The basic tenets of marketing call for us to meet customers where they are–and these days, they're on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp users worldwide spend 16 hours and 32 minutes per month or 33.1 minutes per day on the app. Users have not only embraced the channel–they've evolved and expanded the ways they use it. Shoppers are using WhatsApp to talk with the brands–and not just hear from them.
WhatsApp conversational messaging has opened a two-way communication channel between businesses and customers. It gives users control over their experiences, letting them reach out to brands when they've questions, share more about what they're interested in hearing, and get real-time support.
Plus, it saves them the hassle of waiting on calls, refreshing their emails for replies, or making a trip to the store to get help.
Consumers say that they'd rather talk with a brand on WhatsApp than call them, talk to a sales representative, do laundry, or even exercise.
This new capability lets companies transform shoppers' experience on WhatsApp and gives them new ways to discover, browse, and buy products from their favorite brands.
What is WhatsApp Conversational Messaging?
When brands want a more casual and effective way to connect with their prospects and customers, they often turn to conversational messaging.
WhatsApp conversational messaging is a two-way conversation between your brand and the customer on WhatsApp. Any of the parties can initiate these conversations: parties, your customers.
For instance, you might send out an appointment reminder, and the customer can ask to change their appointment dates or ask questions about what they should bring. A customer might also directly message the brand regarding product inquiries, purchases, or refunds.
It's kind of like you're having a conversation, but you're actually filling up a form that will help the brand help you better with personalized offers and suggestions.
Importance of WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
It's all about building a solid relationship with your customers.
And believe this is what your customers want. A recent Forrester report says that 50% of consumers rank texting or social media messaging as a preferred way to reach and speak to a brand. Another survey shows that 83% of consumers said that the option to message a brand gives them confidence.
Consumers rank a brand's ability to resolve their questions or issues quickly as the most important feature when interacting with a brand. Among consumers who prefer WhatsApp, the two most common reasons are that they find it more convenient and expect it to be faster.
Interestingly, consumers under 35 are twice as likely as other age groups to say
They prefer asynchronous chat because they want to pause and come back to the conversation later (30% vs. 15%, respectively).
When consumers can use the conversation channels they prefer, they're more likely to recommend the brand, buy from them, and likely switch from their competitors because of convenient communication.
Future trends for WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
Every region has its favorite chat app, but there's one that rose to prominence across the globe in the past few years. With 3 billion active users and a business API that's seeking wider adoption every month, it's no surprise that so many businesses are actively using WhatsApp as their prominent messaging platform.
WhatsApp is uniquely positioned to serve the modern consumer, making it a powerful tool for marketers, irrespective of industry. A study found that texting is quickly gaining favor with consumers. Currently, 93% of US shoppers are interested in or opted in to receive text from brands. Last year, that number was 81% (which is already a 26% jump from 2020).
The fact that consumer adoption of WhatsApp has continued to grow highlights that it clearly meets the expectation of convenience. When asked, their favorite message types to receive from brands (52%), shipping notifications (45%), sales and promotions, and birthday/anniversary/holiday greetings (30%) topped the list.
And shoppers aren't leaving brands on read. In fact, they're actively engaging with brands when they receive any message. Globally, 63% of consumers are engaging with the brand's text messaging programs at least twice a week. These numbers are a testament to their comfort and familiarity with WhatsApp.
WhatsApp conversational messages are an excellent first touch–it's urgent, to the point, and hyper-personalised. Customers usually expect exciting announcements and limited-time offers via WhatsApp first and are ready to click through and shop. With WhatsApp, you can lean into visuals (images and videos) and crisp messaging to educate shoppers about the product they're interested in or to build loyalty to the brand.
But the real surprise is that shoppers are just as likely to reach out to learn more about your offering:
- 88% of customers of global consumers would strike up a conversation to learn more about your product
- 70% would start a conversation to get a product recommendation
- 80% would ask for a promotion or discount
Lastly, when reached at the right time, customers would spend more than what they had planned. Understanding your customers' mindsets and when they will be most likely to shop is important. The best times when the shoppers are most likely to make a purchase are while watching TV when they get a text about a sale, or while drinking their morning coffee.
Your WhatsApp campaigns should be timed well and precisely segmented to share the right product at the right time with the right people.
Benefits of WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
WhatsApp has an open rate of 98%, which is the highest compared to any other communication channel. When a brand uses WhatsApp, it can turn impressive open rates and rich media experiences into direct-reliable connections with customers.
