Conversational Messaging Is 2022's Biggest Growth Hack For Your Startup Conversational messaging can help your startup engage with customers and users where they already are: the messaging app

One of the key areas of focus for a startup is customer/user acquisition. Traditionally, startups have relied on digital media such as websites and mobile apps and digital marketing channels such as search, display and social, to find and nurture new customers. Most of these channels are one-way, i.e., your startup is "pushing' ads and notifications to your target audience. What if you could have personalized two-way conversations, at scale, with each individual in your target audience? That's possible with conversational messaging.

Conversational messaging can help your startup engage with customers and users where they already are: the messaging app. This needs no visit to the website or the download of a mobile app. You are engaging with them, the way they would with friends and family.

Consider these statistics:

175 million Consumers message a business on WhatsApp every day (Source: WhatsApp) You can manage the complete buying experience for your startup with WhatsApp Commerce	90% of Instagram users follow at least one business (Source: Instagram) You can enable product discovery, commerce and support using Instagram API	50% of businesses plan to spend more on chatbots than mobile apps (Source: Gartner) You can automate and create personalized consumer experiences with AI-powered chatbots on any messaging app
	98% The Open Rate on WhatsApp and other messaging apps vs. 20% on e-mail

How can your startup leverage Conversational Messaging for growth?

Conversational Messaging can help your startup in three areas: marketing, commerce and support. Let's look at each of these.

Conversational marketing: Gain your prospect's trust, be like a friend or family member

Conversational Marketing helps you take your customers through the marketing funnel through a series of personalized conversational experiences, on messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram and others.

Marketing entry points: Make any digital or physical entry point a conversation starter with QR codes or URLs, be it a website, app storefront, billboard, product package or digital ad.

Marketing chatbots on WhatsApp, Instagram: Starting with an entry point, lead generation, lead nurturing and lead conversion can become frictionless with AI-powered branded bots on WhatsApp, Instagram and any messaging app, taking prospects on a journey

Use A2P messaging: For small and large databases, send rich media messages on WhatsApp, Instagram and any messaging app to start automated two-way conversations

Outdoor media: If you run advertising campaigns leveraging outdoor media networks, QR-code enabled chatbots can convert physical surfaces into conversational interfaces

Integrations: Integrate messaging with your CRM, ORM, social media and marketing automation systems or native tools your startups use

Conversational commerce: A mobile storefront for your startup

Conversational commerce helps your startup generate more revenue by taking your customers on a conversational journey through the purchasing process, through which customers could discover products order, pay and track these orders within a messaging app like WhatsApp or Instagram

Commerce entry points: Make any digital or physical entry point a commerce entry point with QR codes or URLs

WhatsApp commerce: Move your product catalog on WhatsApp using the WhatsApp Commerce feature

Product discovery: Send product catalog messages or single product messages to your database on WhatsApp and start a two-way conversation with them

1-click payments within messaging apps: Collect payments within the messaging app once your customer checks out and is ready to pay

Integrate your messaging app with leading POS and payment gateways including UPI

Conversational support: 24x7 personal assistant to your customers

Conversational support helps you create a 24x7 support channel for your customers so that routine and complex queries can be handled efficiently and live agents are brought in sparingly. This helps your startup maintain customer experience while keeping support costs low

Start support chats on WhatsApp, Instagram: Activate a support chat when a customer calls a toll-free number or leaves a (good/bad) comment on social media. Send links to customers proactively to activate support chats on WhatsApp, Instagram or any other messaging app

Support chatbots: Build them on WhatsApp, Instagram and other apps to handle FAQs and complex queries, advanced queries with context changes

WhatsApp-based customer support tool: Such tools can help you set up and scale up customer support on WhatsApp. They support multiple agents, have intuitive chat screens, support user onboarding and management and also help in creating pre-determined auto-responses to common queries. At any point, a live agent handover is possible.

Handover to single and multiple agents: This is an important aspect of conversational support where, depending on the volume, a query gets routed to a single agent or multiple agents based on a routing logic. Single and multiple agent dashboards can be used.