What is a chatbot and how is it used in marketing?

In a business context, a chatbot is a software application used by online businesses for chat conversations with their audience. The conversation process is actually an automated communication that usually employs a conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) to ensure a personalized customer experience.

Chatbots can be used in a marketing strategy for getting people interested in your product or service through human-like communication. A chatbot helps a business stay connected with clients, streamline service processes, and improve profitability.

In a Nielsen study results showed that:

• 63% of users said their messaging with companies has developed over the last two years
• 61% of users like to get personalized messages from businesses
• 67% of users expect to message organizations even more over the next two years

Check out these interesting chatbot statistics

• Chatbots will produce over $8 billion in global savings by 2022. 
• The Global chatbot market will be priced at $1.3 billion in 2024. 
• The global chatbot market value was at $703 million in 2016. 
• By 2020, 80% of enterprises will look to use chatbots. 
• 50% of online searches used voice assistants in 2020, up from 20% in 2017.
• C-level executives start 41% of online chat conversations with businesses. 
• Chatbots are used by 24% of enterprises, 15% of mid-sized companies, and 16% of small businesses.
• USA, India, Germany, the UK, and Brazil are the top 5 Chatbot using countries. 
• Chatbot market growth will accelerate even more in the 2016-2023 period. 
• 56% of companies say conversational bots are driving disruption in their industry, and 43% report their competitors are already implementing the technology. 

Why use chatbots for marketing?

Chatbots strengthen businesses’ connection with prospects and clients in messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Viber. Messenger has over 1.3 billion active monthly users, so it is a great place to start the communication action.

Creating meaningful connections and keeping track of candidates and consumers is critical for customer acquisition and retention. With a chatbot solution, you can manage customer relationships in one simple dashboard that can show you chat history, user public profiles, collected data, and more. But more importantly, you give people added value in a place they already are — and that is powerful.

How can your business use a chatbot in its marketing strategy?

Chatbots can help your business effortlessly push customers through your sales funnel. Here are some ways to fit them into your marketing strategy:

Personalize the customer experience

Knowing your customer’s names and using them when you interact with them can completely upgrade your conversation. Chatbots integrate with social media, gathering data about every single person with whom they communicate.

When a user has a customer care question, the chatbot can answer it correctly and then take the conversation a step further by offering personalized shopping advice based on the customer’s purchase history and preferences.

Engage consumers

Engage with your clients, and also retain them with chatbots. Unlike other methods of marketing, they keep your consumers interested for longer. Let’s say, for example, you want to catch your audience’s attention with a video. While this video may be extremely engaging, once it ends, it does not have much more to offer.

You can put in action a chatbot to catch your audience’s attention and learn from its interaction with the users, allowing it to send relevant information regarding your brand, products, and services. Basically, the chatbot can up-sell and cross-sell in a personalized, conversational, and engaging way.

Be relevant

Customers do not like to be bombarded with emails, text messages, and other notifications every time something happens regarding your business, products, or services. Because chatbots can capture and analyze data, they are also able to send personalized notifications through social media that are relevant to each and every user.

Analyze client feedback and data

A chatbot can analyze feedback it gathers from users, giving you more information about what your audience truly wants. From there, you can remodel your marketing strategy to become more focused on your customer’s needs and increase sales and profit.

Empower your brand image

Usually, brands only communicate with their audience once a consumer has reached them first. When chatbots automatically send a welcome notification when a person arrives on your website or social media profile, makes your business look more proactive, improving your brand’s reputation, and can even increase interactions, having a positive effect on your sales numbers, too.

24/7/365 communication

Chatbots do not sleep, they can be available for your audience and customers 24/7 all year long. Aside from saving you money when employing them for routine customer care procedures, chatbots will help you keep your social media presence clean and effective.

What’s next for your business?

Now you are ready to embrace the future and include chatbots as an AI powerhouse into your digital marketing strategy to drive the amazing results that go with it. The speedy service offered by chatbots is exactly what people crave in the era of instant satisfaction. Rather than letting customer concerns or potential sales fall by the wayside, social chatbots can pick up the slack and keep your business “open” around the clock.

Don’t forget to check how you can combine your chatbot strategy with your email communications and create truly unique messages for your audience!

306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2020 and the figure is estimated to increase to over 361.6 billion in 2024. Contrary to the people who advocate the slow death of email marketing, numbers do not lie. Email marketing is far from dead or dying -not only it’s alive- but it is up and kicking, progressively growing despite the prominence of messaging apps.

Yet with growth comes struggle, as consumers are bombarded with tons of emails each day. Which email will they open? Will they notice your email or your competitor’s email first? How can you make sure your email will stand out from the crowd? It is not enough to base your email strategy on a hitch you may have of which email will work best for your audience. As we said, numbers do not lie, so rely on them. The best way to ensure the type of email your audience will want to open, let alone read through it entirely, is A/B testing.

