5 D2C Examples of 2-Way Messaging with WhatsApp Marketing you Need to Try Today

We’ve discussed how you can leverage 2-way messaging on WhatsApp for your e-Commerce brand.

We’ve discussed strategies you can deploy for WhatsApp marketing, including guided selling campaigns, customer support, and better marketing and sales.

Today, we bring to you an even more compelling post — real-life examples of how our D2C clients deployed 2-way communication on WhatsApp to increase sales, reduce drop-off, reduce cart abandonment, deal with RTO, increase CSAT, and more!

Why is WhatsApp the platform you should be focusing on the most?

With 2 billion monthly active users who spend an average of 38 minutes daily using the app, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform. 

In fact, India has 340 million monthly WhatsApp users.

Did you know that interactive marketing campaigns have the highest rate of success, and WhatsApp is the platform that lets your customers interact with you the most?

In fact, take a look below-

• Customers engage the most on WhatsApp.
• Compared to other social media, WhatsApp has the highest penetration rate. 
• The open rate of outbound messages is very high. More than half of WhatsApp users check the app every day. 
• 80% of messages sent to WhatsApp are seen within 5 minutes. WhatsApp Business records an open rate of 99%. 
• On the other hand, the open rate for emails and other traditional engagement methods is only 5-10%.
• Approximately 175 million people send messages to business accounts on WhatsApp every day.

What happens when you add the power of level-3 AI to this mix? 

Level 3 AI, our signature chatbot, is the closest to human-level AI that responds to free text- scanning your customer’s intent and sentiment to provide personalised answers.

When you leverage Level-3 AI chatbots in your interactive WhatsApp marketing strategy:

• You simplify your customers’ purchasing process, remember their preferences, and quickly guide them to the right products. 
• You deploy automated mechanisms that not only scale up your reach and reduce your response times but also use a tool that can mimic the authenticity of personal conversations on a personal messaging platform.
• Thus, your chatbot helps build trust to cross-sell and up-sell additional products, helping you significantly boost your sales.
• You re-engage your customers with less effort — A user who went through your list of products and FAQs is usually interested in your brand and is more likely to convert if you keep engaging them on WhatsApp.

Thus, engaging your customers in 2-way communication on WhatsApp is one of the best WhatsApp marketing strategies you can deploy.

What should I look for to make my 2-way WhatsApp messaging campaign a success?

Let’s face it — you need a conversational agent made by a company that understands your unique needs and pain points in the D2C industry as well as you do if you want your marketing campaigns to achieve the greatest success. 

You, therefore, need a brand that understands:

That its conversational agent tool, though automated, must be capable of displaying human emotion

This is not just any marketing campaign we’re talking about. This is a marketing campaign on the most popular private and social messaging platform that exists. 

Since your customer is coming to your brand from a platform that they use only to engage in one-on-one or group conversations in an informal setting, they are looking for that sense of comfort and familiarity in their interactions with your brand a well.

You therefore need a chatbot that is capable of carrying on conversations with your customers — by both offering them a set of options that smoothen their purchase journey, and also letting them type out queries or concerns that you haven’t provided options for. 

This is possible only through a Level 3 AI conversational assistant like LimeChat. A Level 3 AI agent also allows you to interact with emotionally intelligent responses with your customers, thus mimicking the personality and success of a human salesperson.

That you should be using all the unique tools that WhatsApp provides

Since WhatsApp is one of the only platforms that allows you such a high level of interaction with your customers, and since it rewards conversations rather than standalone messages, you should be able to leverage its various features to inject your brand personality into your 2-way WhatsApp messaging strategy.

You should be able to make use of all of WhatsApp’s features, including by adding photos, videos, emojis, and other tools to personalise and humanise an otherwise bland WhatsApp marketing strategy.

Using these tools helps you build and solidify your brand image, and deliver a memorable customer experience.

