Webinar: Multi-channel Marketing How To Acquire and Retain Customers Through Chat, SMS, Email

You cannot rely on ‘just’ Facebook ads and a landing page to acquire new customers. You have to meet your customers where they are and create multiple, personalized touchpoints that include messaging. What’s the best strategy to do this?

Watch our webinar featuring host Mari Smith, Premier Facebook Marketing Expert (a.k.a. The Queen of Facebook), along with guest presenter Kelly Noble Mirabella, Top Chatbot Marketing Expert, as they discuss how to integrate a multi-channel approach to reach your audience.

What you’ll learn:

1. The seven primary mistakes digital marketers are making and how to avoid them.
2. Why omnichannel marketing is the future and how you can get into pole position now to attract more customers.
3. How to master conversational marketing and leapfrog the competition in 2020!

Dive into the world of multi-channel marketing to discover how to acquire and retain customers.

Watch the Webinar: Multi-channel Marketing How To Acquire and Retain Customers Through Chat, SMS, Email

Webinar Notes

Mari Smith: Greetings and welcome everybody around the world. I know we have an international audience. So it’s a joy to be with you here. I am going to go ahead and share my screen. Let’s do that. Share my desktop. We’ve got a wonderful presentation prepared for you today. So let’s dive in Multi-channel Marketing. We’ve been talking about it for a little while. Hopefully, we’ll dispel any myths today because it can be a wee bit confusing. We’re talking about acquiring and retaining customers through chat, SMS, and email

Facebook Privacy

MS: Mark Zuckerberg, speaking of which earlier this year back in March, he penned a 3,200-word privacy manifesto which for us experts, it kind of seemed to come out of the blue. It was just like, “Poof, all of a sudden.” I’ve speculated with many of my peers, what does he mean the future is private? He’s shifting more to private messaging, ephemeral content, encrypted content. That picture right there was Zuck on the stage at F8, their annual F8 developer conference earlier this year in April, May time.

Then right after Zuck, followed Asha Sharma who is the director of Messenger. She did this whole presentation about how Facebook is literally rebuilding Messenger from the ground up to be the lightest, fastest messaging platform in the world. What she called it is a modern-day social network built around messaging. So we have only seen the tip of the iceberg as to what Facebook is going to be doing with Messenger, which is very, very exciting. So another announcement actually back January of 2019 was what Zuckerberg and team called messaging interoperability. It’s a big word, basically means that the infrastructure of the three main messaging apps. WhatsApp is the biggest messaging app outside of the United States. Messenger is the biggest messaging app inside the US. Then you’ve got Instagram direct. I don’t think that’ll ever be broken off to be a separate app, but we do need to keep a close eye on what Facebook is doing with Instagram direct.

So what that means is let’s say I prefer Messenger, but you prefer WhatsApp. I send you a message in Messenger. You get it in WhatsApp and so on and so forth. So that’s not here yet. It’s coming. Also, they’re adding end to end encryption to Messenger and Instagram. It is already there for WhatsApp. So just again, keeping our eye on the whole family of apps, I’ve really been on a mission for the last couple of years in all my talks and my keynotes to really drive home the point that we can’t think of Facebook alone. It’s the Facebook family of apps. This wonderful graphic here, this robot looking lady, a stat from Gartner, by 2020 which is like a few weeks away, hello, 85% of our engagement with businesses will be done without interacting with another human. What? Then instead, we’ll be using self-service options and chatbots. That’s from Gartner.

Facebook Messenger

MS: This is really exciting times for both consumers and businesses. Now then, a slide I often put in my keynotes. Messenger, yes, Messenger, the biggest messaging app in the US for sure, and we’ve literally only seen the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible. They’re bringing payments much more integrated across the family of apps and then obviously the communication aspect as well. But I have to press my little cursor one more time. Oh, ho. Oh, dear. Kelly, we had to address the elephant in the room. Marketers may ruin messenger. I say this tongue in cheek because everybody tuning in here today, you are smart. You are savvy. You are here for a reason. You saw the description of this webinar and something compelled you to come here today, which we’re thrilled about because you’re a forward-thinking Messenger. I’m on this crusade to make sure that marketers utilize this conversational marketing medium in a way that feels human and warm and compassionate and empathetic and really, really in a way that makes people feel human.

The Challenge Marketers Face: Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

MS: How to integrate an effective multi-channel marketing strategy. What even does that mean? We’ll describe it in a little bit, become more clear, and we’ll give you some examples as well so it’ll just make more sense to you. So it’s basically ensuring that you reach your audience in a variety of ways and not just focusing on one kind of silo if you will. One channel of course. For a long time, obviously, about 20 years now, email marketing has been a primary way that we’ve reached our audience, which is great. Don’t let anybody, anybody out there tells you that email marketing is dead. That’s absolute rubbish. Email marketing is alive and kicking. It’s going to become very much an integral part of your multi-channel.

