Building Loyalty with Conversational Marketing

The world continues to hunker down due to the ongoing pandemic. People are staying at home. Online shopping continues to be on the rise. The gig economy and remote work communities are growing. Many businesses are also struggling to maintain operations, or pivoting to digital means of earning money.

It’s a time when many are focusing inward, to ensure safety for themselves and their homes. It can be a very isolating time for many people. And this can be the very time when it’s important to reach out socially, to have conversations with other people, to continue to build bonds.

Conversational marketing is exactly that--it's having a conversation with your buyers while they're interacting with your brand. The result is a more personalized, approachable brand image that leaves your customers happy.

Here's how you can use conversational marketing tactics to build stronger relationships with your customers.

Send Friendly Text Messages

SMS is great due to its high open and engagement rates. But while it's easy to use them to send quick updates, encourage your customers and subscribers to engage with your brand by asking them questions they can respond to very quickly.

Take a leaf from Domino's Anyware initiative, which allows customers to order a pizza just by texting a Pizza emoji to Domino's. It's super fast and encouraging to today's millennials.

Speak in their Words

Don't be afraid to use the vernacular when designing your chatbot or marketing copy. While it's generally better to stay away from overly trendy turns of phrases, when your text message or chatbot speaks in your customer's own language and patterns, there is an instant connection made.

Look into studying your customers chat logs and conversations with you to figure out how to talk to them. Find out not just the exact problems your customers have, but use the exact words they used to talk to them about it. It will help them feel even more in sync with your brand.

Speed Up Chats by Narrowing Down Responses

Messenger chatbot usage is rising, not just for ecommerce but for many other purposes as well. With everyone online these days, it's only natural to be chatting online for many of us.

Make it easier for your customers to respond to your chatbot by giving them options to click or tap on when responding. You're not only saving your customer a few seconds and a bit of effort, but you're minimizing the possibility of errors and misunderstanding.

Give Your Chatbot a Personality

Gone are the days when chatbots are seen as impersonal, robotic avatars of a brand. With advancements in today's natural language processing, it's easy to bring a touch of personality to your chatbot. This can work really well coupled with your company's branding and image.

Take a close look at your buyer persona to make sure your chatbot’s personality matches what your buyers want to see from your brand.

Remember Them When They Come Back

One of the benefits of our online, connected world is the ability to make everyone's lives easier with a little help from machines. While data privacy laws need to be observed carefully, being able to remember some details for your customers' convenience is key to make their lives a little better, and is great for customer retention.

Allowing return customers to reuse their old order details, or even giving them promotional codes for being a loyal customer, is a great way to build relationships and goodwill.

Conclusion

It’s easy to feel isolated in a world where everything is in lockdown and we are distanced from many of our family and friends. Now, more than ever, the focus on building relationships and connections for our customers can be even more important.

Conversational marketing can help bridge that gap. As businesses, we can help provide a little bit of intimacy for our customers by being mindful and thoughtful of what they are going through, and speaking to them in words they can feel connected to.

We all need a little intimacy in our lives. Let’s continue to build loyalty and relationships with our customers, and get through these lockdowns together.