Customer Success ResearchWhatsApp Message vs Emails – Which does Your Customer Prefer?

After the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were forced to find creative and effective ways to continue their commerce. The internet was a helpful source that created a whole new B2C (business-to-consumer) channel in the form of e-commerce. This helped business agents connect with their customers directly through online platforms to sell their goods and services, which is why B2C e-commerce has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. According to the State of Commerce report, 56% of consumers are spending less time in physical stores and more time shopping online. Therefore, many companies are exploring options to improve their businesses online. The ClickConnector is one such software that provides a seamless B2C journey for the WhatsApp business multiple users system.

Emails as a B2C communication channel

Initially, business agents used emails for B2C communications. This was a huge step forward from the traditional forms of communication such as phone, fax, and physical mail. It dominated much of the communications landscape and almost entirely replaced fax. It was also an inexpensive means for reaching the largest number of customers in the quickest fashion. It allowed companies and business agents to send targeted emails to their customers regarding any new product, changes to existing products, and other types of marketing drives they were working on.

The emergence of WhatsApp

However, in recent years, the communications landscape has evolved rapidly. Modern communication platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, etc. have started to play a huge role in people’s lives. Today's consumers prefer communication that is quick, relevant, and personalized. With access to multiple devices and mobile apps, getting the attention of the millennial customer is not an easy task. Access to mobile devices and instant messaging apps has changed the way customers interact with brands. Therefore, to accommodate these changes WhatsApp allows businesses to connect with their users anytime, anywhere.

Over the years, the rapid evolution of Whatsapp has made it the perfect platform for B2C communications. It is one of the most popular messaging apps in over 100 countries and of the world. With over two billion active users per month and exceptionally high open rates within minutes of messages being sent, it has become an ideal platform for marketing and business.Therefore, when it comes to conversational channels of communication, WhatsApp cannot be ignored.

Benefits of WhatsApp over Emails

Hence, many businesses looking to modernize and remodel their marketing strategy frequently switch from email to Whatsapp to connect with their customers. This paves way for better B2C communication because an average user is believed to open WhatsApp nearly 23-25 times a day and spend an average of 38 minutes on the app daily. Unlike emails, WhatsApp is interactive and enables businesses to have personalized interactions with customers. Customers are more likely to respond to WhatsApp messages than to emails or any other form of communication because it is an instant messaging platform. It also helps users to share different file formats, conduct video calls, and have group conversations. Through WhatsApp, you can send alerts, recommendations, notifications, and reminders and give your customers a better brand experience. It is also important to remember that email is a channel that cannot be overused for marketing and business. Email users tend to have a low tolerance for spam or irrelevant content that is sent to them all too frequently. Once your emails have been marked as spam, there is no way to reverse the damage. Your emails will slip through the cracks and not reach your intended customers, nullifying the impact that you wished to create with your email marketing efforts. Thus more and more businesses are shifting to WhatsApp to maintain effective B2C communications.

The role of ClickConnector for WhatsApp Communications

ClickConnector makes it even easier to effectively manage your business platforms and provide a seamless customer journey. It allows you to manage all your Whatsapp leads through a single point by helping you unify conversations across multiple platforms and accessing them from a centralized inbox. It can save you a great deal of time that’s lost when switching between different platforms. It can also be extremely useful when a business has multiple users, using the same account. It can help you assign other users to handle chats or transfer chats to your managers to give decisions. The reports generated are extremely neat and easy to understand, saving management time and providing just the right insight through analytics.

Good communication methods are crucial in maintaining great business relationships and they help in achieving business goals faster. Communication platforms used by businesses should accommodate the features that consumers are driven to: efficiency, convenience, relevance and personalization. Therefore, it's extremely important to choose the right channel to boost your marketing efforts after taking into consideration your business goals and needs.