Who’s Mult-Channel Marketing For?

It’s perfect for all types of businesses, online and offline. What people are looking for is fast response, personalizes the key, and that’s the beautiful thing of using chatbots and Messenger Marketing and where you have, obviously, their first name, but you’ve got other information as well that you can personalize with very diplomatically. Right? One-on-one communications are the key there.

Where to Invest Your Time

I put all the social channels on there and I threw in Snapchat and even TikTok. I know. The jury’s out for me on TikTok. I don’t have a TikTok. But I know it’s the thing. But then you’ve got on top of all your social channels, you’ve got Messenger. You’ve got email. You’ve got SMS, text messaging, and my little phone icon down in the left there. You got WhatsApp, of course, is going to be… At some point, they’ll open up their API. There’ll be chatbots for WhatsApp and there’ll be chatbots for Instagram at some point. But today, in particular, we’re talking about Messenger, email, and texting, which is SMS, short message service.

How Do You Manage All the Marketing Channels?

MS: There are so many channels, so many ways to reach your audience. Here’s a thing as well, friends. Ads are becoming more expensive and more complex, right? Every time I go into Facebook ads manager, you have to be techy. You have to love the techy part of it. The list goes on. So talking about ad costs going out. These are the stats from AdEspresso. This is the 2018 to 2019 benchmarks for understanding Facebook ad costs. As you can see, this is just one year. This is as of 2018 last year. They’ll be coming out with 2019 stats soon enough. But January through December and you can see that going up throughout the year. The actual fact, I want to just put this on record where it’s 3X, that cost per click, right? Those of you that understand that. CPC is the cost per click. It’s three times more the end of last year than it was at the end of three years before that. Oopsies, there it goes.

Multi-Channel Marketing Solution

MS: So the solution is definitely multi-channel marketing. What exactly do we mean by that? Obviously, it’s just simple reaching your audience through a variety of ways. All of us doing some social media platforms, some organic, some paid. Then you’ve got a video. Email, it’s been around for a long time. Messenger Chat is just new. Now, here’s the thing. Let’s take a pause break for a split second there. I’m going to stop sharing because I got to tell you. I’ve got to talk to you one on one friends. Messenger Chat. So two years ago, I was so excited and I got my ManyChat on and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going all-in on bots.” Then I was like, “I got a little jaded.” I’m like, “Oh God, I got to figure out how to…” It’s like a whole other thing. Then I saw some marketers just using it as a broadcast mechanism, treating it like email and just blasting. I’m like, “I don’t want these blasts in my inbox.”

MS: So then I felt really troubled by it and I’m like, “I want to have to go and figure out how I want to do my chatbot marketing.” So now, I’d been working with ManyChat since the summer. We did some broadcasts and some webinars and some training. Then I spoke at the conference as I said. I’m really glad to come back here now and start doing some more education and really helping people understand that I’m right there with you. I’m in the trenches. I’m having actually my bot built out. It’s really, really rudimentary right now. I’m not doing a whole lot with it, but just you wait for friends. In about three months’ time, it’s going to be magical.

MS: So I just wanted to put down on record. I’m not super like, “Oh my God,” and vandalizing everybody, “And their dog needs a chat.” I’m like, “Okay. This is the time now. It’s matured a little more. ManyChat has the most amazing features. They’ve just added the short message services, SMS and email. Maybe you reach people through a mobile app or webchat. The list goes on, right? All the different ways that we reach our audience. It really is the future. That’s what we’re calling a holistic approach. Now then, also, keep in mind that there’s a distinction between multi-channel and omnichannel. You might see them used interchangeably and with or without a hyphen. Fine. It’s not a big deal. But omnichannel, and Kelly’s going to talk about this in a moment when she brings in some examples. But omni is where you as a consumer, let’s say you go and you interact with a brand on social media like Twitter or something. Then you go to call them up and then you’re speaking to a different agent, but they’ve got your information right there. Then maybe you go into the store or you order something online.

It’s seamless. You have this seamless experience that your customer record and details go with you. Whereas multi-channel is a component of omnichannel. Multi-channel is where we’re reaching our market through these different ways. It’s personalized ideally, personalized communications through email, chat, SMS. Personalization, that just means using your first name or pulling in information. You can do some cool things with… I saw actually McKenzie had done that wonderful birthday targeting with one of our clients because you can do that. It’s one of the targeting options in Facebook ads. But it increases your conversion rate optimization.

The key is absolutely to set expectations.

Multi-Channel Marketing Stats

MS: So in terms of open rate, if you haven’t seen this before, it’s extraordinary. The average email open rate is somewhere around 22%, click-through rate, just over 3%. but watch this, Messenger average open rates for your broadcast, your messages in Messenger, almost 84% and click-through rate, 28%. It’s extraordinary. Unbelievable. SMS, actually, I think it’s even higher. So you can also run what is called click-to-messenger ads. You might have seen these, and by the way, these are not only on Facebook on the feed, Instagram in the feed, but they’re also in stories. Now, they’re in stories where you can have the call-to-action be that you tap that little button or they swipe up. They’re now going to have a dialogue with you in messenger. This is just a Facebook screenshot, but it’s like you’ll see that little “get started” button with the recognizable Messenger logo, icon, right?

