Conversational Messaging: A Complete Guide to Conversational Marketing, Sales and Support

Companies are continuously assessing the benefits and drawbacks of various conversational messaging platforms. Customer service, sales, and marketing have all been empowered to have real-time, personalized interactions with prospects and customers across multiple channels, whether through chatbots on a website or app, SMS messaging, or popular messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Conversational messaging (typically via SMS or messenger apps) has some serious benefits regardless of the use case. Conversational messaging via SMS has up to 98% open rates. And you can reach out to virtually anyone anywhere.

Conversational messaging channels allow companies to take the lead with two-way on-demand interactions for virtually everything from customer service, to order notifications, to answering frequently asked questions. This is made possible by a mix of rich media capabilities, AI and machine learning capabilities, and an asynchronous implementation strategy. Eventually, most businesses have a large number of use cases that can be supported over conversational messaging.

What Is Conversational Messaging?

The term "conversational messaging" describes how a company uses digital platforms to offer two-way interactions at scale. Delivering more tailored conversations that improve the user experience on the channels that customers choose is the primary goal.

For most businesses, messaging isn't really a novel form of communication. Numerous firms have adopted messaging methods as a result of the growing number of cellphones on the planet and the widespread use of apps like WhatsApp.

Nonetheless, a lot of the communications that companies send to their contacts are usually one-way. Many businesses employ automated texting to notify contacts of deals and promotions or to provide them with real-time order status updates.

Conversational messaging changes the game. It allows for two-way communication. It opens the door for businesses and customers to have conversations about sales, marketing, and customer service in a setting that they are accustomed to and feel at ease in.

Because they give consumers a choice in how they interact, conversational messaging holds the key in defining an omnichannel communication strategy. Customers have access to useful updates and notifications, and round-the-clock support across multiple touchpoints. To easily make purchases and obtain the information they require, customers simply tap and enter.

Benefits of Conversational Messaging

While SMS is still important for business messaging, conversational messaging offers a number of new features that can help businesses build stronger customer relationships. For example, if users are already familiar with a specific messaging platform owing to regular daily use, it is much easier for a business to reach them through that channel. Consumers can have a single, seamless, and easy-to-use conversation with a business on their preferred chat app rather than alternating between email, mobile apps, and support phone calls.

The biggest benefit of conversational messaging is that it allows businesses to integrate customer conversations within apps that they are already acquainted with. Customers don't have to download and install a new app anymore. Conversational messaging has several inherent business benefits:

Why Messaging Is So Effective

Your customers receive messaging where they are and at a pace that is determined by them. Messages have an innate sense of immediacy that isn't found in other forms of communication like phone calls or emails.

Unlike email or phone calls, which typically have 20% open rates, 98% of SMS messages are read by their recipient, and 45% of those recipients reply to the message they receive. Ninety seconds is the average response time for a text message.

Salesforce reports that the fastest-growing channel is messaging, with a surge in support inquiries via messaging apps. Agents can significantly increase their capacity by using messaging to serve multiple consumers simultaneously. By using the channels that their customers prefer, businesses can reach more customers in less time and reduce contact center expenses.

Whether you're attempting to reach out to customers who haven't been in contact with you in a while or inform all your customers about a new product, your team can collaborate to design tailored messaging campaigns.

How to Develop an Effective Conversational Messaging Plan in 4 Steps

Thankfully, it's not as difficult as it appears. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting started, albeit the exact stages you take will depend on your industry and your business objectives.

1. Select the Channels for Conversational Messaging

Conversational messaging encompasses more than just two-way texting. Nonetheless, it is unquestionably worthwhile to adopt SMS first. Recall that around 90% of people worldwide frequently use SMS, and 98% of individuals read SMS messages in less than three minutes of receiving them.

Today's top messaging channels such as WhatsApp and SMS are used for business interactions. Find out which channels your audience prefers, then connect with them on those channels. For example, some subscribers prefer WhatsApp since it allows them to search for your company and initiate a chat right away.

GirikSMS, being a 100% native Salesforce messaging app, integrates with SMS and WhatsApp with just a few clicks, making it the ideal choice for enabling conversational messaging on these channels.

