Craft your conversational commerce journey with HubSpot and Infobip

Conversational commerce is a term coined by Chris Messina back in 2015 to define selling products and services over chat apps. Essentially, it is the marriage between messaging and eCommerce.

Brands can lead their customers through the entire marketing and sales funnel over their favorite channels and create personalized interactions to enhance the conversational experience. They can connect over chat apps like WhatsApp Business, Apple Messages for Business, and even SMS.

Consumers can now ask for support from a live agent or a chatbot, get information on products and pricing, browse product catalogs, get personalized recommendations and make purchases all within one conversation. The goal is to create convenient and personalized interactions that guide customers through their journey.

Read on to learn how the Infobip integration on Hubspot can help you craft an end-to-end conversational commerce journey on WhatsApp and SMS.

For conversational commerce to be successful, it has to be personal. 71% of customers expect relevant personalized communications from brands and get frustrated when they don’t receive it. McKinsey research has found that personalization directly impacts buying behaviors.

Here’s how:

All in all, personalizing the shopping journey will:

Brands looking to craft conversational experiences turn to the channels their customers use most. Here are the leading channels you can use to connect with customers through the HubSpot Infobip integration:

WhatsApp is the world’s #1 chat app. Customers use it to communicate with family and friends daily – and brands have started to use the channel for marketing, sales, and support as well.

Leveraging WhatsApp’s unique features such as branded profiles, rich media messaging, product messages, call-to-action buttons, and more makes regular B2C communication fun and engaging. These features also make WhatsApp the ideal channel to set up end-to-end eCommerce journeys – making it easy for brands to onboard, promote, sell, and serve new and existing customers.

SMS should not be neglected as a tool in conversational commerce – it has the greatest reach and open rates and doesn’t rely on an internet connection. For marketing messages, many regions will have guidelines on how SMS can be used, so it is most often used to interact with existing customers for transactional purposes.

Due to the 160-character restriction, there are limits on what can be conveyed, so SMS is often used for critical alerts and for directing the customer to another channel like a website or WhatsApp chat. Think of a message from your favorite retail brand when they send you a new offer and tell you to use the code when you shop their site.

When customers are navigating your website, live chat is an ideal tool for fast responses and immediate resolution for queries. You can help customers avoid having to make phone calls or leaving your site because they can’t be bothered to search for the answers they are curious about.

You can use a chatbot or live agents to manage the live chats and converse with multiple customers at once. Send product recommendations based on what information they share with you to walk them through the sales journey all on your website.

Below are a few ways you can use WhatsApp and SMS at each stage of the eCommerce journey to keep customers engaged with your brand.

Post ads on Facebook and Instagram that click to a WhatsApp conversation with your business. This will give customers easy access to your customer support team or chatbot that can answer their questions.  

QR codes on ads are also useful for customers as they just need to scan the code to start a conversation. This makes the discovery phase user-friendly, as customers do not need to read through long FAQ pages or search for the right support number to contact.

Give customers the option to opt-in for notifications from your business on WhatsApp. Instead of sending newsletters that get a low open rates, use a channel that customers are active on and make sure your offers and promotions get the most visibility.

Set up an SMS short code for your seasonal promotions. Create ads that entice prospects and customers to text a keyword to your short code to receive coupons and limited-time offers. Then share a link to your website where they can browse your products and complete their purchase.

Now that your potential customer has subscribed to notifications or opened a conversation with you, you have a channel where you can send relevant offers for them to consider. Collect data on their browsing behavior on your app or website to send engaging promotions through WhatsApp or SMS to drive sales and stay top of mind.

Let your potential customers know about new and improved products over WhatsApp. Send messages with easy access to your webshop where they can browse your new arrivals, boosting their eCommerce experience.

Send back-in-stock messages to customers for items on their wish list. When the items hit your warehouse, you can let customers know instantly, allowing them to reserve or purchase items via WhatsApp or SMS. Use call-to-action buttons to elicit quick responses and boost engagement.

Cart abandonment is a pet-peeve of all eCommerce retailers. Reduce the chances of customers not completing a purchase by reminding them of what’s in their cart. Make it easy for them to complete the purchase by providing a direct link to their cart in your WhatsApp or SMS message. You can even send discount codes or promotional offers for those items to entice them into making the purchase faster.

Make it easier than ever to browse your collection of products without having to leave the WhatsApp conversation. Thanks to list messages, retailers can offer a better conversational experience by allowing customers to shop on WhatsApp.

They can even choose from a list of past orders and repeat their purchases. This WhatsApp message type is great for retailers who sell products that need to be repurchased regularly such as printer toners, vitamins, or cosmetics. By offering a seamless conversational experience, customers are more likely to shop with your brand.

Allow customers to confirm orders with one tap. With call-to-action buttons, customers can complete their purchase while they converse with you. In one conversation they can view the product, add it to their cart and buy the product through HubSpot payments.

Give customers access to their loyalty status and the ability to use their loyalty points during a purchase. With an automated WhatsApp chatbot, customers can simply ask for the status of their points, and you can offer them the option to use those points during the checkout process.

You can even send personalized automated messages for discounts and promotions based on their loyalty status on SMS, and link to those products in your message.

Easily send receipts and warranties over WhatsApp. Use the channel that customers are familiar with and trust to make sure their documents are safely sent and seen. It makes for a user-friendly experience, eliminating the need to dig through mountains of emails in order to find receipts.

If you want to ensure customers receive important alerts such as order or payment confirmations, send them the details via SMS.

Continue the conversation once the order has been placed. 93% of customers say that they want to receive proactive updates from retailers about their shipments. Proactively send delivery updates via WhatsApp or SMS and let them know about status updates before they reach out to you.

Sometimes the wrong order is sent to a customer, and it can be a pain point that leads them to abandon your brand. You can avoid this by enabling your customer to send you an image of the item they received and ask for instructions on what to do next. This helps them resolve their issue faster and makes for a positive shopping experience.

Returns may be disappointing, but it can be an opportunity for eCommerce brands to enhance the customer experience further. Send your customers shipping labels over WhatsApp to make for a smooth return experience. Follow up with updates to make sure they know their return has been received and the reimbursement has been paid out. Don’t forget to set up SMS as a failover channel so they receive time-sensitive updates even when they aren’t online.

Keep the conversation open by re-engaging customers and sending recommendations on products they might like over WhatsApp. It’s a great way to upsell and ensure customers see your products without having to open your website or app.

Collecting customer feedback can go a long way in deciding how eCommerce brands approach their processes and tackle pain points. Use call-to-action buttons or list messages to create a seamless feedback experience on WhatsApp. Customers can rate their experience by choosing a ranking right in the chat – with no need to switch apps. You can also send a link to your online survey in an SMS message.

The Infobip WhatsApp & SMS app integrates your customer engagement activities in Hubspot with the Infobip SMS and WhatsApp channels. This integration gives you the ability to send SMS and WhatsApp messages to your customers directly from Hubspot.

Example of sending an SMS message via HubSpot and Infobip

Example of sending a WhatsApp message via HubSpot and Infobip

In Hubspot Sales, you can:

In Hubspot Automation, you can:

Learn more about how to use the integration