How Business Messaging can boost your Ecommerce sales

Business messaging is a term that refers to the use of text messages, chat apps, and social media platforms to communicate with your customers and prospects. Business messaging can help you reach your target audience in a fast, convenient, and personal way. 

Business messaging can offer many advantages for ecommerce companies, such as:

• Increasing customer engagement: Sending personalised promotional offers, product recommendations, loyalty rewards, and soliciting feedback, reviews, and referrals can help you to build strong relationships and to maintain customer interest throughout the customer journey.
  
• Improving customer service and satisfaction: Enable faster and more efficient customer service by answering queries, resolving issues and confirming orders. Keep customers informed about the status of their shipments through SMS notifications, including tracking information, delivery updates, and any delays or changes in the delivery schedule.
• Reducing cart abandonment: Minimise the number of customers leaving your website without completing a purchase. According to a study by Baymard Institute, nearly 70% of customers abandon their online shopping cart without clicking buy. Reminders, incentives, and reassurances sent via SMS and OTT channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can motivate customers to finalise their transactions. For out-of-stock products, companies can notify customers who have expressed interest via SMS when those products are back in stock, allowing them to make a purchase promptly.
• Enhancing brand awareness: With rich channels, you can share rich content such as images, videos, CTA buttons and branded messages with your company's logo to increase brand visibility. 
  
  

A powerful tool for Ecommerce

Business messaging can be a powerful tool for ecommerce companies, but it also requires careful planning and execution. Here are some of the best practices to follow when using messaging for ecommerce success:

• Tailor your messages to meet your audience's specific needs and preferences. This can be achieved by segmenting them based on various factors, including demographics, location, purchase history, and browsing behaviour. Implementing this personalised approach significantly enhances engagement and boosts conversion rates.
• Choose and send messages in the right channel. By taking your audience's preferences and habits into account, you can find the channel that suits your customers best. Channels like SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Direct should be evaluated. Consider features such as message length, delivery speed, scheduling, multimedia support, and more to ensure optimal communication.
• Create messages for maximum impact. SMS has an open rate of over 98% compared to email's average open rate of around 20%. To maximise its impact, optimise your content accordingly. When sending an SMS, you only have 160 characters per message. SMS forces companies to communicate their message in a distinct and attention-grabbing manner, and you should use clear and concise language and craft attention-grabbing headlines. When sending rich messages, you can incorporate strong CTAs and include emojis or images when appropriate to drive conversions.
• Respect customer privacy and consent. As messaging involves personal communication, it is crucial to prioritise customer consent and trust. Adhere to relevant laws and regulations, such as GDPR, by getting customers to actively opt in before sending messages. Provide easily accessible opt-out options to give customers control over their messaging preferences. Avoid inundating them with excessive or irrelevant messages, ensuring a respectful and enjoyable experience.
• Seamlessly integrate SMS or rich messaging channels with your Marketing Automation- or CRM system. SMS and OTT channels can easily be integrated into existing Martech software and CRMs. You only need an API connection to start sending messages.

Most retailers nowadays have an online presence where the customer journey is key to building close relationships and loyalty with customers and prospects. Building this personal connection is more than just adding a customer's name to a message. By communicating through your customers' preferred channels and tailoring your messages according to their habits and preferences, you can deliver exceptional customer experiences that drive growth and satisfaction. Understanding your audience and leveraging business messaging are essential in achieving these goals.

ABOUT LEKAB
LEKAB provides mobile messaging services, messaging APIs and software for advanced messaging and process automation. We offer digital tools and solutions to companies that want to optimise how they communicate and interact with customers and employees on the mobile to improve productivity, availability and the customer experience through mobile channels. Do you want to know more or ask us for advice? Contact Us!