2. Establish Your Conversational Messaging Strategy

The next step after selecting your channels is to determine the type of one-on-one interactions you will be engaging in. Conversational messaging is typically used in customer service.

You can utilize conversational messaging to have personalized interactions with customers rather than merely using transactional SMS to send them status updates about their orders. Furthermore, this two-way communication can result in a far better user experience if AI technology is leveraged. Conversational messaging can also be used for:

3. Select the Right Tool for Conversational Messaging

You need the best-fit platform now that you have defined your two-way messaging use cases. Two-way communication isn't the only feature of a great conversational messaging app. It will provide you with the resources you need to scale your operations, maintain security, and deliver tailored experiences at scale.

For example, with built-in data security, sophisticated AI technology, and a library of pre-defined messaging templates for multiple business use cases, GirikSMS lets you personalize every interaction for all your conversational messaging campaigns. Using GirikSMS, you can:

4. Prioritize Delivering Outstanding Customer Experiences

People feel more comfortable interacting with brands they can text. Enhancing relationships with prospects and customers should be your primary goal when using conversational messaging. Follow these tips to enhance the customer experience:

With GirikSMS, you can also automate parts of your conversational workflows, enabling you to provide round-the-clock service and support or proactively contact consumers to gather information and provide tailored product recommendations.

Conversational Marketing, Sales and Support: What's the Difference?

Conversational marketing is part of a larger framework of marketing strategies called conversational customer engagement.

An inbound messaging technique, the goal of conversational sales is to assist prospects and customers in making the best purchases by responding to their inquiries about a brand's offerings. Additionally, it emphasizes following up with them individually after initial interactions.

Another inbound messaging technique is conversational support. By giving customers easy access to one-on-one support, it helps them get the most out of their purchase. Additionally, it motivates support teams to follow up consistently to make sure customers are satisfied with their purchases.

Authenticity and establishing human connections are given top priority by all three of these conversational strategies. The development of enduring consumer relationships is their shared ultimate objective.

Conversational marketing has more of an emphasis on sending outgoing messages that encourage prospects to interact, whereas conversational sales and support are almost completely inbound methods. Having said that, its ultimate objective is to drive conversations and action inbound.

What Is Conversational Marketing?

After the digital era, marketing has advanced to what some industry experts refer to as the "era of infinite experiences." Today’s customers want personalized, one-on-one experiences with brands on their phones. And as businesses embrace this paradigm shift, they are turning to CRM-enabled texting apps such as a Salesforce SMS app for delivering next-level conversational marketing experiences to customers.

Conversational marketing is the latest messaging approach designed to meet the growing needs of prospects and customers for quick, short, personalized interactions. It's marketing driven by one-on-one conversations. It's likely that you're already utilizing some of its potent capabilities. With conversational marketing, you can:

Conversational marketing works best when paired with messaging. Text messaging gives you immediate access to leads and prospects and gives them the ability to reply straight away. Leads find email to be convenient as well because they may respond to your material at any time. However, email lacks the high read and response rates of text messages as well as the personal touch.

Through the use of the aforementioned strategies, messaging-powered conversational marketing helps you promote your offerings in a way that allows you to establish enduring relationships with your customers.

How to Embed Conversational Marketing in Your Messaging Strategy

Any communication strategy is enhanced by conversational marketing, which is also simple to use. A little creative thinking will suffice. You should:

Remind yourself to come across as human, not robotic, while responding to leads and consumers. Speak informally and politely, as though you were chatting with a new neighbor. Use animated gifs and emojis to give communications a unique flavor. Incorporate the names of your leads and customers, along with any relevant loyalty scores, to let them know that you are focusing on them particularly.

6 Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Marketers can increase customer acquisition, send conversion rates skyrocketing, deepen loyalty, and ramp up engagement across the customer lifecycle by enabling customers to respond to marketing communications, ask questions, and communicate with brands in real time. Let's examine the advantages of a conversational marketing approach in more detail.

Conversational Marketing KPIs to Track

Conversational marketing is already proving to be quite an effective messaging strategy for a variety of businesses. Prospects seem to enjoy having one-on-one conversations, and interactive messaging content seems to increase response rates. However, how can you be certain that the plan is effective? Key performance indicators (KPIs) for conversational marketing must be monitored to ensure you are on the right path.

