Conversational marketing provides marketers with an opportunity to make a connection with customers.
The trick is knowing the right techniques and tools to use.
This article lists five conversational marketing tools, trends, and practical examples for you to consider.
But before we dive into conversational marketing tools and examples, let’s first define what conversational marketing is.
Conversational Marketing: What Is It?
Conversational marketing is the art of engaging people in an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time broadcast.
It’s about creating highly personalized experiences that feel like a dialogue instead of a monologue.
Marketing becomes conversational when it feels almost human as if you are speaking directly to someone on the phone or walking down the hallway at work.
Examples of Conversational Marketing
Now that you know what conversational marketing is all about, let’s discuss some examples.
Marketing Automation for 1-on-1 Personalized Conversation
One of the key tools for conversational marketing is marketing automation.
Marketing automation enables marketers to create personalization at scale by sending automated messages that speak directly to customers in a personalized, human way based on their behaviors and preferences.
Most importantly, these communications are delivered without requiring any direct involvement from your team – they just happen naturally as a result of the automation.
For example, an eCommerce site could send a personalized email to each shopper who abandoned the cart, asking them if they needed assistance.
Another example is an online retailer that sends emails after users view specific items on their website or apps.
This lets shoppers see similar products at later dates, and can help drive more sales by bringing attention to other relevant promotions.
Chatbots for Instant and Real-time Conversation
Chatbots are an excellent example of conversational marketing.
They are computer program that mimics human conversation, text, or voice interactions to offer help and advice over the phone lines or in digital channels like websites, chat rooms, e-mails, and social media networks.
A chatbot can be programmed to answer FAQs about a product or service, take orders and automate the buying process.
According to a recent study, Chatbots are projected to handle 75-90% of healthcare & banking queries by 2022. (Source: CNBC)
The same study also reveals that chatbots could help trim business costs by more than $8 billion per year by 2022, and will be dealing with 90% of queries in the healthcare and banking industry.
There are several ways you can integrate chatbots into your conversational marketing plan:
Build an FAQ bot that engages website visitors and handles simple questions through text or voice interactions on mobile devices, messaging apps, or even social networks like Facebook Messenger.
For example. a US-based company created a tax advice chatbot to help customers find answers to tax-related questions.
The chatbot is available on Facebook Messenger and can answer more than 70 of the most commonly asked questions about filing taxes this year, like how to report business income or whether you should itemize instead of taking the standard deduction for your charitable donations.
Not only does it provide useful information but also offers a way to engage with customers.
These are just two examples of conversational marketing, but you got the idea.
The goal of conversational marketing is to build loyalty and trust among customers so they keep coming back for your products or services.
Many companies are already doing this, and you can do it too!
You do not need a large budget either – simply using the right tools in place of traditional marketing techniques will have an impact.
Here are 5 Conversational Marketing Tools (Mostly Free)
Now that you know what conversational marketing is all about, let’s look at some tools you can use to get started.
1. ManyChat
ManyChat is a conversational marketing tool that gives users a drag-and-drop builder they need to create Facebook Messenger bots.
It provides everything you’ll need for creating, deploying, and managing your chatbot on Facebook – including analytics about interactions with your customers so it’s easy to see which messages are working best.
You can also use ManyChat to create automated marketing campaigns and even integrate your chatbot with other popular apps like MailChimp.
2. Tolstoy (aka. GoTolstoy)
Tolstoy is a new tool in the conversational marketing space, it allows you to tell better stories through interactive videos on your website or web apps.
It provides a simple and easy-to-use tool with no coding required. And the best part is that it’s free.
With Tolstoy, marketers can use conversational marketing to engage their website visitors or app users in real-time using interactive video series.
You can record a few short videos using your phone or camera, and link them using Tolstoy’s user-friendly interactive video builder.
Here’s an explainer video that will blow your mind.
3. Drift
Drift is an intelligent messaging platform that helps you turn website visitors into customers.
It works by combining chat and real-time communication with the content marketing tools marketers are already using, like forms, tags, and emails.
This lets Drift help them engage more people on their site through instant conversations while keeping the conversation data in one place for reporting.
Drift supports Facebook Messenger and Slack, two popular messaging apps. It can also integrate with over 60 other marketing tools through its API.
4. MailerLite
MailerLite is a simple email marketing automation tool that lets marketers create, send, and track emails.
It comes with several tools to help you grow your list of subscribers, personalize the content in your messages or set up automated campaigns based on user actions.
MailerLite also has a built-in SMS service that lets you send auto messages to your customers or subscribers via text message, which is an excellent way to keep the conversation going with customers on the go.
And it’s free for under 1000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.
5. TelBee
TelBee is a conversational marketing tool that lets you create “voice messages” for your customers or subscribers.
It’s perfect for businesses and marketers who want to offer their customers an easy way to stay in touch but don’t always have the time to engage with them through text-based messaging apps.
If, say, someone subscribes to your list via SMS, you can use TelBee to send them a voice message instead of a text.
You could also set up automated campaigns for customers who’ve bought or enquired about certain products and services in the past.
Or offer different messages based on where they are (i.e., their location) when they subscribe or opt-in.
It’s a simple way to build relationships with your customers and increase customer retention through personalized, on-demand voice messages they’ll listen to!
Conversational Marketing Trends and Statistics
In closing, here are some conversational marketing trends and key statistics marketers should keep in mind as they develop their strategies this year.
- Over the past year, 68% of 18-24 year-olds are using chatbots more, or the same. It’s 71% for 25-34 year-olds. (Source: State of Conversational Marketing Report)
- The average satisfaction rate of bot-only chats is 87.58%. (Source: Comm100)
- 68% of consumers like chatbots because they provide quick answers. (Source: Userlike)
- 76% of companies that implement marketing automation generate a return on their investment within the first year. (Source: Marketo)
- The marketers who created a multichannel conversational experience earned a 90% higher customer retention rate than single-channel marketers. (Source: Omnisend)
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post. If you have any questions just let me know in the comments below!
Ali is a digital marketing blogger and author who uses the power of words to inspire and impact others. He has written for leading publications like Business2Community, Inc. Magazine, and Marketing Profs. When not writing, he enjoys spending time with his family.