Using Targeted Audiences and Chatbots to Deliver a High-Performing Inbound Marketing Campaign

Developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are advancing at a breakneck pace, seeming to bring the promises of the future ever closer. One surprising, yet welcome, recent development in this arena is the rise of the chatbot.

From massive tech firms to lean startups, from Facebook to Uber to Bank of America, companies are racing to roll out smart chatbots in their consumer-facing products. In a December 2016 study, 80 percent of business decision-makers said that they already used or planned to use chatbots in their operations by 2020.

Chatbots aren’t just useful for interacting with your existing customers, but also for bringing you new ones. Here’s how you can leverage data management platforms and chatbots to create innovative approaches to capturing new customers.

Data Management Platforms

A good data management platform (DMP) is worth its weight in gold — or rather, the weight in gold of the hardware it runs on. DMPs can be thought of as massive, comprehensive collections of data about your customers and target audiences, based on demographic and behavioral information.

By running a query in your DMP, you can identify customers and potential customers who fit certain market segments, such as age, marital and family status, annual income, and interests and interactions. You can then target these audiences with specific email, display and social media campaigns designed for their demographics and interests, which will help you convert customers more efficiently and effectively than with a broad-ranging campaign.

Affiliate Marketing vs. Targeted Marketing

According to the classic affiliate marketing approach, leads are generated from a database and optimized to have the lowest cost per lead (CPL) and the highest margin for the affiliate. The way the target group is selected is opaque, and the affiliate keeps ownership over all of the related data. In the end, this all works out to a low cost per click (CPC) and a prevalence of “clickbait” titles and content.

With a targeted marketing approach, however, such as when using DMPs and chatbots in combination, you can generate quality leads by narrowing in on the audience you want to reach. The volume of leads is lower, but the leads are of higher quality because they’ve been optimized for conversion based on the audience’s profile and media usage. Advertisers are paid based on the number of completed orders, and the data is transparent for you to see. All this makes targeted marketing a smart choice for your telecom inbound marketing campaign.

Chatbots for Targeted Marketing

Chatbots have the power to radically transform the face of the sales, marketing and advertising industries. In the telecom industry, for example, chatbots can be used independently or alongside human agents in order to process account and billing issues and provide technical support for common problems.

However, chatbots can also be used to engage customers and potential customers about marketing opportunities such as device upgrades and new data plans. These chatbots can use insights from your DMPs in order to send information about the most relevant products and services. For example, a customer who is married with three children may want to hear about a new family cell phone plan. Bots can even remember information that customers provide them and refer back to it in later conversations.

And the reviews are in: Some companies estimate that chatbots can help increase your conversion rate by up to 300 percent.