This new-age approach of conversational marketing emphasizes marketing via genuine, one-on-one interactions. It focuses on developing messaging copy that encourages prospects and customers to engage with your business and, when they do, indirectly markets to them through informal conversations. The ultimate objective is to develop enduring customer relationships.

Why Measure KPIs in Conversational Marketing?

Digital KPIs are a valuable compass for any business. They enable you to determine how customers are connecting with your brand through various media. You can measure the effectiveness of your messaging material with the use of conversational marketing KPIs. Every KPI assists you in identifying the areas where your approach is working and those that require improvement.

You can utilize the baseline performance you've established by tracking your conversational marketing KPIs for a few weeks to estimate future success. After that, you may compare your conversational marketing KPIs with those of conversational sales and support. To allocate the marketing budget to the most productive channels, you can even compare the KPIs for conversational marketing to those of other marketing channels, as covered in our guide to measuring messaging ROI.

An omnichannel messaging platform, which facilitates the sending, receiving, and organizing of lead and customer messages, is the ideal tool for executing a conversational marketing plan. Important message metrics should be automatically tracked by your platform and presented to you in clear, easy-to-read reports. When it comes to conversational marketing, monitor these five metrics closely:

What Is Conversational Sales?

Salesforce customers who use a native Salesforce texting app have discovered that leads would rather talk to a sales rep than engage with a chatbot. It is now a known fact that most people prefer texts over phone calls. This is what can drive conversational sales.

Conversational sales refers to a text messaging powered sales strategy that is based on the prospects' inclination for one-on-one text chats. It emphasizes the value of responding accurately and promptly to incoming lead inquiries via their preferred message and texting platforms.

If you adopt this approach, you can focus on responding to leads who text you directly or message you using popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. By using an enterprise-class conversational Salesforce SMS app, you can receive messages from all conversational channels (SMS, WhatsApp, webchat) in a single inbox within your CRM.

The foundation of conversational sales lies in having genuine, tailored conversations with leads. When they're looking at your goods or services, you should make it simple for them to ask questions and provide prompt answers rather than trying to close them for items they might not be ready to purchase or do not need. In the end, this strategy helps nurture strong customer relationships.

Conversational Sales vs. Traditional Sales

Outbound content that is product-centric is the key focus area of traditional sales. Since leads must submit queries via forms or bots and then wait for responses, conversations are frequently disconnected. Traditional sales also employ more antiquated, business-focused communication channels rather than lead-centric ones. Additionally, these traditional forms of communication such as phone and email are less personalized. These challenges are addressed in conversational sales by allowing sales teams to:

In the end, conversational sales is an effective way to centralize the lead experience and assist the lead in making the best decisions at the appropriate time.

When to Use Conversational Sales

Using Conversational Sales in Your Messaging Strategy

It's likely that you're already utilizing certain conversational sales strategies if you text potential customers. The process of fine-tuning your existing initiatives and adding more is easy. Here are some tips to follow for your conversational sales initiatives:

1. Avoid sending outbound sales messaging content.
2. Focus on answering questions about your products or services.
3. Aim for shorter response times (you can set up auto-replies using an enterprise-grade texting app like GirikSMS) to inform leads as to when you will respond.
4. Send follow-up messages after resolving lead questions.

Keep in mind that you want leads to understand that they are having a conversation with a real person and not a bot. Keep your tone informal and welcoming while using grammatically correct language. If you have lead details, such as names and past hobbies, include them. If it fits with your brand requirements, include emojis or GIFs to showcase your personality and establish genuine connections.

Conversational Sales KPIs to Monitor

To get the most out of your conversational sales strategy, you must measure certain metrics to make sure you're doing it right.

Important global events must be considered in the metrics you measure and prioritize. Ultimately, the strategy revolves around meeting the demands of the leads at that moment, and they are impacted by global events. You can begin measuring your metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), once you've identified them. Ideally, an enterprise-grade texting app should be able to do that for you automatically. Alongside average response time and unsubscribed contacts (covered above), these five KPIs ought to be your main priorities:

For conversational sales, unsubscribed contacts matter too: leads must provide their consent to be texted, and they should expect your future messages to be helpful so that they stay on your SMS list. If unsubscribes climb, prioritize the questions that leads ask, engage in real dialogue, and personalize every communication.