What is A/B testing in marketing?

A/B testing is a method that lets you scientifically test the effectiveness of your email marketing. The process of A/B testing requires creating two versions of an email, also known as email variants, to determine which email statistically performs better. These variants are then sent to a limited, yet a random number of subscribers, to monitor which email variant performs best. Once you have determined which email version performed better (in terms of conversion, open rate, bounce rate, etc.), you can optimize your email strategy by updating it based on what you learned about the winning email.

An email marketing automation tool will make the implementation of the A/B testing process much more efficient and effective. Using an email marketing automation tool allows you to easily create and select the message versions you would like to test, to choose the percentage of the random subscribers that you would like to use for testing, to schedule the test run, run the test, monitor the results, and ultimately presents you with the most effective email variant.

If, on the other hand, you decide to manually design and perform an email A/B testing, you must manually follow and put in action all the above-mentioned steps, spending valuable time from your human resources.

How does automation of the A/B testing process optimize your email marketing performance?

In essence, the A/B testing process allows you to identify what emails engage your subscribers best, a fact that ultimately helps you increase conversions and revenue. Automation is in fact the solution that not only saves up valuable time but also minimizes the possibility of error and misguided decisions.

Deciding to manually perform A/B testing means that you have to decide and put in action a series of processes one by one and test just one variable at a time to accurately attribute the email’s success. Automation comes to the rescue, as you do not have to focus on one variable per test, but use a combination of variables, simultaneously test multiple ones, and get instant and accurate statistics and results.

What variables should you focus on during the email A/B testing?

It all comes down to the goal you want to achieve and bearing in mind the target audience at the forefront. For example, If you are testing to improve your email open rates, you will need to focus on variables that users view before they would normally open an email, such as:

• The sender
• The subject line
• The preview text
• The day of the week the email is sent
• The time of day the email is sent
• The week of the month the email is sent
• Whether or not there is an attachment
• Whether or not there is a visual or multiple visuals

In case you are aiming to establish trust with your audience and ignite interest, then you should consider improving your email click-through rates, and take into consideration testing the following variables:

• The email format (branded vs unbranded)
• The email’s buttons colors (e.g., which color button will draw the most clicks?)
• The readers’ preferences in terms of clicking on a button vs. on a text link vs. on an actual URL
• Visuals: will adding imagery to your email make it more compelling or more distracting for your audience?
• What types of texts should you make clickable? (e.g., should you link the name of a blog post or use instead action-oriented text like “read more?”)

What’s next for your business?

A/B testing isn’t complicated, the key to making the most of your email A/B tests is to set your strategy, start testing, evaluate the results, and adjust as you go.

You could start with a simple question, such as, “Why does my email not convert?” You might have a good open rate, but no click-throughs on the email’s call-to-action button, so in this case, making changes can help you collect more data about your visitors’ experience in the email.
Follow the right procedure to get accurate results. Remember the steps of each part of the email’s A/B testing process:

1.  Set your goals

2. Decide on what you want to test

3. Choose the best A/B testing tools to easily automate steps 4 to 10

4. Set the elements of the A/B test

5. Create the variants

6. Design your test

7. Run the test

8. Accumulate data

9. Analyze the A/B testing statistics

10. Optimize your email campaign

A Routee expert is always available to guide you through our advanced email marketing platform and help you capitalize on the email A/B testing process to improve your email conversions.

To design unique email marketing campaigns and engage your customers, you need to add value to your messages. Check our latest article ‘’Personalization in customer experience is key!’’ and discover the secrets for a segmented marketing strategy.

What is SMS Marketing and why is it important?

SMS marketing has been around ever since the early 90s and grows more popular as time goes by. In fact, SMS marketing popularity has grown by nearly 200% between 2015 and 2017 and maintains an upward course. Currently, with the advancements in marketing software, omnichannel campaigns have become a gold standard in eCommerce marketing, with SMS playing an integral role as one of the most popular and effective communication channels.

The value of SMS marketing lies both in its format and proximity to consumers. Not only are mobile phones always at arms-length, but text messages are also short and easy to consume.

Add to that the fact that the target audiences of eCommerce businesses are mostly digital natives—Gen Z-ers and millennials who grew up with mobile phones. That makes SMS the perfect complement to email, which has long been the established medium for digital marketing.

SMS is such a trusted and widely used feature of the mobile device (smartphone or otherwise), boasting an incredible open rate of 98%, the large majority of which are opened within three minutes of being received! Beyond the open-rates, and unlike other marketing platforms, SMS requires basically no extensive ad copy, design issues will never delay its implementation, it is easy to track and measure, it is cost-efficient, and is trusted by most mobile users. It can carve a direct pathway to your target market’s pockets.