MS: But one million customers in ManyChat, using ManyChat to grow. Half a billion, right? 500 million subscribers engaged with customers bots, 190 countries served. ManyChat is actually the number one bot platform on Facebook and the most used one. So really, really awesome.

The Difference Between Chat Marketing and Omni-Marketing

Kelly Noble Mirabella: I wanted to really quick use a very quick analogy. I have little kids, so we play a lot with puzzles. So imagine multi-channel marketing as your puzzle pieces. Pretty much most businesses nowadays are participating in multi-channel right now in some respect. You have your Facebook. You have your LinkedIn. You’ve got all your social networks. Those are all their own pieces. You have your email marketing piece. You have your in-store. Maybe you do print marketing. You’re doing networking, all these pieces, your customer service, and your chatbot, these are all multi-channel. That’s really the first step.

KM: Omni-marketing, as Mari so eloquently said, is seamless. It’s taking those pieces and bringing them together. But I thought I would share some stats on why omni-marketing is so rad. It’s so awesome. I’m just going to move some windows around here because all my stats are being covered. All right. So basically, it makes you money. Who doesn’t want to make more money? Harvard Business Review reported a survey they did that 73% of shoppers that have more than one channel, and this is actually more multi-channels statistics, the shoppers are on more than one channel. So it’s important that you are understanding the power of being in multiple places.

KM: So 7% of shoppers said they only shop online, 20% only in the store. 73% are saying both. We have our big holiday season right now. Everyone’s out shopping, right? I don’t know about you. Maybe you could tell us in the chat, how are you shopping? I’m doing both online and in-store myself. So I am all about getting out there and multi-channeling it up when it comes to the best deals for my kids and for my family and for my friends for Christmas. So if you are utilizing an omnichannel approach, you’re going to see a 91% greater retention. If you’ve been in business a while, you’ve been in marketing, you probably have heard this, but keeping your current customers is actually going to make you more money than retaining new customers. Now, I’m not trying to tell you never retain new customers because we always want to be growing, but your current customers are the ones who actually are going to spend more money with you and they are going to go out and be evangelists for your brand. So they will make you more money and bring in new customers at a lower cost.

KM: So we definitely want those retention rates to be higher. Also, if you’re implementing an omni-marketing strategy, you’re going to see a 9.5 year-over-year increase in annual revenue. Basically in plain English, you’re going to make more money. So we’re all excited about that. Then also, this is why I love this stat, 7.5% year-over-year decrease in costs per contact. How much does it cost you to get a new customer? It’s expensive to bring in new customers. We had to keep those margins low so we have money to spend on Christmas bonuses and also obviously other marketing channels. And also making a profit. So we want to keep those costs as low as possible.

Example of an Omnichannel Approach

KM: All right. We got Timberland. Now, Timberland sells hiking boots. They’re really known for their shoes and their outerwear. They are taking it next level. When I read this case study, I was pumped because they are using near-field communications in their stores. For those of you who don’t know what that is, that is NFC. This is a magical technology that’s been around forever and now because of the new iOS update that just came out, iPhones newer than the iPhone 7 and all Android devices are NFC enabled. So what it does is it takes physical products in-store or in-person and allows me to use my phone or in the case of Timberland, they have in store tablets. I can tap and immediately, it can open up my chatbot, a website, a video, a landing page, whatever you want. You can use right now NFC technology in your chatbots immediately and it’s very affordable. So if you have a coffee shop, a restaurant, if you have any kind of in-store brick and mortar, you definitely need to be looking at the NFC tech.

KM: Now what they are doing here is they’re taking the online, the offline, and they’re blending. They’re creating that seamless experience. So they have the NFC, which as you could see here, this guy on the little picture, he has this tablet. He’s going to go around and look at different products. He can tap the products and because of the NFC sticker, it will open up the details and show him any sales that are going on. If it’s out of stock if they can find it online.

KM: Meanwhile, the app is actually tracking what the buyer is looking at and finding interest in and making suggestions. So Timberland is actually able to sell things that might not even be on the floor.

KM: They take it an extra step though. They have these screens as you can see here on the bigger photo called touch walls. What touch walls are is they allow Timberland to showcase products that are not in the store. These are online exclusive products. So it allows people walking into the brick and mortar to still have access to the full suite of product. All people have to do is touch it and learn more. Again, the back system is tracking everything this person is doing, almost like a pixel. So that they can create truly customized seamless experiences for those buyers. I think this is an excellent example of how those of you who are in-store brick and mortar restaurants, coffee shops, gyms can utilize technology offline and bring it online into this really cohesive environment.

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