B2B Sales KPIs

You shouldn't limit your conversational sales adoption to monitoring KPIs unique to messaging. You should think about a variety of other KPIs for sales teams, especially those related to B2B sales. For instance, you might want to monitor:

Why are these KPIs used? Conversational sales helps sales teams to guide B2B buyers through the sales funnel. With consistent text reminders, you should be able to improve these KPIs if you're doing it right. The trick lies in constant monitoring of these metrics and refining your conversational sales messaging on an ongoing basis to improve numbers.

What Is Conversational Customer Support?

There's a new approach to customer service that's revolutionizing how organizations work. While increasing revenue, conversational support helps organizations engage with their customers at a deeper, more meaningful level.

Answering consumer questions one-on-one with actual individuals is known as conversational support. Conversational support has moved from email and phone calls to quick, simple, and frictionless text communications in recent years. The foundation of conversational support is text messaging, which enables businesses to quickly and more efficiently reach more customers.

When you compare messaging to other forms of communication, your customers will find it more efficient, quicker, and more convenient. When you combine these facts with the significant transition that businesses have made during the pandemic toward going digital, this is the most logical way forward.

The quality of a customer's buying journey is what matters most to them when choosing which brands to endorse. The two most important elements of customer engagement and satisfaction in messaging are speed and personalization.

However, it takes more than just choosing the appropriate messaging channels to give your own customers conversational support. In addition to conversational channels, businesses also need requisite guidance on how to create exceptional messaging experiences for their customers. A company's ability to implement, scale, and refine its conversational messaging strategy can be greatly enhanced by having a well-thought-out plan in place.

Why Conversational Support Is Important

Prior to the spring of 2020, company reps could have in-person meetings with customers to define their experiences. For instance, when a salesperson sees a familiar face, they may greet them, inquire about their day, confirm that the previous item they bought is working perfectly, and ask if they need assistance with anything. All that changed after the pandemic struck.

Brick-and-mortar businesses scampered to implement digital channels to provide the in-store, in-person experience online. Adopting new messaging channels like SMS and WhatsApp quickly was a big part of this massive drive toward going digital first.

This widespread move to digital media was more of a sea change than a shift. There was no turning back once customers realized they could connect with the brands they love via the channels of their choice. Customers still demand in-person interactions along with conversational support that is quick and simple, even when physical stores are starting to reopen.

While many firms were able to quickly adopt these new channels after the pandemic, the job doesn't end when you start receiving text communications from customers. To service customers at scale across all of these different channels, you need a robust plan.

Businesses that engaged in customer conversations without a preconceived plan soon discovered that they faced a number of issues. It's possible that their support personnel took longer to reply to customer questions because it was unclear which team member would handle the case. Alternatively, a business may have responded impersonally to a customer's question because they were unable to access the customer's previous conversations in quick time.

These businesses lose out on the flow of a conversation and the intimate details that give customers the impression that they are conversing with a real human being. You can make the most out of every customer interaction and never pass up the chance to boost customer loyalty when you have a well-thought-out conversational messaging strategy in place.

How to Create a Conversational Customer Support Strategy

To develop a conversational customer support strategy, put together a great team first along with a plan, resources, and expertise before you start working. You'll find areas where you can improve along the journey. Together with your team, you'll work to refine your initial design.

Leverage your CRM data to reveal deep insights about your customers and complement it with your unique competitive advantage to help you craft a robust conversational support strategy. These two assets will serve you well in both identifying the goals of your new strategy and achieving those goals. These are the four key components of creating a conversational support strategy:

Conclusion: Get Conversational Across Marketing, Sales and Support

For today's enterprises, conversational messaging is a game changer. It facilitates growth, increases engagement, and even opens up new revenue streams.

Businesses can quickly go live with conversational messaging with GirikSMS. GirikSMS integrates seamlessly with SMS and WhatsApp, the world's two most popular texting platforms. It combines the power of the world's leading CRM platform, customer data, and automation to deliver rich, compelling conversational experiences to your audience. Whether you want to go omnichannel, add AI capabilities to your conversational sales workflows, or create compelling messaging campaigns, GirikSMS makes it possible.