Instant messaging marketing, as the name implies, refers to the use of instant messaging applications to create marketing campaigns to promote certain products or services. Merchants can make use of automation to deliver pre-made messages or the latest product information to customers who enter keywords in chatboxes, which greatly stimulate customers the desire to purchase.

According to a report presented by Data Reportal 2021, among the instant messaging applications, the top three apps with the most users in Hong Kong are WhatsApp (83.6%), Facebook Messenger (54.6%), and WeChat (53.1%). The frequency of Hongkongers using WhatsApp is quite high, even higher than that of social media platforms like Instagram and Google Search.

What are the benefits of using WhatsApp marketing? How can merchants use WhatsApp marketing effectively? In the following article, Boutir will help you understand this in-depth.

Table of contents

• What are the benefits of using WhatsApp marketing?
• How can merchants use WhatsApp marketing effectively?

What are the benefits of using WhatsApp marketing?

1. Increase store exposure

WhatsApp is one of the most commonly used instant messaging apps in the world. 83.6% Hong Kong users use WhatsApp to communicate with their friends, colleagues, and family every day. Users of Instant messaging apps, especially WhatsApp users, open messages very frequently due to the routine nature of the content sent by instant messaging apps. Meanwhile, the average text messages from Facebook Messenger and Email get an open rate of around 80% and 21.33% respectively.

As a result, by using WhatsApp marketing which is similar to Facebook Messenger with a higher message open rate, customers can check different types of promotional campaigns and click on relevant information for further explore easily.

2. Enhance customer service

To raise customer response rate and reduce pop-up rate, apart from text, merchants can also include images or videos in WhatsApp instant messaging, thereby gradually transforming the traditional one-way communication to two-way communication. Not only can customers use WhatsApp instant messaging to directly talk to merchants to solve their inquires, but merchants can also speed up the sales process and enhance sales transaction rate.

3. Classify target audiences

Compared with marketing on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, WhatsApp marketing allows merchants to classify a more precise “target audiences”. Merchants can obtain information about their customers’ preferences via direct messages, and then classify customers based on similar characteristics into specific groups of “target audience” so as to deliver the most suitable and relevant product information to the correspondings.

Taking a fashion store as an example, merchants can classify customers into “American style”, “Korean style”, and “Japanese style”, etc., and send corresponding products for the fashion categories they are interested in.

How can merchants use WhatsApp marketing effectively?

1. Create Broadcast Lists

First, merchants can create promotional messages about certain products or services, and select a large number of targets to deliver via “Broadcast Lists” (IOS users) in the upper left corner of the WhatsApp conversation page or the “New Broadcast” (Android users) in the upper right corner. Remember merchants can attract customers to become their members in order to obtain their phone numbers. Besides, in the promotion message, merchants can also include product-related links or special offers to encourage customers to click.

2. Create Group

Merchants can set up different groups for their current members to create a sense of member-only privileges, such as “fans groups”, “Benefit groups”, or “clearance sales groups”, thus increasing customer loyalty. Through instant messaging in the group, merchants can also get to know more about their members and preferences, establishing a friendly relationship and communication with customers.

3. Strengthen customer service

Instant messaging is one of the major benefits of WhatsApp marketing, aimed at improving customer service and increasing transaction rates. In fact, WhatsApp has a mobile version and a web version. When using the web version of WhatsApp, merchants can make use of external software to provide a comprehensive customer service at the same time.

Merchants can connect to the web version of WhatsApp in the "Linked Devices" setting (iOS users) or "Linked Device" (Android users) in the upper right corner of the chat. At present, WhatsApp Business can be connected to up to 4 devices without keeping your phone online.

To help merchants promote their business via WhatsApp, Boutir has been in partnership with ChatDaddy. If you are an annual subscriber of our Business or Business Plus plans, you can enjoy the free service offered by ChatDaddy to send your order notifications to customers via WhatsApp automatically. For details, please contact our customer success team.

We understand that everyone comes across difficulties when operating an online store. And you need professional assistance from us. Therefore we have prepared for you the following:

1. Online Store Set Up Workshop

We empower you to open an exclusive online store, and to be outstanding even under the fierce competitions in the retail market. Build your own online store, and join our 2-hour hands-on workshop now: boutir.com/seminar

2. 1-on-1 Online Store Set Up Consultation

Not only does our Professional E-commerce Team deal with a variety of problems regarding online store set-up, but we also provide consultations. We’d first get to know your business strategies in great depth, then give advice correspondingly.

Join now: https://www.boutir.com/consultation

Boutir Official Website: www.boutir.com

Contact Boutir Customer Success Team: m.me/boutir.hk