Your guide to

conversational
messaging.
Connect with customers via the
messaging channels they love
the most. It’s powerful stuff.

messagemedia.com
 2 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | CONTENTS

What’s inside.
INTRODUCTION
A taste of things to come 3
PART 1
Attracting new business 5
PART 2
Get closer to your existing customers 10
PART 3
Turn customers into fans 16
PART 4
Leading in customer experience 19

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 3 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | INTRODUCTION

Introduction.
For small and medium businesses,
Of all the recent trends making beautiful connections with
we’ve seen, one stands customers instead of just selling to
out from the rest: them is the best – and maybe only
– way to get ahead of much larger
customers want to get brands.
closer to you.
I hope this playbook demonstrates
They expect to chat that achieving it is much easier than
you think. You’ll get a closer look at Kate Gerwe,
one-on-one whenever Chief Marketing
the latest data and trends, insights
they reach out, and to into customer expectations and
Officer,
Sinch MessageMedia.
have meaningful and behaviour, and some simple steps
genuine conversations. you can take to streamline customer
engagement and hit your goals.
Can you deliver that?

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 4 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | INTRODUCTION

What’s conversational
messaging?
While brands are flooding messaging channels
with one-way broadcasts, customers are hungry
for something more meaningful. Conversational
messaging lets them have a two-way dialogue –
initiated by the customer – on messaging channels
they already use.

Customers get a sense of personal engagement

and feel heard and understood. Businesses gather
genuine customer insights while transforming and
accelerating the path to purchase.

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 5

CHAPTER
PART 1 1

Attracting
Sub-section
namebusiness.
new goes here
and here.
“More than 50 percent more
consumers now use third-party
Subheading
messaging and chatgoes
throughhere
a
business’ mobile application than
they did pre-COVID.”
– Forrester Study

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 6 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 1

With turbulent economic

forecasts, it would be easy to
focus on a survival strategy –
retreat, cut costs, and ride out
the storm.
But those stormy times also come with the best
growth opportunities. As less stable competitors
shrink or exit altogether, being nimble and
open to change means you can snap up the
customers they leave high and dry.

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 7 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 1
Be where your customers are.
Well, sure. But, where is
your audience?
“Increasingly, businesses are
realizing their audience lives on
Instagram or Facebook,” says
Luke Grimstrup, Head of Product
– Core & Platform at Sinch
MessageMedia. “And so, as part
of their marketing strategy, these
businesses post on social media
every day.”
That’s smart, but you can be
smarter. Social media aren’t
just for broadcasting content
– they’re also where you can
support customers, have
conversations and accept and
manage new inbound leads.
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“It’s a great way to run a sales
cycle,” continues Grimstrup.
“With more channels available for
customers to start a conversation,
it means more opportunities for
40%
meaningful conversations that
convert and a major point of
differentiation for brands of all
sizes.”
More people are using
social networks to search of people
for businesses. According to
HootSuite’s Social Media Trends
aged 18-24 use
2023 report, 40% of 18-to-24- social media
year-olds use social media as
their primary search engines to
as their main
research brands and products. search engine.
SOURCE, Hootsuite Social Media Trends 2023
 8 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 1

Rest assured, search is still

a thing. A recent Consumer
Review Survey found 98% of
consumers used the internet
to find information about local
98% of people still
businesses in 2022. That’s up
use the good old
from 90% in 2019. internet to search
for businesses.
SOURCE, Brightlocal.com, 2022

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 9 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 1

Guide, don’t push.

How to attract your audience:
So, if messaging across
multiple channels is the
goal, how do you make
it manageable for busy
staff while also satisfying
those massive customer
expectations?
While people want conversational
messaging and immediate responses, they
don’t necessarily want the whole thing to
happen all at once or even on one channel.
Crack that, and you’ll have an incredible
point of difference. If you, among your
competitors, can be available for a two-
way conversation, you’ll show you’re the
right choice.
Figure out where prospects are:
Which platforms do they use? Where are they
most likely to engage with you?
Run some experiments:
One of the beauties of social media is they’re
relatively cheap and easy to test new ideas. Run
tests and learn from your own experience what
works for your customers.
Manage your conversations:
Before engaging on multiple platforms, think
about how you’ll manage them all, especially if
people move from one to another. Find a solution
that helps you manage them all in one place.

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 10

PART 2

Get closer to
your existing
customers.
“Brands with more channels of
communication have significantly
higher net promoter and customer
satisfaction scores and are 3.4 times
more likely to have experienced
significant revenue growth.”
– Forrester Study

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 11 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 2

Growth comes The probability of selling to an existing

from within – it’s customer is 60-70 percent while selling to a
new prospect sits at around 5-20 percent.
true for self-help,
and it’s true for It costs around seven times more to acquire
your business. a new customer than keep an old one.

