Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of mankind’s most amazing inventions. It is the technology that enables programs and machines to learn and function like human intelligence. With its growing presence, AI is penetrating and revolutionizing society, industries, commerce, and even governance. But its most successful applications have been realized and utilized in the field of e-commerce.
Conversational AI, which was once a part of fiction, is now a standing reality! It has become one of the most successful digital marketing trends, as well. Businesses and brands employ AI-powered chatbots in their digital marketing to improve the customer journey and boost returns on investment (ROI). These are now automating conversations that, in the past, were heavily human-dependent.
Where Are Chatbots Used?
Chatbots are used in a range of applications like setting the alarm (example, Siri), playing favorite songs (example, Alexa), internet searching (example, Google Home), etc. These are acting as virtual assistants for the user to carry out his or her command.
Chatbots are also employed in websites, email, SMS text messages, and apps to either reach out to or respond to a message from a customer and converse with him/her like a human. These can answer queries and even carry out certain tasks.
For instance, travel agencies like Snap Travel use chatbots that can get to know the customer’s hotel booking needs, suggest hotels available in the preferred location, and book hotel rooms at discounted rates. Customers don’t even have to visit Snap Travel’s website. They can do the booking just through Facebook Messenger or a simple SMS text.
Other sectors like restaurants, e-commerce businesses, hospitals, marketing, governance, and banking also employ chatbots for different purposes. These not only free up human staff for working on core business functionalities but also enhance the customer experience by providing quick and convenient help.
They eliminate wait times with their instant responses. So, they make ideal candidates for answering simple questions like “Which is the nearest restaurant?”, “What does the ticket cost?” “At what time do you close?” “When is the event scheduled?” etc. You can even get product suggestions, like products that are often purchased together. For instance, pillowcases which were bought together with a set of pillows, menu items ordered together, etc.
These can also notify users of nearby shopping places, upcoming events, and more. If you are running a business that delivers, you can update your customers about the delivery status.
Why Use Chatbots?
Chatbots serve great customer service agents for your business because of three important reasons. These include-
5 Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing Using Chatbots
Chatbots are now being employed extensively for brands and businesses in their digital marketing. These lower their operational costs, streamline their marketing tasks, and improve their customer experience. Here are five ways in which businesses online can use AI chatbots in their digital marketing strategies.
1. Customer Analysis
Chatbots can automatically collect valuable insights and other information from the conversations they hold. You can therefore employ them to gather details like customer behavior, purchasing patterns, best-preferred products, key data points, and more. They can also record details about the kinds of queries made and the complexity of those queries. This will help you to be prepared to respond to future questions or upsell additional products to those customers.
For instance, AirChat, an airport chatbot found that stranded travelers were requesting it for information regarding the availability of flights that could get them home. So, the airline equipped the bot to provide this info. They also included answers to many other questions that weren’t previously unavailable with the bot.
2. Customer Engagement and Retention
Chatbots can engage your leads in real-time. Time delays in engaging leads can negatively affect the conversion of leads, says a recent study since chatbots enable you to easily and quickly reach out to customers with product suggestions and specifications, targeted messages, coupons, special deals, etc. This can give them a reason to adhere to your brand. Thus, employing chatbots can be one of the best customer retention strategies.
Emirates Vacations, the tour operating arm of Emirates airline, deployed a chatbot for promoting customer engagement. The chatbot was built within its display ads. It worked to break down extra friction points during the search. It suggests destinations and vacation packages based on the users’ questions.
For example, if Emirates Vacations doesn’t have a hotel in Ontario, instead of suggesting a hotel in Ontario, its ad would read “Explore the world without leaving the page”. The launch of the chatbot increased engagement rates to 87%.
Chatbots can also help you to analyze enormous amounts of data to help you find your right customers. It can also help you find potential leads in your customers. These help in lead generation in the following ways-
Health Tap, a renowned company selling a variety of health apps, uses a chatbot to answer the health concerning queries of users. It also virtually connects users with doctors from the specialization they are looking for. It also assists clinics and doctors in pre-screening their appointment.
4. E-commerce
Ecommerce is one of the most common areas where chatbots are used. It uses chatbots to reach potential buyers across social media, and help them explore the store’s range of products. These present the prospects with the products they are looking for, share those to their circle, update, and notify customers of new arrivals, offers, product deliveries, and delays. These also can provide all the support they would need.
Sephora, a French multinational beauty firm, uses its chatbot in its marketing strategies. The bot offers users makeup tips and product suggestions after asking them a personal quiz on their makeup routine. It also helps them to make purchases.
The firm has another bot called Sephora Virtual Artist, which works on Facebook. It visualizes the effect of Sephora’s beauty products on the user’s selfie. Sephora also employs a booking bot called Sephora Reservation Assistant bot to help handle its booking requests from customers.
5. Lead Nurturing & Personalization
A vast majority (74%) of companies consider it a top priority to nurture their leads. For, companies that connect with their prospects within an hour of receiving queries are almost seven times more likely to generate meaningful customer interactions. And, nurtured leads purchase 47% more than those who buy immediately says a survey.
Further, people develop trust and affinity towards a brand that connects with them with a human touch. Chatbots provides you with a more “human” way to engage with your customers and prospects.
Chatbots can use the information collected from your online assets like past interactions, website, and back-end systems to provide personalized experiences. These recommend products suiting a user’s needs, preferences, and background. These also suggest the best combo offers and offer discounts to increase sales.
The buoy is a medical chatbot that offers personalized diagnosis to its online visitor’s health issues. It provides an experience resembling that of a real medical interview. It asks for your symptoms, gives feedback on those, guides you to the best service based on your symptoms, checks back on your progress, and connects you with people who have experienced symptoms similar to that of yours.
Apart from the above-given five ways, chatbots are also used for many other purposes to improve a brand’s digital marketing. Some other activities for which chatbots are employed include brand mention monitoring, customer support, customer service (handling orders, deliveries, and returns), personal services (like fitness, finances, etc.), gaming, and more.
Examples of Chatbots Across Different Industries
With advancing technology, chatbots are developed with varied abilities to perform different activities in each industry. Here are some examples of the various purposes with which chatbots are deployed in different industries.
Your business can benefit in many ways by integrating AI chatbots into its daily activities. You can automate conversations with customers using a chatbot. You can also use it to execute some of the monotonous and critical tasks with it, irrespective of the industry your business belongs to. AI chatbots are your best choice if you are looking for a way to grow your brand, meet customer expectations, and stay abreast of technological trends.
Hope this write-up has provided you with valuable insights on how chatbots can be used in your digital marketing. Do let us know what you think about AI Chatbots!
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