How to X2 your Shopify Sales with Conversational Marketing

If you’re here looking for a way to boost your Shopify sales through conversational marketing, we have you covered.

As of July 2021, WhatsApp and Facebook messenger have 2 billion and 1.3 billion users, respectively. Compare that to Yahoo’s 122.6 million active users in 2009, and you can already see how messaging has grown in the past decade.

Why does this matter for your Shopify sales?

Well, the introduction of APIs (Application Programming Interface) a few years ago enabled businesses such as yourself to use these vastly popular channels that your potential customers use every single day as a marketing tool.

This is when conversational marketing emerged as a way to meet your customers where they hang out.

Why Conversational Marketing

What pops up in your mind when you hear the word “chatbot”? Do you see that little chat window at the bottom-right of your screen?

Most would. However, that’s the plain vanilla version of a chatbot.

Most people that visit your website use that chatbot only when they need some assistance with your website.

However, conversational marketing gives you the opportunity to interact with your customers to assist them with pre-purchase queries or send post-purchase notifications.

Conversational marketing is an inbound marketing channel that focuses on engaging the customers with one-on-one dialogue.

The key, though, is to be non-intrusive because that’s what sets conversational marketing apart from conventional methods like email marketing.

While your customers may love friendly banter, a business could receive potentially hundreds of messages every day. This is where AI has a role to play.

AI can provide assistance to your customers and answer their questions quickly and at scale, consequently reducing the load on your customer support desk.

3 Ways to Use  Conversational Marketing to X2 Your Shopify Sales

Often, conversational marketing through a chat assistant triggers a thought where businesses see themselves interacting with their customers about something they need help with.

While customer support is an integral feature of a chat assistant, it’s not the only one.

1. Invite Customers to Interact with Your Business

Marketing is the first point of contact with a potential customer.

Conversational marketing can provide an excellent entry point to your customers, and a much better one than a hard-selling email that can feel intrusive. Think about the following scenarios:

1. You use a call to action at the end of an email that brings the lead to your product page.
2. You use a link to trigger a chatbot that initiates a conversation.

How is Conversational Marketing Better than Email Marketing?

In the first scenario, your communication with the lead stops abruptly. You’ve given them the link and left them on their own to complete the remainder of the process by themselves.

Instead, when you bring a lead to a chatbot, it’s the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of a notification.

Suddenly, your customer’s experience transforms into a more personalized one.

Take a moment to think about how powerful this can be — you can virtually personalize any of your outbound marketing channels.

You’re no longer broadcasting; you’re making your lead a part of a conversation.

Your lead can instantly seek clarification on products or ask for customized products. That said, let me ask you, as a Shopify store owner, did you ever think you could implement conversational marketing over offline channels too?

Probably not. Well, you can. If you do advertise via offline channels like billboards or print ads, you can use a QR code that triggers a chatbot. Consider China for instance, where a majority of the billboards feature a QR code (and they’re incredibly effective, too).

This offers your business a unique opportunity to provide a conversational and immersive experience to your offline leads as well.

It is no longer a hard sell. You’re now engaging in a valuable conversation with your lead which makes your marketing more consumer-centric.

2. Provide Real-time Support through Conversational AI

You don’t need to be an experienced entrepreneur to realize the importance of good customer support, but here are some stats to give you a gist of it:

• 90% of customers would prefer receiving an instant response for their queries.
• 70% of customers believe that businesses should collaborate on their queries so they don’t have to explain their queries to different representatives.
• 70% of the customer journey is a factor of how the customer perceives they’re being treated by the business.

Those aren’t small numbers. Falling behind in the customer support territory is dangerous for your Shopify store.

Understandably, these issues are often challenging to deal with, especially for small businesses.

To get a sense of why, try to identify if your Shopify store provides instant responses, offers an easy internal collaboration of customer queries, and treats customers well. You’re likely to be facing a problem in at least one of these areas, and that can put a dent in your Shopify sales.

So, what do you do to fix this?

Conversational marketing through a level 3 AI chatbot!

Why is Level 3 AI better than Level 2 AI?

Granted, chatbots can answer customer queries instantly, but only level 3 AI can offer an engaging experience, and even answer any follow-up questions.

For instance, if your customer is confused between two products and wants to understand which one they should buy, they might ask for the differences between those products.

A level 2 AI chatbot is unlikely to be able to handle this query, while a level 3 AI will seamlessly answer the customer’s question.

Using conversational marketing also leaves behind a trail that allows your customer support desk to collaborate on customer queries. This is often not possible when support is provided over a call or any medium that doesn’t leave a trail behind.

Trails offer a two-fold benefit: it increases your customer’s perception of your quality of support and also helps your support staff quickly familiarize themselves with the solutions provided by another member of the team.

Collectively, these factors improve the perception of your service quality among customers, which makes them more likely to recommend your Shopify store to their friends or family. It’s also far easier to upsell satisfied customers since they already recognize the value your business provides.

A conversational experience, therefore, increases your brand’s value, helps you upsell customers, and translates to increased revenue.

Over time, the impact of conversational marketing will begin to compound and you’ll have X10’d your Shopify sales.

However, there’s one more tactic we need to discuss where conversational AI can come in handy.

3. Retargeting Campaigns Using Data Collected With Conversational Marketing

Retargeting campaigns are a customer touchpoint that allows you to re-invite customers that didn’t complete their journey after they interacted with your business the first time, or for upselling.

However, you must give them a reason to revisit your store.

Conversational marketing, therefore, is a precursor to a winning retargeting campaign. When your business interacts with a potential lead, the lead leaves valuable data for you.

For instance, consider a customer that engages with your chatbot and asks for a face cream suitable for dry skin. The chatbot responds with relevant products, and the customer either completes the purchase or abandons the cart.

In either case, the granular data ( highly specific details) collected by your chatbot presents a marketing opportunity.

If the customer did complete the purchase, perhaps you could upsell the customer by recommending a face wash for dry skin.

However, if the customer didn’t complete the initial purchase, you still have data that you can use for optimizing your retargeting campaign and improving conversion rates.

Conversational Marketing Could Bolster Your Shopify Sales Growth

Conversational marketing is to marketing, what Facebook was to social media or what Google was to search engines. It has revolutionized the marketing landscape and made it a lot more engaging and a lot less “salesy” for the customers.

Did you know that more than 55% of the businesses that use conversational marketing receive higher-quality leads

Plus, it offers businesses deeper insight into what customers want and allows them to provide their leads and customers superior customer support.

The result? Accelerated growth in revenues, and consequently, earnings.

If you’re determined to X10 your Shopify sales through conversational marketing, we can help you.

Schedule a demo with Limechat and use our cutting-edge technology to grow your business.