20 WhatsApp marketing best practices that drive sales

Sales and marketing operations are not intuitive processes. In a super competitive market, e-commerce businesses must focus on crafting the right approach and strategy to set their sales operations to success from the onset.

Do you want to move beyond sending marketing campaigns to opt-in customers and toward converting your subscribers into sales? This article will provide 20 WhatsApp best practices to get you started on the road to high revenues.

1 Include a clear display name

Customers prefer dealing with recognizable brands and businesses. Phone numbers do not make much of an impact. WhatsApp API allows you to clearly add a display name to your account. Audiences coming in contact with a recognizable brand name will  likely enhance their experience and affect their willingness to opt-in.

Ensure that customers understand who they are signing up for and explicitly agree to get these messages from your brand.

2 Apply for the green badge

An authentic account can be all that your audience needs to trust your brand. Luckily, WhatsApp API has the option of the green badge, which testifies that your account is authentic and is the official one.

Make sure you apply for the green tick as soon as you have the requirements. It will protect you against fraud and give your customers another push to trust you. It will also assure new subscribers that they are contacting you through the right account.  

3 Create an informative company profile

When coming in contact with a brand for the first time, people tend to be thorough and look for any information to familiarize themselves with the business and judge it. A good profile will help them decide and impact their first impressions.

A well-crafted profile should include your website URL, email address, and physical address.

4 Provide a path to human agents

Unlike non-reply emails, WhatsApp is, by default, a two-communication channel. Yet, some might neglect customer service and undermine the importance of conversing with leads. A guided chatbot can offer your audience multiple options for frequently asked questions and more. Still, you must provide a clear path to human agents whenever necessary. They will assist customers with complex queries and provide a more personalized customer experience.

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5  Personalize your conversations

Chatbots are doing a great job collecting and storing information intuitively in the CRM. You can use them to collect more relevant information besides the names and numbers. Add qualification questions to your chatbots. Guided chatbots offer a clear flow, and lists can be customized to address certain concerns. You can assign different chatbots for people coming from different touchpoints based on the first attribution message.

More critically, agents' conversations must be personal and customized. Personal questions can be integrated into the conversation to collect information that can clarify customers’ preferences, etc. Giving agents access to the customers’ browsing and conversation history alongside information from their profiles will definitely impact the quality of the conversation to the best.

6 Survey customers at the end of every conversation

Gathering feedback from leads and customers is an effective way to understand their needs and what they are looking for in your brand. It will significantly impact your content and marketing messages. You can add a promo code to the survey to encourage people to fill it out. Or a simple rating message at the end of every conversation can be enough to understand the overall view.

7 Encourage your agents to update customers' profiles

Customer support agents must be attentive and considerate, asking customers relevant questions whenever convenient. Don’t make it look like an interrogation, but personal questions can connote importance to people and will help you know them better. Ensure your support agents update customers’ profiles whenever they have new information.

The conversation topics feature provided by the conversation management platform is an example of how you can organize and add timely information to your existing data.

8 Track customers' behaviors across channels

Tracking customers’ behavior on your website and your App and connecting this data with their profiles will make a big difference when deciding what content to send them. You also need to track and analyze their engagements with your campaigns and your social media content as well.  It will help you decide what’s working and what’s not and improve.

9 Clean your contact list

Owning a large contact list is great, but owning an active contact list is more important. People lose interest, change preferences, or simply change their contact info. Hence, regularly cleaning your list is vital to ensure it’s still relevant and up to date. You can, for instance, reach out to silent contact to see if they are still at the other end of the line and engage them if they are.  Remove contacts who fail to respond to your re-engaging campaign or opt-in re-confirmations.

10 Define a clear SMART goal

Each campaign must have a clear and precise goal from the onset. Determining a SMART goal, that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound will have a huge impact on your ROI. Your goal will determine your message, offer, and customer segment. Make sure you consider customer nurturing as part and partial of your goals; commercial-focused campaigns should not be the only messages your customers receive.

