The Future of eCom and the Role of WhatsApp Automations
The future of marketing is automated, the future of eCom are relationships... Let's put them together!
Read that subtitle again...
Automation & Relationships.
Personalization & Conversations.
That’s how it is. Are you onboard yet?
Let’s break it down and explore what’s possible.
Why care about WhatsApp Automation?
Well, like above, it’s the future.
You may have heard of chatbots, and while they are not bad, they often don’t get the job done.
To achieve success in eCommerce, your communication needs to be personalized. Marketing automation is one way to digitalize your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). And WhatsApp is a means to lower the threshold for customers.
WhatsApp has over 2 billion monthly active users globally, making it impossible for businesses to ignore. Especially for DTC brands.
The customer has more complex needs every day, and chatbots or automated flows help streamline your processes and improve both engagement and relationship building.
Bots are invaluable, but not enough.
People do not like bots, people like to chat with friends over WhatsApp.That is what we dive into today…
WhatsApp automations, the benefits and use cases!
Direct Benefits of WhatsApp Automation in DTC
By automating marketing, sales and support on WhatsApp, DTC businesses can:
Increase efficiency
Improve customer experience
Extend Customer Lifetime
Get a higher Return on Adspend
And, scale time-efficiently
The potential of your automation is only restricted by your imagination.
Automated workflows can handle customer inquiries, order management, and promotional campaigns 24/7, reducing the need to scale with people and saving time and resources.
Personalized, relevant, and timely automated messaging provides customers with a seamless experience that enhances their loyalty and engagement with the brand.
Use Cases You Should Implement NOW
WhatsApp automation can be applied to various business processes, including customer support, order management, and marketing.
Let's take a closer look at some use cases and example flows:
Automated Customer support
This is probably the case that comes to mind when we say “chatbot”.
Automated customer support helps your store handle customer inquiries, provide answers to frequently asked questions, and escalate complex issues to a your support team only when needed.
It is a great use case, but the focus is on lowering costs rather than improving customer experience or driving revenue.
Now you can use WhatsApp to turn it into the first point of contact for users. Connect it to your other systems so everything works on its own.
Example of a Business (B) & User (U) conversation
B: Greeting message: "Hi there! Thank you for contacting us. How can we assist you today?"
U: Order status inquiry: "Hi, I'm checking on my order. Can you tell me where it is?"
B: Order lookup. When previously connected to delivery tracking, it knows, if not: : "Can you please provide your order number so we can look up your order?"
U: Provides confirmation or order number.
B: Order status update: "Your package is currently in transit and is expected to arrive by March 15th."
U: “Ah okay, thanks!”
B: Additional support: "Do you have any additional questions or concerns? Let us know how we can assist you."
….
B: Closing message: "Thank you for contacting us. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you need any further assistance."
Automated Order Management
This is diving deeper.
In the example before, people had to ask for their order update.
Now, we are thinking for them. Provide personal updates directly in WhatsApp.
WhatsApp auto-updates can provide customers with order confirmation, delivery status updates, and personalized recommendations based on their purchase history.
This means users can follow their order in WhatsApp and stay in the loop, receive back-in-stock notifications, pre-order notifications, and sales notifications.
These provide immense value to the customer, lowering the level of uncertainty and making it easy to get any information they need, when they need it.
Sales notifications are also powerful for the business, as they drive sales.
Example of a skincare/cosmetics advisory flow:
Send the right people to the right product, that fits them, and save all of that information in their profile.
In the future, use that information to follow up and give recommendations that actually matter.
It’s a whole new way of communicating with customers.
Automated Marketing
With all of the information you have collected during your automated customer support and order management inquiries, the best is still to come…
Automated WhatsApp marketing campaigns.
WhatsApp marketing leverages all of data from your systems, plus the first and zero-party data collected directly in chat to make extremely personalized campaigns exactly at the right time.
promotional campaigns, provide personalized recommendations based on customer behavior, and collect feedback.
integration with sales/order management
We are talking here about automated campaigns being sent out to a client when a new product is released that matches their interest. Or about a churn prevention campaign being triggered when we detect user behavior indicative of churning.
The beauty of WhatsApp is that all of these interactions are happening in the same chat. It’s not like you only contact your user to sell them stuff.
You chat with them to help them in different ways at different times.
Example of creating super-tailored campaigns:
The right message, to exactly the right person.
Based on what they bought in the past, on their user behavior, on collected data from other platforms… the limit is that there is no limit!
How can this help your business?
Better processes and improved customer experience.
Efficient interactions that save resources and increase NPS.
Stronger brand engagement and ultimately higher LTV.
The Future of eCom = WhatsApp + Automation
Here’s the thing…
Growth without relationships is not possible anymore.
Customers know better.Growth without scalability and automation is not possible anymore.
Business owners know better.
The solution is simple… WhatsApp Automations.
Implementing may seem too hard at first, but will lead to significant growth for your business. And the secret is having the right support.
Start with your most common processes, and keep it simple.
Evolve them there, and you won’t believe the impact.
Hope it helps, and let us know how it goes!
Cheers,
Your Team 🙏🏼
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