How Chatbots and Email Marketing Make a Better User Experience

The evolution of chatbots and email marketing has created more ways than ever to communicate with your customers. But this also creates a catch 22 as more channels of communication can also divide your customer’s attention even further.

Instead of adding more white noise to the mix, businesses need to align their marketing channels and amplify their message. Brands that prioritize the customer experience and use first-party data to enhance personalization have the best chance at retaining and growing their audience.

Simply put: the more you understand user intent and behavior, the better you can market to current and potential customers. In this article, I’ll explain how chatbots gather valuable customer data and how you can use that information to improve your email marketing campaigns.

Why Prioritize a Great User Experience?

In order to encourage brand loyalty and repeat purchases, marketing departments need to focus on building meaningful connections that add value to the customer experience.

According to ZenDesk, 75 percent of people are willing to spend more money on a brand that provides a good customer experience, and over 60% of consumers say the pandemic has raised the standard for customer service. Further industry research suggests that 30% of consumers will leave a brand and never come back because of a bad experience.

Simply put: great user experiences are more profitable, but they also benefit your customers – it’s that proverbial win-win that all great marketers seek out.

Here are some specific ways that a great customer experience will benefit you:

Increases engagement
Improves conversions
Nurtures leads more effectively
Lowers acquisition costs
Improves customer retention and loyalty

How Chatbots and Email Marketing Function Together

Recent studies show that 55% of companies that utilize chatbots are able to generate new long-term customers, and almost 70% of corporations have said that chatbots have contributed to their sales being boosted.

If you’re still interested, let’s go into a few ways fusing the ye olde faithful of email marketing and the modern usability of chatbots can help you provide better personalization and stronger connections with your customers:

55% of businesses gather more sales when chatbots are used according to a Drift study.

By now, most sites – especially retail and B2B in particular – all have chatbots that make a sound effect or flash in the corner of the screen letting you know they’re there. Most of the time it’s an automated bot that performs one or more of the following tasks:

Answering commonly asked questions
Giving customers order updates
Giving product tours
Connecting visitors to a real person.
Collecting users’ email addresses for follow-up

Remember, marketing is all about identifying what a customer wants and where they’re at in the buying process. By gathering high-level details in a conversational and helpful way through a chatbot, you can gain valuable insights from your website visitors that can be used in your email marketing campaigns.

For example, someone’s repeatedly landed on a page with office supplies and has asked a few questions to the chatbot about shipping availability in their country. If they have an account with you or have consented to receiving emails (be sure to check you’re compliant around data privacy laws), you can send a follow-up email through the chatbot for personalized messaging like “other supplies you may like” that’s available in their region. You can also have it generate one of the office supply items with a catchy subject line like “Still thinking about this, [NAME]?”

This is just one example of why omnichannel marketing is so effective. It uses hyper-personalization to identify where someone is in their buying journey and make it a seamless experience for them to buy that’s both welcoming and relevant to their needs.

Personalizing One Step Further With Emails

Personalization and segmentation are becoming the next frontier in marketing – but that doesn’t mean you can’t still turn to tried and true email to apply and iterate. Chatbots and email marketing can integrate with each other not only to personalize messaging, but it can also ensure someone specialized is notified when noteworthy leads or conversions come through.

You can have chatbots answer top-level inquiries and then direct ones requiring more in-depth expertise to someone on your team or support staff. It’s putting the user in total control of curating what they want, when they want it. And with modern marvels such as Instacart and 2-hour Amazon delivery, it can only help your business to offer a similar level of quick and efficient service.

Focus on Customers and Personalization

Omnichannel experiences are all competing for attention, so meeting your customers where they are in the buying process and creating a unique, personalized experience should be the number one priority for brands and content marketers moving forward.

If you need some help turning your website into a tool for customer acquisition, WEBITMD is here to help. Download our free Growth Stack Guide or get in touch to learn more about how we use chatbots and email marketing to help our clients grow.