Whatever your industry, engaging with Loyal customers spend around 67

your existing clients to keep them for percent more than new ones.
longer and make more money from
them is the smartest, most efficient
way to grow. Search around, and Increasing customer retention by
you’ll find variations on the following
five percent increases profit by
statistics – these are from Forbes:
more than 25 percent.

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 12 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 2

Here’s how to go about doing that.

67% more spend from

loyal customers.

7x more spend to acquire new

customers vs keeping old ones.

60-70%
likelihood of converting an existing
customer to a long-term customer.

SOURCE, Neil Patel, How To Make More Money Without Making More Sales, Forbes 2014

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 13
Conversation – it’s personal.
A Forrester study
commissioned by
Google said customers
“demand to be
delighted … These
expectations extend
to when and how they
connect with brands
across communication
channels.”
Delivering that delight once meant
having a contact form on your
site and promising to respond in
a day or two. Now, you’ve got to
be where customers want to talk
– on the same channels they use
to chat with friends and family.
In fact, more than 50 percent
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YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 2
of consumers rank one or more
text or social media messaging
channels as their top three
preferred ways to talk with a brand.
50%
Rank text or social
media messaging
In fact, in one of our recent surveys,
83% of consumers said having
channels as preferred
the option to message a business
way to speak to a
brand.
made them feel more confident
about a brand.
All of this is good news – it gives
businesses a chance to have more
meaningful conversations and
make those beautiful connections.
Whether it’s through SMS,
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger,
Google’s Business Messages SOURCE, Forrester Consulting, What
or Instagram Direct Messenger, Businesses Need To Know About
Communicating With Consumers,
conversations are (finally) 2020
getting personal.
 14 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 2

While 51 percent of consumers rank messaging platforms in their top three

Turn on, tune ways to communicate, “fewer than half of decision-makers report that their

in, stand out.

brands offer chat through their own mobile application or a third-party
messaging app.”

So, you have options:

According to cloud
communication Ignore this trend:
expert Sinch (aka our 1. theoretically, you could ignore all of the evidence, continue as you are
and hope your existing communication channels are enough to keep
parent company),
customers happy.
over three billion
people globally
use chat apps, but Try juggling:
2. you could take an ad-hoc approach to your customers’ experience –
many small and bouncing around from one platform to another with no real continuity
medium businesses or consistency.
don’t.
Develop a strategy:
3. figure out a way to service customers at scale on their
preferred channels.

You can guess which option we recommend.

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 15
Take on the big
players.
Wondering if you have the
time, resources and people
to connect with customers
at scale on their preferred
channels?
You can stop worrying. New tech makes it
easy to engage across multiple platforms
from a central location. This lets you track
previous conversations across different
channels and between team members,
massively increasing your potential for
cross-selling and up-selling.
Since you’ll be combining these tools with
the intimate customer knowledge your larger
competitors probably don’t have, this could
give you a huge competitive advantage.
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YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 2
How to get more from existing customers:
Speak to your customers:
Get in touch with your audience to find out how
and where they want to communicate with you.
Speak to your team:
How easy is it for your people to stay across
different conversations, channels and teams?
How is this impacting their ability to convert new
opportunities?
Revisit your tech:
A lot has changed over the past few
years. Have another look for tools that
could help you manage customer
communications easily and affordably
across multiple channels.
 16

PART 3

Turn customers
into fans.
43% of consumers said they
would ignore a brand’s offer if
it wasn’t personalized.
– Sinch MessageMedia, 2022

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 17
Retain customers and increase brand loyalty
– both good goals, but… how?
More and more, that all-
important brand loyalty
comes from doing two things
– personalizing the messaging
to the customer and being
true to your brand personality.
Get it wrong, and you may be
in trouble.
42% percent of brand
leaders think ineffective
communication leads to
inefficient service, reduced
customer loyalty and lower
customer satisfaction levels.
On the flip side, if you can
create beautiful connections
when responding to sales
inquiries, service requests
or even simple product
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YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 3
questions, you build on your
customer’s sense of brand
50%
are often frustrated by
loyalty. Hearing back from a
human, not a bot, helps them
chat bot experiences.
trust they’ll have a better SOURCE, Forrester report, Customers aren’t mad, they’re just
disappointed, Jan 2023
experience overall.
According to a report from
Forrester, half of consumers
42%
say the experience of using
chatbots often makes
them frustrated.
In short, consumers are now
more likely to shop or engage say ineffective
with brands that personalize communication
their responses, especially if decreases customer
they come from a person.
loyalty and satisfaction.
SOURCE, Forrester Consulting, What Businesses Need To Know
About Communicating With Consumers, 2020
 18 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 3