We at LimeChat built a Level 3 AI conversational agent specifically to allow you to leverage your brand personality in a 2-way messaging strategy on platforms like WhatsApp.

Additionally, our experts understand that the updates WhatsApp has brought to its marketing interface show that it wants brands to engage in personalised, conversational, 2-way messaging in their WhatsApp marketing strategies.

That your WhatsApp marketing strategy should be targeted rather than generic

Most customers are relentlessly attacked with many generic promotional messages every day, on messaging platforms and on email. Most customers don’t even bother opening these messages.

A successful WhatsApp marketing strategy is only that which can customise its marketing strategy to every user in a scalable way.

LimeChat’s level 3 AI chatbot stores and recognises user data in a manner that allows it to personalise its conversations with each one of your customers. It allows you to retarget customers in a timely manner, by letting them know about promotional discounts, hot products, products going out of stock etc based on their past activity and interaction with your brand website.

Ultimately, it is measures like this that take a conversation from a one-sided promotional barrage to a 2-way communication.

Check out 2-way messaging campaigns our clients deploy on WhatsApp

Man Matters – Guided selling strategies in 2-way communication campaigns

Man Matters is a forum for men’s holistic wellness. It sells items for hair, weight, skin, sex, sleep, and other ailments, and offers online consultations for these and other health concerns.

1. It engages in guided selling through both its main shopping webpage for discovery-oriented shoppers, and an omnichannel guided chat experience on WhatsApp for goal-oriented shoppers.

2. The conversational assistant asks customers targeted questions to figure out what they want and need. Based on these goals, they make product recommendations to guide the shoppers to the optimal purchase. Thus, it personalises the shopping journey for every customer.

3. The customer can interact well with the chatbot, and is always in control of their purchase journey. This level of interaction vastly reduces drop-off.

4. Additionally, in order to maximise conversions, the conversational assistant does not present customers with more than three options, because goal-oriented shoppers prefer a fast, streamlined process to purchase the products they have in mind in the shortest period of time. 

5. Customers may thus choose wisely and accurately as a result of not being overloaded with options or information.

6. Since this interaction is taking place on WhatsApp, the chatbot leverages all tools that WhatsApp has to offer, including photos of products, YouTube tutorials, emojis, and information bites. This keeps the interaction authentic and engaging.

7. The assistant also offers alternatives and helpful resources at key points in the purchase journey, thus ensuring the customer keeps moving forward through their purchase journey. 

8. Finally, the chat displays deals and offers at the right time, so the customer completes their journey through the conversion funnel.

WOW Skin Science – Guided Selling + CSAT Campaign

WOW Skin Science delivers high-performance, plant-powered solutions backed by science. They provide holistic wellness products for hair care, skincare, face, and body grooming.

1. WOW first leverages other social media apps like Meta to drive customers to the forum most familiar to them — WhatsApp.

2. On WhatsApp, it opens up its interaction with customers — it allows users to choose from a range of pre-prepared options while still letting them type actions not in the list, to fully satisfy their pre-purchase queries. This is the single most important element of a successful 2-way messaging strategy.

3. It leverages information in engaging conversation bites to drive customers to complete their purchase.

4. Finally, it leverages order confirmation and customer feedback campaigns to increase customer satisfaction. This reaffirms WOW’s commitment to customer satisfaction, and helps cement its brand image in the customer’s mind.

The June Shop – RTO + CAC campaign

The June Shop is an eCommerce brand that sells unique and affordable home décor, stationery, travel essentials, and other quirky products.

1.  In this example, the customer placed an order for the product not via WhatsApp, but through an external source. Nevertheless, the June Shop delivers to its customers an omnichannel experience by redirecting order confirmation to WhatApp, which has a higher rate of engagement and to reopen the conversation with its customers.

2. Recognising that the present order is based on a cash-on-delivery mode of payment, which has a higher rate of RTO, the chatbot leverages an order confirmation campaign to gauge the customer’s willingness and interest.