Consumers expect brands to be fluent in meeting their needs. According to IDC, 73% of customers say that a personalized experience inspires loyalty. That's mostly a challenge for many businesses, but it's also a great opportunity for businesses to communicate on WhatsApp.
There are a number of reasons why businesses should invest in conversational messaging on WhatsApp. Here are some of the most popular benefits:
Reach and engagement
When asked 1900+ marketers which channels they're using or plan to use in 2024–messaging apps like WhatsApp rose to the top of the list, with almost half of them planning to use this dynamic channel to reach customers.
WhatsApp is a unique and dynamic channel that offers customers a unique way to engage with customers through interactive, eye-catching 1:1 messaging experiences. The platform operates on a 24-hour conversation model, which encourages two-way communication, allowing for continuous interaction without any additional per-message cost.
Compared to other marketing channels, WhatsApp drives 72% more sessions per year. This channel is also effective at driving purchases, with an 89% uplift in purchases per user compared to other channels.
It's worth noting that the rise in popularity is closely tied to WhatsApp's ability to facilitate more personalized and direct communication with customers. This feature is no longer a luxury but a necessity in today's marketplace.
Convenience of quick communication
With conversational messaging channels like WhatsApp, you can offer customers the convenience of reaching out for support, inquiries, or guidance right from the comfort of mobile phones or desktops. This empowers customers to engage with a brand at any time, regardless of their location or time zone.
Whether it's seeking post-purchase assistance, pre-purchase queries, or providing feedback, conversational messaging helps increase touch points between customers and brands, fostering a positive experience throughout the customer journey.
Suppose you're a bank that needs to send a customer a fraud alert message and get a "yes" or "no" response immediately. Your contact center can quickly send a message alerting the customer of suspicious activity on their account, ensuring security without harming the customer experience.
This type of proactive, seamless brand interaction makes the conversation less intrusive and more welcoming, taking some weight off the shoulders of the customer care team to focus on the most pressing and complex requests.
Since WhatsApp has advanced interaction skills, it can be used in many different industries to offer richer and more personalized customer experiences, from SaaS to retail and even finance.
Rich media sharing
WhatsApp allows you to send various types of multimedia content like images, videos, audio clips, documents, and stickers within a WhatsApp chat, allowing businesses to communicate with more visual and interactive elements beyond just text messages.
You can easily implement rich media sharing across your WhatsApp campaigns in a number of ways:
- Encourage cart abandoners to complete purchases by using compelling product images and personalized messaging.
- You can send automated reminders for your upcoming events like webinars, concerts, etc. Confirm their participation with a quick reply button.
- Send flight tickets and boarding passes to your customers via WhatsApp to provide easy access to all travel documents.
- Seamlessly onboard customers with new users quickly and effectively by sending them educational videos explaining how to use the product, enhancing the overall onboarding experience.
Automated messaging that creates a personal connection
While automation feels robotic and impersonal, WhatsApp's automation capability actually enhances the customer experience when implemented thoughtfully. Unlike traditional marketing channels that are often one-directional and impersonal, WhatsApp encourages two-way communication that significantly improves customer satisfaction.
Sophisticated chatbots integrated with WhatsApp can seamlessly:
- Provide instant responses to common customer inquiries around the clock.
- Qualify and categorize leads through intelligent conversation flows.
- Manage and automate appointment scheduling and confirmation process.
- Provide personalized product recommendations based on customer interactions and preferences.
- Handle routine customer inquiries while handling complex requests to the human support team.
For instance, this chatbot from Lifeline Hospital automates the entire process of appointment booking. It understands context and helps the user take the decision, similar to a human agent.
AI transforms business messaging from a simple query-response model to an intelligent conversation partner that can handle complex customer interactions, make decisions, and execute tasks autonomously.
WhatsApp Business API offers sophisticated integration capabilities with existing CRMs, providing a unified view of all customer interactions in one place. This helps businesses execute highly personalized follow-ups based on customer behavior and preferences.
Best Practices for WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
By following the tips above, you’re already on your way to setting up an engaging business WhatsApp channel. But, if you want to make the best of your WhatsApp conversational messaging platform, here are some of the best practices to adopt:
Ask People to Opt In
Businesses can’t just buy databases and start messaging people. Whatsapp is a private messaging platform, so it's important to get permission before initiating any conversation.
Here are some digital touchpoints where you can ask people to opt in for your message:
- Any time you ask for someone’s phone number, give them the option to opt in to receive messages from your business account, WhatsApp.
