Email messages tend to be more and more ignored nowadays. The problem isn’t only with email opening but also customers rarely click on any link placed in it. This is mainly caused by advertisers due to a misuse of the channel in terms of quantity and frequency.
For instance, a Mailup research reveals that the average DEM (direct email marketing) open rate is 23% while the CTR doesn’t go above 3%.
Let’s take Pharma and Editorial industry as examples:
Our own researches show instead that chatbot messages (sent via push notification) get an average CTR of 40% and an open rate of 85%.
There is therefore a completely different user response when the conversation moves from a traditional, static channel to a more dynamic, colloquial mean of communication.
Users can choose if and how long to stay engaged in conversation that certainly seems more human that what it actually is.
Facebook Messenger is used by more than 1,2 billion people monthly, which makes it one of the best channel to maximise company’s reach toward current and potential customers worldwide.
People that engage with companies via chatbots or emails share a common behaviour: they express interest toward that company and are willing to receive more info about a specific product or service. From the statistics mentioned before, companies ought to carefully choose the right channel to use to communicate with them in order to not waste advertising budget with a poor user experience that doesn’t lead to conversions.
Current trends
- Chatbots are getting different than clockwork messages: sending daily communications at the same time leads to lose audience interest since it is perceived as spam.
- No more fishy or chain messages: we used to receive, interact with, and forward those type of messages but they seems to become less and less common.
- Moving toward social networks: we found a simpler way to communicate and stay in touch with friends and family. Messages are exchanged in real time and resemble human conversations.
- Adoption of messaging mobile applications: mobile messages get an astonishing open rate of 98% within 3 minutes from its delivery.
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Conquering CTR
An incredible CTR statistics for Facebook Messenger bots come from an Octane research that states an average between 15% and 60% for the mentioned channel compared to a 5% to 10% for emails.
In the case of chatbots, most of the answers occur within the first 10 minutes from delivery and 99% of the informations given by the users are true (only 4,7% of Facebook accounts are fake). Email marketing instead, receive 60% of incorrect info and 33% of wrong emails. It’s obvious how CTR percentage are high enough to destroy any email marketing performance.
The potential of Facebook direct marketing is huge and it’s close to reach email marketing fame. Chatbots are really effective and able to reach companies’ objectives in an easy way.
Conversion rates are so high because people love to respond to instant messages and with chatbots it’s possible to accomplish many activities such as lead generation and engagement retention.
Far from standard email marketing activities are personalised interactions, where we offer special offers to prospects and current customers based on what/how they interact with our website and social accounts. Facebook Message chatbots are still fairly new in the marketing scenes so it might be the right channel to test such activities in a yet competitive and challenging market.
