WhatsApp has over 2 billion users in more than 180 countries, making it the most accessed app for messaging in Latin America. 96% of the Brazilian population uses WhatsApp (according to a Statista survey). This implies that, regardless of your target audience, it is almost certain that they have WhatsApp as one of their favorite communication channels, and it may already be one of the best channels to establish a commercial dialogue with that audience.
For a culture in which the customer must be at the center of any and all communication, marketing, advertising or publicity actions, starting the dialogue through the customer's favorite channel, or simply having it as an option for a transfer, is already a step in the right direction to engage much more.
That said, it is important to remember that engagement goes beyond "communicating"; it represents a much closer connection between the consumer and the brand and does not come without efforts related to personalization. Twilio's 2024 Customer Engagement Report indicated that 82% of interactions between customers and brands are digital and that 36% of people spend more with companies that personalize their communications. Through personalization, engagement is achieved, which ultimately generates financial return.
With this line of thinking outlined, it's time to consider how to achieve financial return, in this case starting with WhatsApp as a tool for personalized and engaging dialogue. Recently, Twilio released an e-book titled "The Power of WhatsApp to Engage Customers: A Practical Guide”. It presents many relevant pieces of information on this subject, as well as providing powerful insights about the topic.
Based on that, I want to provide a general overview of what is discussed in the material, in order to pique your curiosity to check out the full content and start embracing WhatsApp in your journey to improve the relationship between you and your clients. Therefore, let's reflect on the direction of WhatsApp in the customer journey and six hot tips on how to start the customer engagement journey with WhatsApp.
What functions should WhatsApp target?
WhatsApp can be a tool used to send promotional messages, such as loyalty programs, engagement campaigns, customer acquisition, lead qualification, after-sales and loyalty, self-service via chatbot, among other possibilities.
Meta recently launched, and Twilio is now with customers in beta testing for the new WhatsApp Business Calling functionality, where the user can make a voice call to the company using the WhatsApp application with Twilio Programmable Voice. With WhatsApp Business Calling, customers and brands will have the voice channel to communicate, for various use cases, such as service, customer support, sales, after-sales, among others.
This powerful application, when combined with customer engagement platforms, becomes a channel with automated campaigns, while still being personalized. It is even possible to use predictive AI to collect, integrate, and analyze customer data in depth, which will be used in dialogues through the app.
Despite this, it is important to remember that for more robust personalization, it is important to collect quality data, first-party data or primary customer data, and an open dialogue channel, such as WhatsApp, is ideal for this.
Using WhatsApp in marketing and sales
- Know your audience in detail- everything begins with understanding who your audience is. There is no strategy without prior knowledge of preferences, needs, pains, desires, language, communication channels, most loved products/services, etc.
- Segmentation- Personalization is closely linked to segmentation, which defines common characteristics and behaviors among customers. Here it is possible to use AIs to analyze large volumes of data and monitor changes;
- Plan- The customer journey needs to be thought out step by step. It's not enough to start a dialogue; there must be a marketing flow that leads to sales within the communication designed for WhatsApp.
- Be creative- It is important to explore various message formats, sending conversational messages with texts, images, videos, and links to the website, blog posts, or even news related to the segment. To make this more automated, it is possible to implement an intelligent chatbot to serve the public through selected buttons or according to keywords;
- Mental triggers- since messages are instant, there is little time to capture someone's attention. Mental triggers are techniques that stimulate a person to perform a certain action. There are various types of triggers, such as urgency, social proof, and authority.
- Click-to-Ads for WhatsApp- The idea is to have a link that directs the customer straight to the brand's WhatsApp, allowing them to start a conversation without having to save the number in their contacts. It is important to monitor the click-through rate, the number of people who actually start a conversation, and the average response time of the attendants.
Additionally, as a bonus tip, when using the WhatsApp Business API integrated with Twilio's customer engagement platforms, you gain scalability and campaign and message personalization; high delivery capacity; integration of chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants into the app; and multichannel support within a single API. third-party data collection in a safer manner and in accordance with legislation; sending data to over 400 applications with predefined integrations; and automation of processes and sending campaigns, content, and notifications.
With these tips, I hope to have piqued your interest in learning more about how to start using this communication channel as a powerful tool to personalize, engage, and achieve better returns, both financially and in customer relationships. If you want to learn more, the complete e-book on the topic is available at:The Power of WhatsApp to Engage Customers: A Practical Guide.
*Vivian Jonesis vice president of Latin America at Twilio.
