Connect with customers via the messaging

channels they love most. It’s powerful stuff.

What’s inside. PART 1 PART 2
Attracting new Get closer to
business your existing
customers

5 10
INTRODUCTION
A taste of things
to come

3 PART 3
Turn customers
PART 4
Leading in
into fans customer
experience

16 19
Introduction.
Of all the trends we see For small and medium businesses,
coming in 2023, one making beautiful connections with
customers instead of just selling to
stands out from the rest: them is the best – and maybe only
customers want to get – way to get ahead of much larger
closer to you. brands.

I hope this playbook demonstrates

They expect to chat that achieving it is much easier than
one-on-one whenever you think. You’ll get a closer look at
they reach out, and to the latest data and trends, insights

Beautiful Connections
into customer expectations and
have meaningful and Kate Gerwe,
behaviour, and some simple steps
genuine conversations. you can take to streamline customer
Chief Marketing
Officer,
engagement and hit your goals. Sinch
Can you deliver that? MessageMedia.

Sinch MessageMedia
3
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.

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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.

Sinch MessageMedia
4
PART 1:

Attracting
new business.
“50 percent more consumers now
use third-party messaging and
chat through a business’ mobile
application than they did

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pre-COVID.”
– Forrester Study

Sinch MessageMedia
5
With turbulent economic
forecasts for 2023, 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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Sinch MessageMedia
6
Be where your customers are.
Well, sure. But in
2023, 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.
“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
meaningful conversations that
convert and a major point of
differentiation for brands of all
40%
sizes.”
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More people are using
social networks to search
for businesses. According to
HootSuite’s Social Media Trends
2023 report, 40% of 18-to-24- of people
year-olds use social media as
their primary search engines to
aged 18-24 use
Sinch MessageMedia
research brands and products. social media
as their main
search engine.
SOURCE, Hootsuite Social Media Trends 2023
7
 98%
Rest assured, search is still
a thing. A recent Consumer
Review Survey found 98%
of consumers used the
internet to find information
about local businesses in
2022. That’s up from 90%
of people still
in 2019. use the good old
internet to search
for businesses.

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SOURCE, Brightlocal.com, 2022

Sinch MessageMedia
8
Guide, don’t push. How to attract your audience:

So, if messaging across Figure out where prospects are:

multiple channels is the Which platforms do they use? Where are they most
likely to engage with you?
goal, how do you make
it manageable for busy
teams while also satisfying
those massive customer Run some experiments:
One of the beauties of social media is they’re
expectations? relatively cheap and easy to test new ideas. Run tests
and learn from your own experience what works for
While people want conversational

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your customers.
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
Manage your conversations:
Before engaging on multiple platforms, think about
competitors, can be available for a two-
how you’ll manage them all, especially if people move

Sinch MessageMedia
way conversation, you’ll show you’re the
right choice. from one to another. Find a solution that helps you
manage them all in one place.

9
PART 2

Get closer to
your existing
customers
“Brands with more channels of

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communication have significantly higher
net promoter and customer satisfaction
scores and are 3.4 times more likely to
have experienced significant revenue
growth.”

Sinch MessageMedia
– Forrester Study

10
Growth comes from within – it’s true for
self-help, and it’s true for your business. Increasing
customer retention
Whatever your industry, engaging with your existing by five percent
clients to keep them for longer and make more money
increases profit
from them is the smartest, most efficient way to
grow. Search around, and you’ll find variations on the
by more than
following statistics – these are from Forbes: It costs around 25 percent.
7x more to
acquire a new
customer than
keep an old one.
The probability of

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selling to an existing
customer is 60-70
percent while selling to
a new prospect sits at Loyal customers
around 5-20 percent. spend around

Sinch MessageMedia
67 percent more
than new ones.

11
Here’s how
to go about
doing that. 67% 7x
more spend more spend to acquire
from loyal new customers vs
customers. keeping old ones.

60-70%

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more spend to acquire

Sinch MessageMedia
new customers vs keeping
old ones.