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11 Personalize your campaigns

Forging a personal connection with each and every customer on your list might be daunting but highly necessary. You can feed into their individuality and sense of uniqueness by sending personal messages. One simple way to do so is by adding custom fields to address customers by their first names.

WhatsApp API automation solutions are also useful for building this special rapport. Personalize content for automated flows and special occasions like birthdays, and send custom recommendations based on people’s purchase history and profile information.

12 Use segmented audience

Segmented campaigns have 14.31% higher open rates than non-segmented campaigns. Segmenting your marketing campaigns is part of personalizing your messages. It allows you to reach out to the right people, with the right information, at the right time, which enhances conversions.

Use demographics, website behavior, social media content engagement, and purchase histories to divide your contact list. Make sure your persona or customer profile for the campaign matches your goal.

13 Use conversational language

Just like when you are writing a blog post, and you focus on readability, you need to do the same with your outreach messages. Use casual and everyday language to make people feel comfortable and build a liaison with them.

The formal language might drive them off and make it harder for them to understand your messages. Be an expert but use simple jargon that is understandable to the average person. Speak in a friendly tone and don’t be afraid to use humor and opt for creating a familiar environment. Content should be varied; ensure you use videos, expressive images, and any type of multimedia you deem engaging.

14 Keep your message short

WhatsApp templated messages have a character limit of 1,024. You can spill ink and write a long message, but will it convert customers or be read in the first place? People have short attention spans, so make sure you cut the noise and write to-the-point messages, especially for marketing campaigns.

15 Add a compelling CTA

Call-to-action buttons are vital for your outreach messages. Choose the right call to action and make it obvious to spot. Also, make sure you provide a clear path for whatever action you are asking of your leads. CTAs are vital to marketing campaigns; it’s preferable that you add your catalog to the buttons, instead of sending your customers to the website.  Direct CTAs with a catalog button will entice audiences to shop directly from WhatsApp and enjoy an easy experience.

16 A/B test your content

There’s no one version of the perfect outreach message content, but it never hurts to test and experiment with your content. Send different versions of the same message to different sets of contacts. Analyze performance based on open rate and click-through rates to determine which content is more engaging. You can compare CTAs, visuals, and the header, alongside the copy itself.

17 Entice your audience with great content

Great content is the final step to retaining your customers. Make sure you are sharing valuable content that addresses your audience’s pain points and offers solutions. Great beneficial content will keep bringing your customers back and potentially bring more subscriptions.

Even if your primary focus and goal is to sell, don’t make your content focused solely on sales. Add varied and valuable content to build a community around your brand. The message must perfectly align with your goal.

18 Use analytics to send data-driven campaigns

WhatsApp provides a reports feature to help you study your campaigns’ performance. Along with other analytics tools, study your messages' performance based on click-through rates, open rates, unsubscriptions, and other custom metrics, if necessary.

Also, you must track your ROI, as WhatsApp messaging is a paid service. These data will help you improve future campaigns and create a checklist of best practices.

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19 Determine the frequency and timing of your campaign

Too many messages will most likely result in a number of blocks, as people do not appreciate being spammed. But less than required messages risk disengagement. You need to find a balance in the frequency of your outreach messages.  Experiment with the frequency of automated transactional messages, but generally, it’s best to send three or four messages maximum.  

Beyond transactional messages, make sure you create an outreach calendar for weekly and monthly messages. Balance your content for each campaign.

Timing is another important factor to study. Depending on the country of your audience, their weekends, and general behavior, you can determine when exactly to send your campaigns.

20 Provide a clear opt-out path

No relationship lasts forever; customer-business relationships definitely will change in the long run. Make sure you provide a clear opt-out path for customers wishing to unsubscribe. It will prevent them from blocking your number, for instance, if that’s the only option they have left, which will damage your rating. Add an “unsubscription” button to all your marketing messages. Make it straightforward and ask customers to tell you the reason for opting out to help you improve, but don’t make it a prerequisite.

Following these best practices will put you on the right path to creating a marketing strategy that works and drives sales.

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