Guest post from isendu - shipping platform for the growth and automation of e-commerce stores.
Conversational marketing and transactional messages are closely intertwined, and can lead to a great conversion rate when it comes to online sales. Why? People look for relationships, interactions and immediate answers in ecommerce.
Transactional messages keep your customers updated on the status of their order, allowing them to interact with your store if necessary. It is important to understand the value of these interactions and use them to stand out from the competitors. Tracked delivery allows your customers to feel in control of their orders, and to monitor the shipping status even for the fastest deliveries.
Conversational marketing focuses on leveraging such interactions to achieve higher sales through a conversation with the users. If handled correctly, good conversational marketing can lead to higher sales and increased loyalty of your customers.
What tools can help my conversational marketing strategy?
Often ecommerce stores use exclusively emails when it comes to conversational marketing. Email marketing is, in fact, still one of the most important channels when it comes to customer notifications as shown by Statista. But we recommend considering alternative solutions to build a winning synergy between tracking and conversational marketing.
One of the best tools to build ecommerce conversational marketing is messaging. Push notifications can be seen as something intrusive, and emails tend to be forgotten in the inbox. Messages instead are a synonym for conversation, making customers feel like they can reply. If they do, though, it is important to be ready.
How can I improve the customer experience?
To manage conversational marketing successfully, it is important to take the right strategic decisions - both in terms of tools and usage of such tools.
For instance, is it better to use SMSs or whatsapp? SMSs are probably better for an audience that isn’t used to “new” technologies, while whatsapp could work better with a younger audience. At the same time, whatsapp is now becoming a global, widespread tool.
As highlighted by verloop.io Gen Z and millennials are the main users on the platform. On the contrary, only 36% of Baby Boomers use it.
The average open rate of a whatsapp notification is above 90%, and whatsapp seems to be used by non-digital natives as well. Whatsapp is the symbol of interaction: when I receive a message, I tend to answer.
Apart from choosing the right tool, it is important to reflect on how to leverage it in specific moments of the customer journey, and in particular during the shipment tracking. Users tend to ask for information during the tracking period, and it is advisable to implement a marketing automation tool to manage the conversation in the smoothest way possible.
How to increase the Average Order Value
Conversational marketing can help to increase the Average Order Value (AOV) and to push conversions further.
How? Firstly, a successful conversation around order tracking can increase users’ trust in our brand. From there, it is possible to work on cross-selling and up-selling dynamics, leading the customer to a higher order value in a personalized, purposeful way.
Once the customer contact has been acquired, it is possible to build some interaction flows to sell further products and increase further conversions. More subtle but not less important actions like review requests can be carried out through such automations, not to forget post-purchase thank you emails, maybe with a discount for further purchases or a request for an unboxing video.
What software should I use to automate?
There is a wide range of choices. It is important to find an automation tool that is powered by AI and that can lead your customers exactly where you want to.
isendu is a software focused on creating a winning flow when it comes to shipping messages and tracking updates. A good management of shipping updates can create further marketing opportunities, both through email and chat notifications.
