How CMOs Leverage Intelligent Conversational AI to Maximise Leads & Drive Engagement

The current digital world causes rapid changes due to the demands of customers. This has led many Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to face the challenge of fulfilling customers’ needs at any time of the day. They risk losing customers if their brands could not provide a consistent customer experience throughout each stage of the customer journey.

Since most consumers today are going online for purchases, CMOs have to gain a deeper understanding of customer experiences across the shopping journey, especially in the online space. Thus, there is an urgent need for CMOs to leverage on automation technology in order to compete with other businesses, generate higher return on investment (ROI), and expand business reach quickly.

Beyond emails, websites and social media, social messaging apps are one of the online channels to effectively engage with the customers. But at a high volume, it’s a challenge for the social media executives or customer service agents to deliver high quality engagement for all customers with speed and efficiency. When some prospective customers don’t get served in time with their request or assistance, they can get frustrated and abandon their intention of purchasing or leave for a competitor.

So how can CMOs attract more prospects and turn them into qualified leads and ultimately customers? What is a reliable solution to fragmented customer experience online that can drive better leads and engagement?

CMOs tend to focus on conventional online channels like emails, websites, social media, etc. Unfortunately, these channels, although essential to your marketing mix, have become saturated and less effective over time. Therefore, brands need to constantly reinvent themselves and explore new ways of reaching out to potential customers online.

According to Opentext, 70% of Singaporean consumers want a personalised digital customer experience and would be more likely to buy again from brands which treat them like an individual, rather than like every other customer. Conversational AI is the answer to personalised engagement at scale that was never possible before with any other strategies.

Furthermore, 80% of business leaders say consumers spend more (34% more on average) when their experience is personalised, while 47% see it to help with a more timely and relevant interaction.

Deploying conversational AI can help businesses automate 1:1 personal conversations, while acting as a tool for gathering leads and optimising engagements and conversions across multiple channels.

Conversational AI has its obvious advantages. But is there an urgent need for marketing leaders to invest in this technology now? And when is the critical time to adopt conversational AI?

The way people and businesses communicate is transforming. Every week, one billion people message with business on messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct – sending DMs, browsing product catalogues, requesting support, or interacting with stories. It is apparent that messaging represents a new digital frontier, similar to the revolutionary shift of the mobile world 10 years ago, and businesses need to act now.

In fact, CMOs should get started with conversational AI sooner rather than later for two reasons; cost and data advantage.

According to Chatbots Magazine, companies can save 30% by using digital assistants like chatbots to answer customer queries and drive engagement. Conversational AI can assist your marketing team in various campaign engagements, making sure your leads are properly nurtured and your ad dollars are well spent.

On the other hand, investing in conversational AI earlier helps marketers to stay ahead of their competition. AI leverages on training data and gets smarter over time. Thus, marketers will be better equipped with a wealth of customer data ripe for implementation and improvement by launching and training the bot earlier.

CMOs may also achieve the strategic key performance indicator (KPI) of boosting average order value or required ROI by using AI chatbots. These chatbots are capable of collecting and unifying customers’ chat data from various platforms into one single CRM. This data could be used to understand the customer profiles and behaviours better and draw insights on where exactly marketers need to work on for their marketing approach.

Now, let’s explore 5 ways conversational AI can help businesses in lead generation.

No matter how big or small your marketing team is, the AI chatbot can take over tedious and repetitive tasks, providing more than 70%-80% instant support for FAQ-based queries without any human assistance. For complex enquiries that do indeed need a customer service agent, the AI chatbot has the ability to qualify the leads and route them to the most suitable agent or department.

Besides, the customer service agent team is able to leverage on the A.I assisted live chat feature where best matching answers are suggested by the AI. The agent can then insert the relevant answer template promptly without having to search through the huge knowledge base or consult each other. This saves time and significantly increases the productivity of the human agent.

Users who have privately messaged your business are middle of the funnel leads who are highly engaged and already interested in your product or brand. With conversational AI, brands can identify these specific groups of audiences to run retargeting campaigns that yield higher conversion rate and lower ads cost.

Conversational AI eliminates the user pain points of switching platforms as well as keying in the information field after field in a static form. Answering the chatbot feels much more interactive and comfortable like you are talking to a friend rather than the unnatural and tiring form filling process. In fact, research has shown that a conversational form beats web forms of any kind by a large margin – resulting in higher conversion rate in lead generation.

