Why CMOs should pay attention to ‘Messaging’

In 2018 the world-wide digital ad spend as per eMarketer report will be approximately $270 billion accounting for 43.5% of the total ad spend (~650 billion) and by 2020 digital ad spend will be about 50% of the total ad spend. This uptick firmly signals confidence in the effectiveness of digital formats such as search, social and mobile compared to traditional media. There’s a trend that shows that digital is on a path to eclipse traditional, but the fastest growth is in mobile.

“Messaging” is poised to be the biggest untapped channel in mobile, which actually works across mobile and desktop. The most observable aspect of Messaging is how it has become a platform accessible across all the most successful internet “platforms” (desktop, mobile and social). Eventually Messaging will become an inherent component of social, mobile and even search formats. But right now CMOs should think of Messaging as a separate channel due to the definition phase of the new possibilities with user engagement and inherent differentiation around 2-way communication with consumers.

CHALLENGES FACING MARKETERS USING THE CURRENT DIGITAL CHANNELS

Marketers continue to depend on agencies to deliver better ROI across most of the digital channels as off-the-shelf tools lack in capabilities. While brands continue to rely on agency resources, CMOs continue to invest in attribution and analytics tools helping with ROI measurement. Social and mobile are two channels that have shown effectiveness in terms of measuring and delivering a better ROI. Therefore, the growth in spend on mobile and social continues to increase by double-digits year over year.

Social has been pretty effective for marketers as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social platforms have continued to deliver efficiencies around attribution and measurement. As Facebook & other social platforms continue to tweak their algorithms the marketers will continue to struggle with finding those leads, conversions and building brand affinity with compelling ads. Many of these social platforms have taken on major efforts to help marketers offload conversations & interactions to 1–1 messaging experience.

Mobile spend is continuing to increase as users spend a significant time on their mobile devices. Mobile apps continue to engage users but it is pretty clear that Messaging apps contribute to a higher percentage of the user engagement time. We have seen Facebook Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, Telegram, SnapChat have continued to grow at a pretty significant pace, outstripping the social network growth seen this past decade. All these platforms are investing in enabling the 2-way communication for marketers through Messaging

Before we discuss the merits of the new kid on the block let’s first understand Messaging and what it means for businesses.

WHAT IS MESSAGING?

“Messaging” or “Business Messaging” is a way for users to interact with brands & businesses using various chat platforms, currently used by users for personal conversations. Unlike other spammy mechanisms this channel allows for users to opt-in first before engaging with a brand or a business. There are many messaging app channels through which users can engage with a brand. Facebook Messenger has spearheaded this effort and has really focused on delivering specific business outcomes through engaging and meaningful chat experiences. Facebook also built tools and components required to make ‘messenger’ a very capable channel. Facebook has also re-organized recently to bring WhatsApp and Instagram under single leadership. We will see some amazing experiences via WhatsApp for Business and Instagram ‘chat’, which is in beta mode in some countries. Apple’s Business Chat, Facebook’s WhatsApp, Google’s RBM and Twitter DM are not far behind in these efforts.

WHY MARKETERS SHOULD CARE ABOUT MESSAGING?

Marketers already message users today via e-mail and SMS. They are both very powerful but each has its limits:

• Email marketing has been strongly impacted by SPAM, Phishing .. and isn’t engaging younger audience as much as it does older demographics.
• SMS & other similar apps are also too limited due to size of message and text only experiences with no support for rich media. Users also experience spam and there is no easy way to make the omni-channel experience across mobile, web and social seamless.

Rich Messaging solutions such as Facebook Messenger, Google’s RBM , Apple’s Business chat etc. not only solve the email & SMS pain points but they also promise on delivering better engagement, retention and LTV through stitching the user journey across mobile, social and web. The interactive nature of messaging channel allows for understanding many user generated events that show intent, sentiment and needs of the end consumer. Here are some key value propositions for messaging:

Amplify engagement around ad spend

• Off load users engaging with your ad campaigns into a messaging experience to further deliver value add
• Impact ROI by understanding user behavior across multi channels especially around social ad spend

Messaging as a key component of your marketing technology stack

• Deliver marketing campaigns similar to email campaigns with much better message open rates, CTRs and also to further engage the user with a personalized journey
• Develop drip campaigns for lead gen, lead nurturing and conversion events

Personalized messaging that can be hyper targeted

• Deliver personalized content and product recommendations based on user interactions and content consumption
• The experience is much closer to native mobile apps with ability to easily interact using rich media with images & video

Engage users with highly interactive content and instant delivery

• Gather useful feedback from various segments with engaging quizzes and consumer surveys
• Users get instant feedback through delivery confirmations and read receipts

WHAT BOTWORX HAS TO OFFER?

Botworx.ai has invested in NLP and Machine Learning models to customize user experience in verticals such as ecommerce, media, travel, customer service, hospitality etc.. Our platform can understand user intent, sentiment and also build rich consumer profiles & preferences based on their behavior. The messaging experience can be fine-tuned to deliver on any of the KPIs or business outcomes that customers intend to achieve through a set of ‘Botworx’ tools. Marketers can use these tools to use messaging as a key strategy to engage and interact with their consumers:

• Conversation Analyzer helps brands understand consumer “conversations” happening on social platforms. Our analyzer can listen, analyze and provide actionable insights
• Generate brand lift and user engagement through our Engage tool set by targeting segments of users that show positive sentiment and high frequency of interactions
• Nurture users by running drip campaigns with easy to use Drip Templates
• Achieve business outcomes through conversion focused actions using our Targeting and Segmentation capabilities
• Make decisions using data through our Analytics tool that is top of the line, generating actionable insights
• Acquire users through organic and paid strategies using our Growth tool
• Stitch together User Journeys of consumers navigating through different digital channels with our tracking capabilities