- Make use of the powerful click-to-WhatsApp ads. You can integrate the click-to-WhatsApp ads feature into your Facebook and Instagram ads. So, when anyone clicks on them, the user is redirected to WhatsApp chat.
- Include an opt-in for WhatsApp communications during sign-ups or purchases.
That being said, give your users the option to opt out of the chatbot experience if they wish to do so.
Personalize the experience
Personalization is another crucial factor in building an engaging Whatsapp chatbot. You can use customer’s information to tailor messages to their preferences. For example, you can send them product recommendations based on previous purchases or discounts depending on service usage.
WhatsApp has plenty of features like stickers, emojis, gifs, and options to send images, documents, locations, etc. To make sure your WhatsApp messages don’t lose context, leverage WhatsApp Business API providers like Gallabox to enable personalization at scale.
Gallabox allows users to be segmented into demographics, buying behavior, and communication frequency to resonate with different funnel content. You can tailor product updates with preset templates with WhatsApp's 60+ language repository.
Let the customers make the first move with chat widgets
If you’re considering adding a chat widget to your website, then why not consider WhatsApp? You can add a WhatsApp widget to your website to skip the hassle of email back-and-forths. A user can instantly start a conversation right on the website without having to switch platforms.
Depending on the WhatsApp business automation platform you choose to manage the chat widget, you can also get other benefits like:
- CRM integrations to centralize customer conversations.
- Chatbot templates to create automated conversation workflows.
- Shared inboxes to auto-assign conversations to free agents.
Subhangi Basak, our Customer Success Manager, uses the Shared Team Inbox in Gallabox to oversee all customer tickets and assign them to her team based on predefined rules.
Key features of WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
WhatsApp conversational messaging provides several key features that are tailored to improve business communication and customer engagement. Here are a few of them:
- Verified business profile: Seamlessly establish trust and credibility with a verified business profile. A blue checkmark beside your business name says that your account is real, and customers will feel confident interacting with your brand.
- Template Messaging: Use pre-approved WhatsApp templates for messaging customers beyond the free 24-hour conversation window (after they've sent the last message). These are the best transactional updates or re-engagement campaigns.
- Interactive messaging: Make conversations interactive by using buttons, rich media sharing, list menus, and quick replies to make it easier for customers to take action, such as booking a service or making a purchase.
- Label contacts: Businesses can organize their contacts with labels for easy access, making it easier to send personalized messages and tracking each step in the user's buying journey.
- End-to-end Encryption: All messages sent on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, which prevents even WhatsApp from listening or reading to the text content.
- Shared Team Inbox: Today's customers need speed, and making them wait can imply not respecting their time. The WhatsApp Business API lets multiple agents handle your WhatsApp account from a single interface. So, no more juggling between platforms to respond to customer inquiries or losing track of messages.
Challenges for WhatsApp Conversational Messaging
Conversational marketing on WhatsApp presents various challenges that businesses must navigate to effectively engage with customers. Here are the key obstacles:
- Technical complexity: Many marketers find the technical aspects of implementing WhatsApp for conversational marketing daunting. This includes understanding WhatsApp Business API, which is essential for automating and personalisation at scale. The lack of awareness of using API can hinder effective campaign development.
- Understanding Consumer Behavior: Effective conversational marketing relies on a deep understanding of consumer behavior and preferences. Businesses must ensure that their target audience actively uses WhatsApp and is receptive to marketing messages on this platform. Without this insight, campaigns may fail to engage users effectively.
- Maintaining Natural Conversations: WhatsApp is primarily a messaging platform used for informal communication among friends and family. Businesses must adapt their messaging style to blend in seamlessly, using casual language, emojis, and short sentences. This requires marketers to rethink their communication strategies to ensure they don't come off as overly formal or intrusive.
- Measuring Campaign Effectiveness: Tracking the performance of conversational marketing campaigns can be challenging. Businesses need to identify key metrics such as response rates and conversion rates to assess the effectiveness of their interactions. Without proper measurement tools, it becomes difficult to refine strategies and improve future campaigns.
By addressing these challenges, businesses can leverage WhatsApp as a powerful tool for conversational marketing, enhancing customer engagement and driving sales.
How can we implement WhatsApp conversational messaging on Gallabox?
Now that we've covered the basics of WhatsApp conversational messaging, it's time to implement it in your next marketing campaign. The only requirement is that your business should have a WhatsApp Business API interaction.
Let's create your campaign now!
Step 1: Use the WhatsApp Business API to set up a business account
Sign up or log in to your Gallabox account.
Next, optimize your profile; add your logo and contact information (support email and phone numbers).