SOURCE, Neil Patel, How To Make More Money Without Making More Sales,
Forbes 2014
12
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 of consumers
rank one or more text or social
50%
media messaging channels as
their top three preferred ways to
talk with a brand.
In fact, in one of our recent
surveys, 83% of consumers said
having the option to message a
Rank text or
business made them feel more social media
confident about a brand.
messaging
All of this is good news – it gives channels as
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businesses a chance to have
more meaningful conversations preferred way to
and make those beautiful
connections. Whether it’s through
speak to a brand.
SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook
Messenger, Google Business
Messages or Instagram Direct
Sinch MessageMedia
Messenger, conversations are
(finally) getting personal.
SOURCE, Forrester Consulting, What Businesses
Need To Know About Communicating With
Consumers, 2020
13
Turn on, tune While 51 percent of consumers rank messaging platforms in their top three
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
expert Sinch 1. 2. 3.
(aka our parent Ignore this Try juggling: Develop a
company), over trend: you could take an strategy:
theoretically, you ad-hoc approach figure out a way to
three billion people to your customers’
could ignore all of the service customers
globally use chat

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evidence, continue experience – at scale on their
apps, but many as you are and bouncing around preferred channels.
small and medium hope your existing from one platform
to another with no
businesses don’t. communication
channels are enough real continuity or
to keep customers consistency.

Sinch MessageMedia
happy.

You can guess which option we recommend.

14
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.
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 on top of
different conversations, channels and teams?
How is this impacting their ability to convert new
Beautiful Connections
opportunities?
Revisit your tech:
A lot has changed over the past few years. Have
another look for tools that could help you manage
Sinch MessageMedia
customer communications easily and affordably
across multiple channels.
15
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

Beautiful Connections
Sinch MessageMedia
16

Retain customers and increase brand loyalty –
both good goals for 2023, 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
questions, you build on your
customer’s sense of brand
loyalty. Hearing back from a
human, not a bot, helps them
trust they’ll have a better
experience overall.
According to a report from
Forrester, half of consumers
say the experience of using
chatbots often makes them
frustrated.
In short, consumers are now
more likely to shop or engage
with brands that personalize
their responses, especially if
they come from a person.
50%
are often frustrated by
chat bot experiences.
SOURCE, Forrester report, Customers aren’t mad, they’re just
disappointed, Jan 2023
42%
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say ineffective
communication
Sinch MessageMedia
decreases customer
loyalty and satisfaction.
SOURCE, Forrester Consulting, What Businesses Need To Know
About Communicating With Consumers, 2020
17
Get super How to build loyalty and trust.
consistent.
Survey your customers:
Wherever your See what they think of your messaging, brand voice and
customer wants personality. Is it consistent and loyalty-inspiring or a bit hit-
and-miss?
to chat, your
business needs Revisit your business goals and values:
to sound the To add power to your overarching customer satisfaction strategy,
same, with a weave conversational messaging into everything you do. You’ll get
more cut-through and deliver a better experience.
consistent voice
and personalized

message.
It’s an important part of
building trust and loyalty
while enhancing the
customer experience – and,
Beautiful Connections
Give employees standard templates:
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

according to Forbes, there’s
an 80 percent increase in
revenue for businesses that
do that.
Sinch MessageMedia
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. 18
PART 4:

Leading in
customer
experience
“48% of customers say it’s critical

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that they can contact a business via
their preferred method.”
– Forrester Study

Sinch MessageMedia
19
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?
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.
“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
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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
Sinch MessageMedia
meets customer expectations and
drives customer satisfaction.”
20
56%
people 18 – 44
prefer digital
channels to
contact a
business.

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69%

Sinch MessageMedia
customers want to
text businesses.
SOURCE, Clickatell, The Evolution of Notifications
to Chat Commerce 2022.
21
Delight customers with
fast, relevant responses.
Wherever they “The question asked
becomes more pointed, and
are, on whatever the service agent or staff
channel, customers member on the receiving

90%
will no longer settle end can answer much more
quickly.”
for slow responses.
Social agents can handle
In fact, 66 percent of
four to eight times as
customers say they expect
many queries per hour as a of customers

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an immediate reply from
companies.
phone agent, while the per-
interaction cost on social is
expect a response
Getting things sorted less than $1, as opposed to within 24 hours.
quickly using digital $6 per phone call and $2.5
platforms is also good for to $5 per email.
the business.

Sinch MessageMedia
That’s a huge competitive
“Queries received by advantage.
message are succinct,”
Sigalov says.

SOURCE, Sinch MessageMedia, 2022.

22
How to get gold-standard customer experiences:
Audit 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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Sinch MessageMedia
23
What’s next?
You’ve got your strategy
in place and a head full
of ideas. So, what now?
Whatever your 2023 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.
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
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noise. With over 70,000 customers
worldwide, across all brands and
20+ years in business, you’re in safe
hands – we can help you easily
and effectively connect with your
customers.
Sinch MessageMedia
24
 

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