly increase the effectiveness of your marketing.
Conversational marketing can be a great benefit to brands running loyalty programs. It offers the level of service your users want which will only help improve their opinion of your brand.
Want to learn more about the power of conversational marketing and loyalty? Jumper.ai have created a tutorial over on the LoyaltyLion Academy all about the power of social media for customer retention.
About the author
Pete Boyle is the founder of Have-a-word and head of Content for jumper.ai, a sophisticated social commerce solution that works across all social media networks.
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