Start with importing your customer data.
This can be easily done via Google Sheets, customer relationship management (CRM) tool, or other third-party software using Gallabox connectors. Gallabox seamlessly integrates with popular apps like Shopify, Hubspot, Google Sheets, Razorpay, ZOHO CRM, Zoom, OpenAI, LeadSquared, WooCommerce, and more.
Here's how you can add contacts in Gallabox:
- Single contact creation: Manually enter each contact detail, such as customer name, phone number, and email address.
- Bulk contact import: Upload a .xlsx file that contains a list of all your contacts.
- User-Initiated Message: Gallabox will automatically save the contact of the customer who initiates a conversation with your business.
Step 2: Divert all traffic to WhatsApp
Now, let's drive traffic to your business. You can do this by:
- Adding a WhatsApp chat widget to your website for launching a WhatsApp chat.
- Generating WhatsApp QR codes to help customers reach your business instantly. You can display this on all customer-facing platforms and even offline.
- Run click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram to initiate a conversation with your business on Instagram.
Step 3: It's time to configure templates
Gallabox has an extensive range of WhatsApp templates for quick customer interactions like service reminders, delay notifications, and status updates. You can also check out our free AI-based WhatsApp template generator that helps you create high-quality templates using simple prompts in a few minutes.
You can personalize each template with customer-specific information using variables. This will make your messages more engaging and relevant to individual receipts, improving response rate and customer satisfaction.
Step 4: Setting up your WhatsApp marketing campaign
Now that you've laid the groundwork, it's time to set up your marketing campaign.
#1 WhatsApp ad campaigns
Click-to-WhatsApp ads are a type of ad format that drives users directly from social media platforms like (Facebook, Instagram, or Google) to initiate conversations on WhatsApp.
To create your first WhatsApp ad campaign:
- Go to Facebook Ads Manager.
- Give your campaign a name.
- Add Campaign Details.
- Set your budget and bid strategy.
- Choose WhatsApp.
- Define your target audience.
- Customize your target audience details.
- Set the ad formats.
- Highlight your offers/discounts.
- Upload your creatives.
- Set the call-to-action (CTA) to "Send WhatsApp Message."
- Create a welcome message template.
- Publish the ad.
#2 Broadcast messages
WhatsApp's broadcast feature lets you send bulk messages to your contacts. It is ideal for announcing new products, sharing company news, or sending time-sensitive offers.
Using Gallabox, you can easily categorize your audience and personalize your broadcast messages for maximum messages. You can easily track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates on Gallabox's dashboard to refine your messaging strategy.
#3 WhatsApp Flows
Gallabox's flow builder lets you quickly create WhatsApp forms using custom, industry-specific templates, and intuitive drag-and-drop elements. Furthermore, you can integrate these forms into your chatbots, bulk broadcasts, and drip marketing campaigns.
#4 Access conversations via shared team inbox
Gallabox's shared team inbox allows you to manage all customer interactions in one place. For example, you can:
- Easily manage user assignments.
- Set reminders or track session windows.
- Organize conversations with tags.
- Block and unblock contacts.
Get started with WhatsApp conversational messaging.
The advantages of conversational marketing with WhatsApp Business are quite apparent.
Even though conversational messaging can be implemented and executed using the free WhatsApp Business app, the API has so many additional features that it would be a shame not to try it.
If you're serious about starting conversational messaging on WhatsApp at scale, the first step is to create a WhatsApp Business API account.
Gallabox makes it possible to integrate WhatsApp API with your favorite tools, manage patients' contacts, and streamline bulk messaging, allowing health professionals to focus on their prime objective – patient care.
In addition to WhatsApp messaging, Gallabox also provides excellent WhatsApp workspace and no-code chatbot solutions. So don't wait; sign up now to get a free trial.
FAQs
What is WhatsApp conversational messaging?
WhatsApp conversational messaging is a two-way conversation between your brand and the customer on WhatsApp. Any of the parties can initiate these conversations: you or your customers.
What is the 24-hour rule on WhatsApp?
The WhatsApp 24-hour rule says that businesses can only reply to a user's message within 24 hours of it being sent. After the 24-hour window, businesses can only send pre-approved templates by WhatsApp.
Why do businesses prefer WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is uniquely positioned to serve the modern consumer, making it a powerful tool for marketers, irrespective of industry. A study found that texting is quickly gaining favor with consumers. Currently, 93% of US shoppers are interested in or opted in to receive text from brands. Last year, that number was 81% (which is already a 26% jump from 2020).