Of course, text message marketing isn’t about just sending off a generic marketing message — there are a number of creative ways to use it, such as by offering coupons and promotions, delivering customer service or important updates, and sending appointment reminders. Find more creative ideas from our recent article on Types of SMS to kickstart your 2021 marketing strategy.

Before you step into SMS marketing here are some do’s and don’ts that will guide you and help you to not overstep your customer’s boundaries.

Text message marketing: Do’s and Don’ts

Get Permission

Just because you have a contact’s phone number doesn’t mean you can go ahead and use it. Make it clear to your text receivers that they have the option to opt-out of your SMS campaign at any time. It is a one-step process. Be sure an opt-out shortcode is visible, in all caps, at the end of your outgoing campaigns every so often.

It would be even better to inform users what type of text messages they can expect to receive from your company and how often. Be clear about what messages you will be sending and keep your promise to your audience. For example, if users are expecting to get text messages about flash sales only, you cannot send them text messages promoting new products.

Use SMS Marketing Tools

Don’t start sending SMS to your customers directly through your mobile phone. Instead, use professional SMS marketing tools and automate your SMS marketing. This way, you can automatically follow up with contacts, set the exact delivery time, and send text messages triggered by particular behaviors. For example, when a customer makes a purchase, you can automatically send them delivery updates.
Also, with SMS marketing software you can easily track your results. You can see how many people opened your message, how many times the link was clicked, and so on. All these will help you create a successful customer journey and increase your profit.

Add value to your messaging

Don’t send text messages, well just because you can. Instead, you’ve got to make them valuable for your audience. For example, you can offer your customers something amazing for them, that they can relate to, such as a special deal or a coupon that is exclusive to your SMS marketing list. Exclusive offers will make your customers feel like VIPs.

Keep your messages short

A text message is not the appropriate channel to send users large, complicated messages. Keep them short and simple. Start with something attention-grabbing, like the amazing offer you have to share, or your new product collection launch, and encourage your users to keep reading and drive them to take action.

Include Personalization

You should never make your customers wonder who is texting them. Also, it is not a good idea to send the same message to everyone either. Some personalization examples are addressing each recipient by name, sending offers/information based on their location, and mentioning recent activity with your company like recent purchases, cart abandonment reminder, shipping update, and more.

Don’t forget about the time

Pay attention to the time zones your customers are located in and send messages during appropriate times. A text in the middle of the night is unlikely to get the positive reaction you are hoping for. Make sure any automated responses are sending in sociable hours.

Include a call to action

Every message goes out with an intention. A strong call-to-action is important in any type of marketing campaign. A call-to-action encourages users to take the next step, moving them along in the buyer’s journey. Keep your call to action to-the-point and simple.

Don’t bombard your customers

Make sure not to abuse your customers’ permission to text message them. Select a proper frequency to send them SMS so that you do not risk subscriber opt-outs and maintain your valuable contact list intact. Every audience has its best frequency balance, so you can employ A/B testing to discover the rate that works best for your target groups.

SMS marketing can be a strong tool for your company, enabling you to send important messages directly into the hands of your clients. So, make the best out of it. Remember to keep these tips in mind, add a touch of creativity to your content, study your audience well, and you will become a pro at SMS marketing.

WayMore is a cutting-edge user-friendly automation tool by AMD Telecom designed to automate business and marketing procedures, improve conversions, and decrease digital marketing costs. WayMore adopts ML (machine learning) and AI (artificial intelligence) disciplines and integrates with all major eCommerce, websites, or CRM suites.

Here in Routee we are constantly working to improve your Waymore experience, so we are happy to announce the release of WayMore’s new version 1.5.

These are the benefits of Waymore v. 1.5

Have an insight into the activity of your clients with the New Feature – Event Logs

The new WayMore v. 1.5, has new functionality that allows our customers to see the logs for all enabled automation per Installation (integration), in a human-readable/friendly way. This includes information about the events that were triggered and the actions that were taken for these events based on the workflow settings.

This feature enables the user to have an insight into the activity of their clients and Waymore.

New Widget for an even better UX

The sidebar menu has been enhanced with a new widget that allows the user to view the current installation in order to navigate faster to automation settings as well as select one from the actives in case he has multiple installations. (Installations selector).

UI Switch (Between Routee/ Waymore) for a seamless experience

In order to make the experience fast and seamless, we added a UI Switch that changes between the two interfaces.

Enjoy a unique user experience with Unified chatboard improvements

We improved Unified ChatBoard in order to provide a better user experience. Users can now sort by date all incoming messages. The new view allows the user to see more clearly the message sender/recipient per available channel and the time that has passed from the last reply in the main view.

Additionally, the conversation/chat UI has also been improved in order to allow the agent to work more clearly and monitor the whole conversation in a larger area within a new side-docked chat view.

