Conversational Marketing 101: why you need it in your eCommerce

Conversational Marketing for eCommerce

Conversational Marketing puts communication between brands and their customers at the heart of the online buying journey. This inbound marketing strategy focuses on personalized interactions with customers rather than one-way communication.

Instead of forcing people to go through obsolete lead capture forms and wait days for a response, at RevenueHunt, we’ve built a Conversational Marketing platform for eCommerce that leverages interactive quizzes to engage with buyers when they’re on your store.

This makes it easier for shoppers to engage with your business and will also help you collect actionable zero-party data from your customers, which can be used for segmentation and personalization.

In this post, we’ll discuss what Conversational Marketing is and why it’s so important for eCommerce businesses.

What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational Marketing is a dialogue-driven approach to marketing that uses real-time conversations to engage site visitors and quickly move them through the buying journey.

It’s an ongoing dialogue between you and your customers when and where it’s most convenient for them. It connects channels like your website, social profiles and CRM.

Conversational Marketing is changing the way your customers buy.

How Conversational Marketing can benefit your eCommerce

Conversational marketing is a new way of doing things. You’re not trying to cram a bunch of information down people’s throats, you’re trying to engage them in a conversation. The goal is to build a relationship with the customer instead of just a transaction. And there are plenty of benefits that come with conversational marketing.

• It’s great for building customer relationships

For one, it helps build trust and credibility. When you’re engaging with someone in a conversation, they’re more likely to trust what you have to say. They’re also more likely to remember it.

“Conversational marketing truly transforms how we engage with customers by focusing on meaningful interactions rather than mere transactions. At Wave Connect, we’ve implemented similar strategies to build trust and enhance customer relationships. By facilitating real-time communication and allowing customers to use digital networking business cards online, we’ve seen firsthand how personalized conversations can drive engagement and loyalty. This approach not only fosters a stronger connection but also encourages customers to feel valued and understood, leading to improved satisfaction and increased sales. Embracing conversational marketing is essential for any eCommerce business looking to thrive in today’s market.”

George El-Hage, CEO of Wave Connect

• It boosts sales by giving shoppers personalized product recommendations

Conversational marketing gives you the opportunity to get to know your customers, ask about their preferences and build trust. Based on the conversation, customers get personalized product recommendations, which makes them more likely to purchase from your store. Conversational Marketing has been shown to increase conversion rates by up to 30%. When customers feel seen, heard, and connected, they are more likely to buy from you.

• It gathers zero-party data from customers for segmentation and hyper-personalization

Finally, conversational marketing is incredibly effective at generating leads. When you’re engaging with someone in a conversation, they’re much more likely to give you their contact information than if you were just trying to sell them something.

So if you’re not using Conversational Marketing in your eCommerce business yet, now is the time to start. Here are some short actionable points to get you going in no time.

Step 1: Engage customers with quizzes instead of forms or chatbots

With more than 80% of shoppers purchasing from their smartphones, typing has become obsolete. As a result, forms or chatbots are becoming less useful.

That’s why, at RevenueHunt, we’ve built a Conversational Marketing platform that uses quizzes to engage with shoppers. Quizzes are user-friendly interfaces that improve the experience for smartphone users. Shoppers don’t have to type anything, they just need to tap one of the different choices displayed with each question.

The quiz is designed to collect data about the shopper’s preferences and needs. It then provides them with personalized product recommendations based on their answers.

Product Recommendation Quiz for eCommerce

Conversational Marketing for your eCommerce store. Available for Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and other platforms. Quizzes drive sales, segment your customers and grow your audience.

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Step 2: Understand what buyers want

After filling out a form, a customer can take days to be engaged by a sales representative from the company.

However, brands need to respond within five minutes of initial contact to have the best chance of closing a sale. Wait any longer and the odds of converting that shopper decrease by 400%.

A product recommendation quiz keeps you available 24/7 to engage with new shoppers instantly. A quiz can understand who those visitors are and what they want by engaging those leads in real-time.

Build your quiz using questions similar to the ones you would ask a customer who comes into your store. The quiz will engage the shopper just like a salesperson would, starting a conversation with the lead to understand them better and recommend the best products for them.

Step 3: Recommend the right products to drive sales

By asking your customers a few questions about their needs and preferences, you can narrow down the field of potential products and recommend the one that’s right for them. But how do you make sure that your quiz is giving accurate recommendations? Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Make sure that your quiz is designed to collect accurate information from your customers. This means including questions that are relevant to the product you’re trying to sell, and making sure that the answer options are clear and concise.
• You don’t want your customers to feel like they’re being interrogated, so keep the questions short and to the point. Don’t show them more than five questions.
• Make sure you’ve linked the right products to choices in the quiz. If you notice that certain questions are leading to inaccurate recommendations, then adjust your quiz accordingly.
• Use customer data to fine-tune your quiz. You can use customer answers to personalize the recommendations that your quiz gives. That’ll show your customers that you’re paying attention to their individual needs and preferences, and it’ll increase the chances that they’ll take your recommendation and make a purchase.

Finally, don’t be afraid to change! Make a quiz and evolve it as your customer base grows, for a better and more personal conversation experience.

Bonus: gather zero-party data from your shoppers

Getting a sale on the first visit is just the tip of the iceberg. A recommendation quiz helps with that, of course, but 90% of the value a quiz provides is collecting zero-party data from your customers. Leads are no longer just contact details from potential buyers.

A quiz enables you to use your customers’ responses to the quiz in order to segment them, hyper-personalize their shopping experience and follow up with targeted campaigns.

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Conversational Marketing is a much more human way to gather actionable zero-party data from eCommerce shoppers. Plus, it allows for leads segmentation for further retargeting.

It allows companies to develop more genuine connections with their consumers through conversation and messaging that is delivered how customers want, where they want, and when they want.