October 12, 2020 
Online communication is changing daily, and with it, digital marketing. There are several examples of the way online businesses have used conversational marketing to achieve effective results.
There is so much competition in the online marketing space and businesses nowadays now have the responsibility of offering a more personal touch to user experience.
Lead capture forms, submission forms, and other traditional follow-ups that come days after a user sends a query can no longer provide the personal experience that wins customers over.
Therefore, as these means of dealing with customers gradually become out-dated, a new and more effective way of marketing is ushered in.
Conversational marketing is a way of using real-time communications and dialogue-driven activities to interact and engage with users, customers, and visitors through online channels.
Although conversational marketing is relatively underused, the businesses that have used it or are using it have achieved impressive results.
There are several examples of online businesses that have begun to use conversational marketing in personalising customer experience.
The goal of this strategy of marketing is to enhance the user experience, build long-lasting relationships between user and business, which will eventually lead to improved sales and minimised friction in communication.
With this in mind, this blog will highlight the examples of conversational marketing that has yielded positive results and shown this marketing trend is not to be ignored.
Although two main strategies characterise conversational marketing – the use of instant messaging platforms or live chat tool and chatbots, many businesses have opted for highly intelligent chatbots to engage their customers with real-time engagements.
While both live chat tool and chatbots are aimed at real-time communication, chatbots have salient features that naturally make businesses and marketers choose it ahead of the former.
Examples of Conversational Marketing
- eBay
- Lyft
- HealthTap
- 1-800-Flowers
eBay
eBay’s e-commerce chatbot has been hugely successful over the years.
eBay realised early that voice search would be important in future and adopted a suitable conversational approach.
With voice-based AI assistants like Alexa, Amazon Echo, Siri, and many others becoming popular, it is clear they were right, and this strategy of conversational marketing boosts customer engagement and interaction.
eBay’s chatbot is based on the Google Assistant platform; this means users can only access it through voice-based interfaces like Google Home or Google Now.
eBay’s intelligent chatbot makes online shopping tremendously easy for customers. Users can browses through their large online shopping database by simply saying what they want to buy.
The highly intelligent bot will proceed to ask a series of additional questions that are geared towards narrowing down your search to the best and most relevant results.
After finding your desired item, the chatbot will ask for permission to send the results to your phone so that you can complete the purchase.
eBay’s smart approach is one of the many examples of conversational marketing we have today. By bypassing text-based chat, this strategy has created an experience similar to shopping in person.
Lyft
Lyft is also one of the very good examples of conversational marketing done right. The ride-sharing company are also one of the pioneers of conversational marketing.
Their strategy of hosting their customer service chatbots on several platforms like Facebook Messenger, Slack, and the Amazon Echo using simple voice commands has worked effectively.
Lyft has integrated old services into a new technology by making it possible to hail taxis from the comfort of your homes and as well as easy-to-use platforms.
Integrating with Facebook Messenger, for example, has made it very easy to request rides quickly. You only need to click on the car icon and be matched immediately with local drivers.
The Lyft Facebook Messenger bot is also on hand to notify you when your driver is coming as well as other details you will need like their license plate number, and the car the driver is in.
One of the benefits of conversational marketing is shortening the transaction cycle, and Lyft has successfully achieved this. The process of getting a ride to your destination has been simplified, and your life made a bit easier.
Lyft on Slack is also one of the many examples of chat-based conversational marketing as you can use slash commands to request rides and any trip-related information.
To achieve this, type “/lyft” in any channel and you will get a list of Lyft-related keywords.
1-800-Flowers
Another early pioneer of conversational marketing on Facebook Messenger, 1-800 Flowers have made buying and selling simple and efficient.
1-800 Flowers use a chatbot that allows users to choose from a variety of flower arrangements to order.
Customers are then subsequently asked to input their delivery address before being taken to the payment page.
The chatbot also gives you the option of talking to customer support via real-time conversations. The entire process of ordering a flower or flower arrangements can be done without leaving the window.
Data from the flower company confirm that 70% of the orders their chatbots receive are from new customers.
The only logical explanation of this is that users are beginning to enjoy speaking with a bot.
It also highlights the fact that users now feel comfortable using chatbots and prefer this conversational marketing strategy.
Customers now feel like they are interacting with a human customer service agents and this process has been known to be more preferable to the traditional means of contact between business and customers like call-backs, submission forms etc. which require days and sometimes weeks to get a response.
HealthTap
HealthTap is a company that is aimed at ensuring healthcare is easily accessible. They are one of the examples of businesses that have successfully adopted the use of conversational marketing in their operations.
HealthTap’s strategy is also based on Facebook Messenger chatbots. Once you access the bot, it allows you to ask any health-related question you may have.
Afterwards, the bot will process your request and suggest the top answers to similar questions.
As health is a personal topic, and many feel the need to see a doctor personally, Health Tap’s conversational marketing bot gives you the experience of having a physical consultation with a Physician online.
You can see different detailed answers from different doctors about your query.
That is not all; if you are unsatisfied about the answers you have seen, you can choose to send your questions out to be answered by a live doctor. This typically takes a day.
However, you can get the answer immediately at $25 gauge the opinions of multiple doctors over a particular issue, see a specialist in real-time, all from the comfort of your home or office.