Moreover, pairing this with a Click-to-Message ad campaign where users are led to messaging channels rather than a landing page after clicking on an ad, brands like FWD have been able to generate 5x more lead conversion and 5x lower cost per lead.

Conversational AI provides customers with the convenience of not having to search through pages of items. Rather than taking part in a website treasure hunt, customers can converse with AI to search for the product they are looking for.

Digital coupons and trials are highly effective marketing tools that help brands to capture leads and drive sales. Unlike the usual distribution channels like in-store physical vouchers or websites, brands are able to run top of the funnel promotional campaigns and distribute coupons right on the social media platforms where your potential customers hang out at, therefore attracting and converting leads at a much earlier stage.

Wondering what successful marketing campaigns powered by conversational AI look like? Here, we’ve compiled how the top 3 best marketing teams innovate and skyrocket their ROIs by being the first to leverage conversational AI in their respective industries. Let’s dive right in.

Now, marketers are not unaware of the power of user-generated content (UGC) campaigns in today’s climate. Studies have found that consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making a purchasing decision.

M1 launched the “Be” campaign which was an ode to unique Singaporeans who dared to embrace their individuality by following their passions and beliefs to be the best in their own paths. To drive awareness of its new brand initiative, and lead generation among its target audience, M1 needed to create a custom messaging experience that reflected its bright, friendly, and innovative ethos.

With AiChat’s solutions, M1 was able to adopt chat marketing via Facebook Messenger to run this wildly successful UGC where the customised chatbot solution by AiChat utilised personalised video message technology to enable user engagement. The campaign resulted in 4.1x new user acquisitions, generating more than 132,000 messages and 1,700 unique videos.

Kim Jieun, a spokesperson from M1, said: “Conversational marketing will be an important touch-point in the near future. Being able to communicate and promote our brand through Messenger has proven to be effective in driving awareness and customer engagement.”

Industry leader Petron Malaysia seeks for a way to enhance their popular Miles loyalty programme with Tania, the first ever petrol service station virtual assistant in Malaysia. One of the difficulties Petron Malaysia faces is convincing customers to register their Petron Miles cards in order to take advantage of the benefits and privileges of the loyalty programme when they fill up with Petron. AiChat solution serves to inform clients about the Petron Miles card registration procedures in addition to promptly responding to requests for customer support assistance.

The mobile-friendly, highly engaging experience is hosted on Facebook Messenger and can be accessed by just texting Petron’s official fan page. The conversational journey is positioned to not only improve the experience of loyal members but also deal with the problem of card registrations. Tania keeps consumers informed about the latest deals and items available for redemption from the various Fuel and Partnerships rewards packages. She also helps them find the closest Petron service stations for reward redemption. Moreover, Tania also demonstrates extensive product expertise by providing information on products like the advantages of Petron gasoline, engine oils, and liquefied petroleum gas in just a few chats.

Between August 2019 and June 2021, the campaign resulted in 4.9X more open rate vs email, generating 2.2X more membership sign-ups via chatbot vs website, and achieved 83% CSAT.

In a crowded insurance industry, how does FWD Insurance Thailand stay ahead of the curve? The solution is to facilitate faster conversations and be the first to disrupt the industry norms by meeting customers’ needs at an instant speed.

AiChat’s automated conversational experience for FWD’s “E-Cancer” campaign makes it a breeze to ask questions and receive quotes for their insurance products via Messenger. The team also created conversational scripts tailored to specific products, especially its cancer-protection offerings.

For comparison, FWD Thailand also A/B tested the new campaign versus its business-as-usual campaign of photo ads, which directed people to its website. The results? The brand saw 5.4X more quote conversion rates from ads that click to Messenger than from business-as-usual campaigns that clicked to the website and 5.6X lower cost per quote from ads that click to Messenger than from business-as-usual campaigns that clicked to the website.

There is still a lot of untapped potential with conversational AI that marketing leaders have yet discovered. Investing in your conversational AI strategy early means getting ahead of the game and being able to leverage on first mover advantage. With AiChat’s bespoke AI & messaging solution, brands can go beyond service support automation and present scalable and memorable brand experiences that attract new customers and delight existing ones.