3. Additionally, it provides other essential tracking and delivery information to the customer that helps them make quick, favourable decisions.

4. The June Shop also drives a 2-way WhatsApp marketing campaign by notifying customers about products they have previously shown interest in. 

5. This specific, targeted marketing with information about a customer’s interests, combined with the high open rates of WhatsApp messages, ensures the highest WhatsApp marketing campaign success.

Kapiva + andMe — Abandoned cart campaign + Retargeting

Kapiva is a nutrition brand that develops Ayurvedic products with a contemporary touch, allowing authentic Ayurvedic nutrition to meet the demands of convenience.

1. Kapiva displays the WhatsApp icon front and centre on its website to redirect customers into an interactive, 2-way communication.

2. On WhatsApp, it guides customers like Man Matters and WOW Skin Science guide and interacts with their customers.

3. Its uniqueness comes from its cart abandonment campaign — once a customer has shown interest in a product, Kapiva follows up on the conversation by reminding customers of the products they had in their cart, incentivising them to complete their purchase. 

4. Another way brands use chat powered by LimeChat to deploy cart abandonment campaigns is by offering discounts for the order in increments to incentivise customers to follow through with their purchase and complete their journey.

Neeman’s – Brand memorability

Neeman’s is an Indian footwear brand that creates sneakers and loafers that prioritise comfort. Its 2-way messaging campaign on WhatsApp is enviable in terms of how its brand personality shows through conversations.

1. Neeman’s welcomes its customers to the chat exactly like a human salesperson would, with excitement and a helpful demeanour.

2. Its chat is able to detect customer intent even with spelling mistakes, providing customers a hassle-free, humanlike 2-way interaction experience.

3. Similarly, the conversational assistant can detect a customer’s choice from a text that doesn’t contain only their choice, but is a response the way they would respond to a salesperson.

4. Finally, Neeman’s is able to inject its brand personality into the conversation by flattering the customer’s choice, thus making the interaction a memorable experience.

What strategies do LimeChat’s experts recommend to successfully leverage 2-way WhatsApp marketing campaigns?

Prakhar, one of our founding members, recommends the following tips you can adopt to leverage 2-way messaging on Whatsapp to get 2x results:

1. The most successful WhatsApp marketing campaigns are those created with your customers in mind, rather than with product or brand promotion in mind.
2. WhatsApp is one of the only apps that can make your campaigns very interactive — as interactive as letting your customers decide what the next step will be.
3. You can optimise your 2-way campaign by curating a list of quick replies customers can respond with, while still giving them the option to type a concern that isn’t listed in the quick reply. 
4. You can also configure AI-powered responses to those quick replies that help communicate your brand’s intent, and keep the customer engaged with positive emotional responses.
5. Finally, you can leverage 2-way messaging on WhatsApp by deploying 2-step campaigns that take your customers through a 2-step funnel — like COD to Prepaid + COD Verification, and NDR Automation + Product review campaign.

Found these helpful? Just wait till you read more of his insights here: Top 5 Things a Brand Must do to Take their WhatsApp Marketing to the Next Level!

I’m sold, but I’m also looking for a cherry to top the cake. How else can LimeChat help me maximise my returns from 2-way communication?

If you’re looking for that extra-special something, LimeChat is the right place to be! We at LimeChat believe in going above and beyond, and complete that extra mile to make sure our clients get the best returns possible.

How do we do that? LimeChat can help you run all these campaigns using the world’s first Level 3 AI Chatbot:

To reduce CAC —

✓ Abandoned cart 

✓ Reorder

✓ Cross Sell

✓ Regular promotional campaigns

To deal with RTO —

✓ COD Confirmation

✓ COD to Prepaid

✓ Non-Delivery Notification

To maximise CSAT —

✓ Order Confirmation

✓ Order Shipment

✓ Customer Feedback

And more!

Can’t wait to start your journey with us? Neither can we! Book a free demo now.