How we automated our way to a 32% increase in conversions

Almost every brand seems to have its own app nowadays. However, the truth is that many of them are abandoned or never even used. It then boils down to two questions “Does your brand really need an app?” and “What for?”. Most of the time, we get answers like “marketing”, “customer engagement”, “increase stickiness”. Those are definitely important but, do you need an app to achieve those? Here’s how we automated our way to a 32% increase in conversions without an app and convinced our clients to do the same.

The Challenge

We realised that the app market trended towards “superapps” like WeChat, Grab and Gojek and brands that solely had an app to digitise their shopping experience weren’t cutting it anymore.

Thus, we started out on a journey to help brands redefine e-commerce marketing and challenged ourselves to do it without an app.

Customer feedback is always important and so we sat down with our e-commerce clients to better understand the issues they were facing.

28 meetings and close to 73 hours of conversations later, we distilled their wants into four main points:

1. Reduce time spent exporting and importing contacts between ad platforms like Facebook and CRMs

2. Improve customer outreach efficiency and personal touch through messaging channels like WhatsApp

3. Simplify and increase membership signups

4. Have a fast, convenient and reliable redemption system

The question we got most was “can we really do away with an app for membership signups and point redemption?”

The Solution

As the African proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. Therefore, we roped in platforms customers were on the most – Facebook and WhatsApp.

Are you ready to see how we automated our way to a 32% increase in conversions without an app and convinced our clients to do the same? Get your pens and papers ready! 

We’ll walk through the steps with “Earth Beauty”, a brand we created to illustrate this use case.

Membership Registration

First, we created a Facebook ad that promoted the client’s product with an informative copy, an attractive creative and a “Send Message” call-to-action button.

When a customer clicks on the “Send Message” button, the customer is immediately directed to our client’s official WhatsApp page and will be prompted to start a conversation with a pre-filled message. All the customer needs to do is to simply tap on the send button!

We’ve tested this with various brands and found that pre-filled messages allow customers to commit and take action up to 80% faster. This could be due to some customers not knowing how best to initiate a conversation when faced with an empty text box or simply procrastinating or even forgetting to start a conversation.

Once the customer sends the message out, a SleekFlow automation will be triggered. A welcome message, as well as a membership registration link, will be sent to the customer through WhatsApp.

Then, the customer just needs to tap on the link and be redirected to the membership sign up site to complete the registration. The best part of this step is that the customer’s phone number will be automatically filled in as the customer was redirected from WhatsApp. Talk about convenience!

Product Redemption

Once the registration is complete, another SleekFlow automation can be triggered to send a message to the customer to check that the information filled in is correct and to confirm the registration.

The customer can then use this link to redeem the product through both online and offline avenues. For example, if the product is to be redeemed offline, the salesperson simply has to type a keyword – in this case, “Redeem” –  to indicate redemption. At the same time, an automated message confirming the reception will also be sent.

Now, you probably must be thinking, “won’t some customers try to redeem multiple products”? Well, we’ve got that covered too! If the customer has already redeemed the product, or if the campaign has already ended, a corresponding message will be sent to inform the customers that they will be unable to redeem the product. Nifty, right?

Value-Added Services

At SleekFlow, we believe in giving a full experience to both our clients and their customers.

As such, to ensure a truly seamless experience, our team at SleekFlow provided clients with fully integrated website pages so that certain fields will be automatically populated.

After a customer fills in the signup form, their information will be automatically imported to SleekFlow’s dashboard. Clients and their team members can then view the customer profile anytime, including name, phone number, email and contact created time.

To prevent a scenario of low stocks at a redemption location or multiple redemptions by a single customer, SleekFlow has implemented safeguards such as specific quota rules for both the reception location and product.

In addition, SleekFlow also offers clients marketing metrics to track:

• The number of people redirected to WhatsApp from Facebook Ads and received the first message.

• The number of people redirected from the WhatsApp message that submitted the form

• The number of successful coupon receptions

With this Enterprise Marketing Campaign in place, our clients have reported higher conversion rates and shorter conversion cycles. They were happy to have been able to achieve up to 40% conversion rates with half the time, money and effort required to make an app.