Ease and speed are two indispensable factors that determine the success of any channel of communication today. You will fail to impress if your beautiful website doesn’t load in a matter of nanoseconds. In fact, Google loves fast websites and apps so much that it is moving them to the mobile first index this every year.
Now, even if you manage to get to your audience in less than 4 seconds, you got to help them skim through all the noise and deliver your message even quicker. That’s the only way to win them over and make them stay.
For the millennials of today, it is all about convenience. They are extremely tech-savvy, need self-help solutions that help them solve their problems in no time, like to hang out on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook and absolutely avoid reading lengthy email messages. Yes, one of the most popular marketing channels is also slowly becoming as difficult to get conversions from.
So how do you make sure that you establish a good reputation amongst them and convert them into loyal customers before they are already ‘bored’? Read on an find out the 3 customer engagement tips for quicker conversions.
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Progressive Web Apps
Unlike native web apps or slow loading mobile websites, PWAs offer the ultimate user experience. One big reason why you must consider switching to PWAs is that they eliminate the need to extensively work on discoverability. This means that they are more search engine friendly as they can be optimized similarly to a website’s URL.
Moreover, PWAs enable you to send out push notifications to your users in real time. So, not only are you being discovered easily, but your messages reach out at the right time to the right audience.
The best part is that you can always reach your customers – even if they’re driving through a tunnel with no internet access. PWA’s offline functionality allows them to browse through your site just like they would use an app.
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Facebook Messenger Bots
With 2 billion people using Facebook every month, you can’t ignore this social media platform as a channel of engagement. The way customers buy online is changing. They are just not satisfied with the idea of being pushed into a purchase. They want a business to reach out to them with one-on-one personalized communication.
They browse websites on the go and often forget what they added to their wishlist or items they left behind in their shopping carts. Now, relying on reminder emails is just not good enough – just how many times do you read messages from businesses?
With facebook messenger marketing, you are reaching out to them exactly where they spend most of their time. These are consumers that can be re-engaged with personalized messages, as they have shown a high intent of purchase. In fact, messenger bots can even let you run messenger marketing campaigns based on an inquiry or a message sent in by the consumer.
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Apps in Chat
The app-in-chat technology is still evolving and the best example here is that of WeChat. With WeChat there is a lot more that users can do than just talk. They can book a cab, buy their favorite things, order food etc. Because ‘chat platforms’ are the new way young users converse, bringing them app functionalities on these chat platforms makes all the more sense. You could hack more engagement and sales from users who prefer this medium of staying in touch.
For example, if you own a small cafe, you could use platforms like Wechat to help users place orders or book a cab to your cafe. App functionalities such as interactive widgets and mobile wallets can now be easily integrated within chat platforms to provide ease of use and make your services, as well as notifications, reach out to users in a matter of seconds.
Over to You
Now we all know how expensive running a Facebook or Instagram ad campaign can be. Most businesses end up setting aside thousands of dollars to simply keep their customers engaged and reach out to new ones at the same time. But what if you could engage your customers and also drive in new ones, without that big a budget?
The three new ways of engagement that we talked about above have one more benefit apart from being easy and super quick – they are all very cost effective.
These strategies focus on understanding how your customers are interacting with your business and their journey to conversion. Letting you create customer retention campaigns that are designed to address their changing needs in time and also turn them into brand advocates – letting you leverage word of mouth promotions as well.
Are you using any of these latest channels of engagement that we discussed in this post? How have they been working for you so far? Simply send in your thoughts as comments and we will get back with a response for sure.
Author bio: Umair is the founder and CEO of Wigzo and ZoPush. This product ninja is passionate about anything eCommerce. Talk to him about progressive web apps, push notifications, and conversion optimization.