How eCommerce businesses can leverage WhatsApp Marketing?

WhatsApp has grown to be the most popular messaging platform in the world. With 2B+ global active users, the eCommerce industry is taking full advantage of the growth of their businesses. They have found WhatsApp marketing to be an effective way to increase their brand awareness and build customer loyalty at the cheapest costs. 

That's how WhatsApp has come up as an incredible method of customer engagement channel for all businesses. As WhatsApp marketing has been highly successful for eCommerce businesses in building long-lasting relationships with customers.

Continue to read exactly why and how you can utilize WhatsApp Marketing for your eCommerce business.

Why use WhatsApp Marketing for your eCommerce?

Remember how television ads, print ads, and other traditional marketing activities certainly have their impact but as gradually people are connecting more on social platforms, digital marketing took over these traditional methods.

Similarly, WhatsApp messages with an open rate of 99% have craved businesses to do more WhatsApp marketing than traditional emails and other digital campaigns.

Thus, connecting on WhatsApp is a powerful asset for eCommerce businesses as it provides multiple features to interact with their customers alongside personalized messages. To be noted, personalization on WhatsApp is proven highly effective for eCommerce brands.

According to industry data, 70% of customers believe to respond more positively to personalized marketing messages than brands that send messages with any personal touch.

Moreover, building connections with existing customers is always cheaper than acquiring new ones as on average customer retention rate is 15-20x less expensive than the new acquisitions.

How to develop WhatsApp Marketing Strategy?

WhatsApp marketing is driving increased conversions, and sales, and also allowing D2C brands to build deep quality relationships with their customers. In comparison, costs next to it are nothing in terms of marketing expenditures. 

Therefore eCommerce businesses should develop a well-researched strategy to leverage WhatsApp Marketing.

Read further to know how to build a WhatsApp marketing strategy:
- Get the WhatsApp business app

The popularity and convenience of WhatsApp led more small businesses to use it to communicate with their customers hence, WhatsApp Business App. It allows eCommerce brands to create a tailored profile to suit the products and services they offer. Compared to regular WhatsApp, WhatsApp Business includes additional features, such as:

  • Business Profile (to display essential information - address, business description, email address, and website link)
  • Catalog (to virtually showcase products)
  • Labels (to organize chats with customers)
  • *Note - Merchant can label conversations according to the stage of the sales funnel.
  • Quick and automated replies (to stay in touch with customers and quick resolution to their queries)
  • Statistics (to track sent, delivered, received, and read messages)
- Create your brand personality

A brand persona is a kit of traits, attitudes, and values that your brand showcases on a regular basis to help connect with the customers. Thus, to make a successful WhatsApp marketing, you need a beautiful/impactful brand persona.

Remember market leaders?

Have you noticed any market leaders for their brand persona? Just like Amazon is reliable & competent, Tesla is visionary & courageous, Apple is sophisticated, creative & artistic, and Nike is exciting & provocative, and the list can go long. 

Spot the meaningful traits of your brand and underlie those in a tone of voice and communications with your prospects, especially for WhatsApp marketing.

Use WhatsApp marketing to create a feeling in your customers that they are dealing with a real person rather than a bot. Try to include a person's name in the form of a signature - helps to develop a better connection when talking to a person.

- Get a contact list to boost engagement

Thinking to utilize WhatsApp as more than just a support channel - reminder - you'll need a contact list.

In order to get more new contacts, you can include subscription forms to your online store, and place them on different pages. Offer something your customers can take their eyes off - eBooks, product tutorials, multiple uses of a single product, how-to videos/guides, otherwise, play with evergreen discounts/offers/gift cards.

Gain the trust by maintaining transparency - ask them about their preferred channel for these forms. Allow your subscribers to choose the channel they want to receive updates on - email, Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp. 

A confirmed approach will help you create higher engagement and conversion. 

- Create an impressive communication

With a 98% opening rate, WhatsApp is a highly engaging channel for all. Therefore, carefully produce your content to reach out to customers on WhatsApp.

Start by picking topics and the messages that are pinpointed to your customers so that they'll entertain a fully informed content piece from you. main you want to deliver. Get out from your comfort zone - promotional messages start sharing entertaining and informative messages to your audience either for fun or education.

How can you optimize WhatsApp Marketing?

    - Create a broadcasts list

Segment your customers according to your requirement of targeting them - create a broadcast list of recipients. Contact will not get to see others, they'll receive the messages separately. It will be easier for you to administrate your mailing/contact lists.

The attribute of the broadcast list makes them perfect to run relevant campaigns on WhatsApp. You can this feature best to re-engage and retain your existing customers - how? Create the broadcast list including all your VIP customers, send them exclusive offers and ask them for referrals.

Sounds easy? Create your broadcast list and get started!

    - Use group chat

WhatsApp groups might look similar to the broadcast list but there's a little difference. Group chats allow the people to each other and share their opinions on the group, which will be seen by all the members whereas in the broadcast list neither can people see each nor can reply to the same group (individual chat will be created automatically).

So, if you want to encourage a conversation between your customer then group chats are the best medium and come in handy as well. For instance, you may set up a group chat to warm up participants before some event or webinar.

    - Send short messages 

Keep your communications short and sweet! WhatsApp is used very handy, people check their WhatsApp on the go and have no time to read any long messages.

Always keep a measure of your message frequency. Don't bombard your customer with messages, it will annoy them. It's best to practice sending 5-10 messages on weekly basis. 

Strengthen your WhatsApp messages with multimedia files such as videos, animations, or pictures. Incorporate Emojis in your messages, they are engaging and tend to build a connection faster than mere words - choose smiley faces rather than business-themed objects.

Advantages you'll get from WhatsApp Marketing

WhatsApp marketing tends to drive more conversions, improves sales, allows to build a deep quality relationship with customers, and costs next to nothing in terms of marketing expenditures. Read to know-how,

   - Build sincere relationships 

With the edge of sending personalized messaging, you can build some profound relationships with your customers. With WhatsApp marketing, you have more power to send personalized welcome messages, birthday wishes, anniversary congratulations, other special offers, etc. Such practice will keep you more connected with your customers - 70% of customers admit to bond better with brands by sending them personalized marketing messages.

   - Higher conversion rate

The initial point of contact is very crucial in D2C business, as people may feel disconnected from phone calls or emails you send. WhatsApp is a wise and handy option to send short and crisp messages to your potential customers. Also, businesses have ensured that customers have responded to 40% of their WhatsApp messages so has the prospect of increasing your conversion rate by 110%.

    - Increase sales

WhatsApp has some magic for sales, just by adding a WhatsApp number to the website, businesses have got a 27% increase in their average sales. So it is optimistic for a D2C business to be active on social media & messenger apps to increase sales as it grows the tendency of people to buy from you through messaging apps.

(It is easier to buy from the app after watching an ad rather than visiting the website and searching for the product).

    - Reduced cost of marketing

WhatsApp is the most economical method for marketing these days, all you need is to install the app and get access to the internet, hence enticing small businesses more. Meanwhile, the chances for your message to reach the customers are sky-high with a reading rate of 98%. On average, a user checks WhatsApp over 23 times a day.