[by: Amanda Midence, BBA]
Messaging apps are becoming a phenomenon around the world. Everybody texts to some extent and messaging apps present the perfect medium to be expressive and connect with people from around the world. According to a recent report, WhatsApp has more than one billion active users per month and the app is used to send over 55 billion messages per day! On the other hand, Line App has over 700 million users and 220 million of them engage with the app on a daily basis.
Now, let’s talk about FB messenger. A few years back, FB messenger was called Facebook Chat and was just another part of the Facebook experience. Later, Facebook decided to renovate its messaging service launching a new separate app that also integrated with Facebook. Today, Facebook has over 1.3 billion active users!
What does this mean for a business?
According to HubSpot, there are about two billion messages exchanged every month between businesses and their customers through FB Messenger. This behavior can be attributed to the fact that a lot people, especially millennials and younger generations, would rather text or have digital communication instead of a phone conversation. In fact, 56% of people say that they would rather communicate through a messaging app than to speak with a live representative.
Facebook’s Product Growth Manager, Anand Arivukkarasu, says that people prefer instant messaging over other forms of communication because of its immediacy. Texting and instant messaging allow us to simultaneously do several things at a time. In the last few years, mobile phones became our primary medium, a sort of one-stop shop for everything we might need.
Consequently, texting tends to be more expressive than email or other forms of communication making it a very personal way to connect.
Additionally, HubSpot’s Founder/CTO, Dharmesh Shah drew a comparison on how the messaging landscape has similarities with websites when they first came to life. Before, you would create a nice website to answer FAQs your customers had. You were facilitating information. It was simple back then, there was nothing to download, no apps and no need for mobile-optimized websites.
That’s what messaging apps are offering today. As a customer-driven economy, connecting with customers on a personal basis allows us to answer those FAQs in a timely and effective manner with a hint of personal touch. After all, that’s all your customer wants! They don’t like to take time out of their busy day to navigate through a website and risk not finding what they are looking for. They want answers and they want them fast.
Businesses can use messaging to promote brand engagement, drive purchases and carry out small transactions. Your business SHOULD implement messaging into its marketing strategy. However, it is important to know your business and your customer to create a seamless integration with all your other marketing efforts. Know when it’s a good idea to communicate through text and when to transition a conversation to other forms of communication like email or a live conversation with a customer agent.
The prospect of engaging with your customers at a more personal level is very exciting! If you need any help understanding messaging apps, its benefits and integration to your marketing strategy, give us a call at (866) YES-BLOOM, we are happy to help.