Get super
How to build loyalty and trust.
consistent.
Wherever your Survey your customers:
customer wants to See what they think of your messaging, brand voice and personality. Is it
consistent and loyalty-inspiring or a bit hit-and-miss?
chat, your business
needs to sound Revisit your business goals and values:
To add power to your overarching customer satisfaction strategy, weave
the same, with a conversational messaging into everything you do. You’ll get more cut-through
consistent voice and deliver a better experience.

and personalized Give employees standard templates:

message.
It’s an important part of
building trust and loyalty
while enhancing the customer
experience – and, according
to Forbes, there’s an 80
percent increase in revenue
for businesses that do that.
To keep your messages on brand, give your team scripts and templated
replies to common customer queries.
Use emojis:
People who use visuals like emojis in their messaging are 1.59 times more
likely to say they have ‘great conversations’ than those who don’t.
Allow for personalized messaging:
Make it easy for employees to refer back to a customer’s past conversations
and purchases. Give them the context they need to have a really
personalized conversation.

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 19

PART 4

Leading in
customer
experience.
“48% of customers say it’s critical
that they can contact a business via
their preferred method.”
– Forrester Study

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 20
Whether you’re in a
service or retail industry,
manufacturing or a technical
profession, the customer
experience can become
your core competitive
advantage – or weakness.
This is especially important
in industries where
customers lack the technical
knowledge to assess quality
or when they must choose
between a range of very
similar products. Essentially,
when there’s no other way to
choose, people will decide
based on how a business
makes them feel.
So how can you take your
customer experience up
a level?
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Surprise customers
with messaging options.
The digital world has
changed business, and
the way customers want
to connect with you.
69 percent of
customers say
they’d rather contact
businesses via text.
Demographics matter too, with
56 percent of those aged 18 –
44 preferring digital channels to
contact a business.
It all adds up to one fact –
consumers are flocking to brands
that offer messaging convenience
and options.
YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 4
“Communicating with your
customers through one channel
alone is no longer enough,” says
Gene Sigalov, Sinch MessageMedia’s
Chief Strategy Officer.
“Small and medium businesses
have discovered that multi-channel
messaging – where customers can
engage with brands on the channel
of their choice – is perfect for
communicating with customers.
And the payoff for offering
customers multiple messaging
options can be huge.”
“It’s a great way to offer support
that meets customer expectations
and drives customer satisfaction.”
 21 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 4

56%
people 18 – 44 prefer digital
channels to contact a business.

69%
customers want to
text businesses.
SOURCE, Clickatell, The Evolution of Notifications
to Chat Commerce 2022.

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 22
Delight customers with
fast, relevant responses.
Wherever they
are, on whatever
channel, customers
will no longer settle
for slow responses.
In fact, 66 percent of
customers say they
expect an immediate
reply from companies.
Getting things sorted quickly
using digital platforms is also
good for the business.
“Queries received by
message are succinct,”
Sigalov says.
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YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 4
“The question asked
becomes more pointed,
and the service agent or
staff member on the
receiving end can answer
much more quickly.”
Social agents can handle
90%
four to eight times as
many queries per hour as a
phone agent, while the per-
interaction cost on social is
less than $1, as opposed to of customers
$6 per phone call and $2.50
to $5 per email. expect a response
within 24 hours.
That’s a huge competitive
advantage. SOURCE, Sinch MessageMedia, 2022.
 23 YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | PART 4

How to get gold-standard

customer experiences:

Audit query response

times across your
channels:
Measuring response times in days
or hours? Imagine if you could
make that minutes or seconds.

Review customer
service processes:
How many touchpoints are there
for customers? Who handles
these requests? Who else has
access to those interactions?

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 24
What’s next?
You’ve got your strategy
in place and a head full of
ideas. So, what now?
Whatever your 2024 goals, they should
aim to be on the channels your clients
prefer. Engage on new platforms, ask
customers about their communication
preferences, and work with your team
to improve the customer experience.
If that sounds overwhelming, start
small. Take it bit by bit, and look for
quick wins with cost-effective, easy-
to-implement solutions that will deliver
significant impact. The outcome you
want? Getting closer to your audience
by paving the way toward those
beautiful connections.
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YOUR GUIDE TO CONVERSATIONAL MESSAGING | WHAT’S NEXT?
Things are noisy.
Here’s how to cut through.
Whether you want to quickly add
text message automation inside
your existing CRM, ERP or marketing
automation platform or get expert
help, there’s a solution.
Sinch MessageMedia is a global
messaging provider helping
businesses of all sizes cut
through the noise. With over
70,000 customers worldwide
and 20+ years in business,
you’re in safe hands – we can
help you easily and effectively
connect with your customers.
 

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