Six successful conversational marketing examples
How brands interact online with their customers is constantly evolving. Users now expect more personal, tailored experiences. Unfortunately, digital channels can make this level of personalization hard to provide. With conversational marketing techniques, such as live chats, chatbots, and social monitoring, it’s possible to promote authentic conversations and build real relationships. This can also be used to enhance the user’s experience while minimizing friction.
The time has come for brands to listen actively while their customers do the talking—and that’s the essence of conversational marketing.
So, what is conversational marketing?
Unlike traditional marketing, conversational marketing can enable brands to have authentic, meaningful, conversations with their audiences one-on-one. This can also be done across multiple channels of communication.
Conversational marketing can be effective because it builds and develops relationships with customers through the experience of a conversation. Additionally, it’s been proven to be a successful way to drive user engagement. It may also help when you want to expand your customer base and develop customer loyalty.
Some benefits of this approach may include:
- 24/7 availability: AI-powered bots can answer customers’ questions in real-time, whether it be 7 AM or midnight. This is something your customers may appreciate since it shows you are putting their needs first. By providing an AI-powered service, you can deliver high-quality service beyond regular working hours.
- Getting to know your audience: These AI-powered conversations can be a gold mine for brands because they may help you understand your audience better. In terms of marketing value, brands can start using a customer’s language and verbiage in their messaging.
- Giving your brand a more human element: When combining live chat options, AI-powered bots, and social media, your outreach can become much more natural.
1. A leading entertainment streaming brand targeted AI-powered ad experience with IBM Watson Advertising Conversations
IBM Watson Advertising and a leading entertainment streaming brand collaborated to build a more authentic ad experience with IBM Watson Advertising Conversations (Conversations). The streaming brand’s goals were to build awareness for its brand, promote the launch of its new live TV service, educate its users on additional services and differentiate its brand from others as the preferred streaming service.
By providing users with an in-scope response to their query 99% of the time, the streaming brand saw the following results across its campaign:
- 44,000,000 impressions served in total
- 18,000 active user sessions
- 3,500 conversations
- 14,000 total button clicks with 3,000 clicks to its web site
- 3.7 times more time spent in the unit versus Google Rich Media interaction rate benchmark
2. Best Western improves visits with Conversations
Best Western came to IBM Watson Advertising to reach and engage its consumers in active travel planning mode. The campaign had to be done around peak holiday weekends, which are some of the busiest travel periods of the year. The AI-powered Conversations solution was the ideal way for Best Western to personalize travel recommendations and help its consumers take the pain out of the travel planning process.
Conversations acted as a mini focus group by providing real-time audience and customer insights. From this campaign, Best Western learned that its consumers were most interested in tips that were related to membership perks, discounts and in-room amenities. Best Western can now use these findings to improve its ongoing product and marketing strategy.
Best Western saw the following results in its campaign:
- 2.2 times more time spent with Conversations versus Google Rich Media interaction time benchmark
- 42 seconds average time spent within the Conversations unit per session
- 48.6% incremental lift in visits to Best Western locations versus those who had already planned to visit Best Western hotel properties
3. Lufthansa drives meaningful conversations to leverage personalization
Lufthansa wanted to use personalization in the travel planning experience by reaching and engaging everyday travelers and adventure seekers. The core goal of these conversations was for consumers to explore the world of possibilities, while also discovering their travel desires again.
These conversational marketing experiences brought forth messaging to inspire users and provided travel facts related to some of the featured international cities. This helped to uncover some valuable insights, such as:
- “What language makes the world sound beautiful?” was the top-performing first frame
- Users chose French as the most beautiful language
- Frankfurt and Paris were top destinations that users wanted to explore
By using Conversations, Lufthansa achieved the following results:
- 8% conversation rate driven by the mobile integrated marquee
- 41 seconds average time spent
- Total of four user-driven interactions per session
4. Behr reached consumers through personalized recommendations
More people have recently turned to do-it-yourself projects. When choosing a project, consumers can become overwhelmed when they have too many choices. For example, many people struggle with choosing paint colors. For this reason, many consumers become hesitant to start their painting projects.
With extensive product training from Behr Paint, FAQs, as well as additional brand content, AI-powered Conversations from IBM Watson allowed Behr to enable real-time, one-on-one dialogue with its customers. This conversational marketing approach allowed Behr to deliver unique paint color recommendations for each user.
Conversations uses Watson’s machine learning to scale personalized connections with consumers. Through this solution, Behr learned its consumers are most interested in painting their living room with relaxing, comfortable, warm and friendly color moods. Behr can now use its findings to improve ongoing product and marketing strategies. In addition, Behr was able to achieve the following:
- Over 10,000 one-on-one conversations between Behr and consumers, helping each user find their personalized paint color recommendation
- 3.4 times more time spent versus Google Rich Media interaction time benchmark
- 108% increase in engagement rate versus IBM Watson Advertising Conversations benchmark
5. CPG food brand generated unique recipes based on consumers’ personal tastes
A leading CPG food brand came to IBM Watson Advertising to better understand its consumers’ mindsets. The company wanted to use IBM Watson in one-on-one Conversations with its consumers so it could provide the right goods to the right person at the right time.
The IBM Watson Advertising Conversations solution allows consumers to interact with ad experiences by letting them ask questions through voice or text. Consumers then receive highly personalized information in response. For this CPG food brand, it analyzed thousands of recipes to understand how ingredients can be used in different dishes, commonly paired ingredients, and varying cooking styles. Watson then combined the knowledge with machine learning to generate unique recipes based on consumers’ personal tastes. The company was able to increase engagement, which led to the following results:
- 10,000 active user sessions (one-on-one engagements with consumers)
- 1.9 times increase in desktop ingredient submissions rate throughout the campaign
- 50% of all recipe shares driven by email
- 27% mobile app video completion rate (VCR)
6. Toyota Prius Prime uses AI conversations to interact with consumers
Toyota collaborated with IBM Watson Advertising to engage auto-intenders in today’s more environmentally focused world. Since the Prius Prime car is more technologically advanced than the average car, the IBM Watson Advertising Conversations solution provided a customized way to engage and educate this tech-savvy audience.
With real-time Conversations with clients and prospects, Toyota enabled a new way for users to engage with the brand, leading to the following results:
- 37% increased engagement with audience-based location targeting versus other audience-based campaign targeting used
- 6,000 total user conversations
- 3 times Google Rich Media interaction time benchmark
- 3 interactions per session for Big Web
How Watson Advertising is using conversational marketing to improve brand engagement
It may seem difficult to incorporate conversational marketing into your strategy, but with innovations in AI, businesses can provide many authentic conversations that might not have previously been possible.
Learn more about how conversational marketing can improve interactions with IBM Watson Advertising Conversations by contacting our team today.
The performance data discussed herein is presented as derived under specific operating conditions. Actual results may vary.
All client examples cited or described are presented as illustrations of the manner in which some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual client configurations and conditions. Contact IBM to see what we can do for you.