Dashboard: New widgets and personalization feature

Each new feature is packed with a dashboard widget that is fully flexible and movable to create your own dashboard. Event logs activity is now also displayed on the dashboard as a new widget.

Users can easily drag and drop dashboard widgets and re-order them as per preference.

New platforms supported and custom software integration Improvements

We are also pleased to announce that Custom software integrations (CRM, ERPs, or other software) with WayMore platform have been activated, and we already have customers that have integrated their custom software with our platform.

Plugin updates:
● Support of Custom Groups for Contacts retrieved by API

New version for open cart plugin

Plugin updates:
● Informing the shop owner of a new order for visitors
● Fixed cart URL property
● The version of the plugin is not static

New plugin for Bitrix24 cloud CRM.

One of the most popular cloud services is now supported on WayMore. The omnichannel automation for Bitrix24 web plugin allows you to synchronize your customer database in Bitrix24 with WayMore. An ideal omnichannel marketing automation tool that enables your business to increase its revenue and boost its brand loyalty. The plugin will help you transform your message and email campaigns, create a powerful brand presence that leads to new customer acquisition, retention of existing customers, an increase in sales revenue, and, ultimately, business growth.

It is critical for organizations today to craft and complete an efficient customer engagement strategy. The higher your engagement levels are, the deeper your relationships with customers become. Engagement nurtures loyalty and drives consumers to spend more money.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer Engagement is the relationship between a consumer and a brand. This relationship can take place through multiple channels, ranging from email, click-through-rate, online reactions, feedback, re-purchasing, and more. Highly engaged customers purchase more, promote more, and are more loyal. Implementing a high-quality customer journey is a vital part of your customer engagement strategy.

Why is Customer Engagement important?

The latest research point that a strongly-engaged client represents 23% more revenue than average. No customer engagement strategy could mean that your business is missing chances to communicate with customers and build a real connection with them. There is no magic customer engagement plan that works for every organization, overall industries. A serious focus on compassion, clarity, and unity in your dealings with customers and prospects should be the basis for all of your customer engagement actions. There are many accurate customer engagement examples, from brands that use everything, from playful, active social media agents to personalized discounts and offerings to inspire faith and love in their customers.

Customer engagement is the new marketing

If you want to stand out from the competition, you need a great customer engagement strategy. That’s for sure. But, INC goes as far as claiming customer engagement is the new marketing.

A strong omnichannel customer engagement strategy can make you maintain an average of 89 percent of your customers. Up to two-thirds of a company’s profit relies on efficient customer engagement.

A solid customer engagement strategy will result in a customer-centric organization that, in turn, fosters growth and customer loyalty. Getting there means giving customers value that goes beyond a simple transactional relationship.

Turning to an omnichannel strategy is the only way to implement a personalized shopping experience for your consumers. A cohesive brand message across your channels (website, mobile app, social media, email marketing) is crucial. Not only to provide excellent service to your users but to improve your brand reliability. Clients want to be listened to and considered by their favorite brands.

How can you use omnichannel communication to optimize customer engagement?

Simplify the communication

Your customers feel like they already experience an omnichannel experience. A combination of web, email, SMS, and direct mail impressions. The difficulty is to secure that their experiences with you are consistent, and that messaging is reinforced across all channels.

It’s essential to find the proper tools to assure unified management of your customer communication across all channels. Look for a solution that allows your content and rules to connect across all channels.

Working with one platform will also make it possible to reduce the number of document templates being created and offer the functionality to create content that assures consistency.

Create a seamless experience

Omnichannel communication enables you to create a unique customer experience. All bits and pieces of communication, ranging from the simplest data entry to a full-on transaction, are combined to form a customer journey that’s fluid and not fractured. Therefore, no matter which channel a customer chooses to begin their journey on, whether they channel hop or even stop and re-engage later, all data associated with their path moves with them and is available on all other channels.

Add value to your messages

Today’s organizations are asking: how can we gain from personalization without sacrificing client trust? Before getting started, you may need to assess your goals. Many organizations want to understand how to use personalization to increase revenue, foster loyalty, and boost customer satisfaction. But ultimately, those elements are a byproduct of a properly established program.

The first, most important stepping stone is to put the consumer at the center of the experience. Organizations can do so by:

• Asking customers what they want to get out of the experience across various channels
• Explaining the benefits of personalization and creating a value exchange
• Giving customers control and allowing them to set preferences
• Having a clear privacy statement and an easy opt-out

Improving customer engagement rate means adopting a customer-centric business model. By focusing on the individualization of the customer experience, businesses have the opportunity to provide real, practical, and impactful value to consumers. When you know what makes your customers tick, you’ll be able to deliver a more relevant customer experience—taking advantage of their individual attitudes and affinities, motivations, and propensities—to drive higher levels of consumer satisfaction and generate better results over the lifetime of your customers.