In June GMS and Rakuten Viber held a joint webinar on mobile marketing trends and service updates from both companies.
The event was hosted by GMS’ Chief Business Development Officer, Yurii Pryima, and Head of Enterprise Relations Division, Artem Doroshenko, together with Rakuten Viber’s Sales Executive, Artem Vagin.
It was a great opportunity for our clients from the Banking, Retail, Insurance and B2G industries to get together and discuss the latest mobile marketing trends and the influence of personalisation. The webinar also looked at the most recent client success stories and upcoming Viber Business Messaging updates.*
Here are some insights and highlights from the GMS Rakuten Viber webinar that impressed the audience the most and are likely to affect the adoption of business messaging in the Ukrainian market in 2021.
Mobile marketing trends
1. Hyper-personalised communications
The basic audience segmentation just does not cut it any longer. To stay relevant, it is essential to go much deeper into customer data and make your offers a lot more personal. Tailoring your offering and communications to individuals’ preferences improves the brand’s image as a caring partner since it spares your client’s time and helps them find what they really need. Additionally, you will reap improved sales and exposure, and greater customer retention. All this can be achieved via…
2. The rise of CPaaS
CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) is the messaging ecosystem that goes beyond the usual communication platform. CPaaS includes the platform itself, channels, a set of tools and technical documentation (SDKs or individual libraries, APIs and IDEs), reporting tools and much more.
CPaaS allows brands to integrate their software and systems with communication channels such as SMS and Viber, without developing in-house solutions.
3. Mobile commerce gains traction
Since the beginning of the pandemic, consumers have had more than enough time to realise the benefits of mobile commerce. The way it liberates and keeps people safe means that people are far less likely to go back to traditional brick-and-mortar shops, and this trend promises to stay.
The struggle for safety has also resulted in mobile payments rising 30% worldwide. To enable quick and secure payments for its audience, Viber has launched in-app payments that can be performed with the user’s Apple Pay or Google Pay wallets.
4. Video still rules
The steady rise of video as one of the most engaging content channels was only amplified with the isolation that all of us had to endure. Videos constituted 64% of mobile data traffic in 2020. Considering this fascination, promotional videos, tutorials and even the ability to contact the brand representatives via video calls is what consumers are looking for.
5. Engaging in a two-way communication
The ability to have a meaningful conversation with the brand representative means the world for consumers. A dialogue in a messaging app is the next best thing to face-to-face communication, as it is psychologically comforting for the user. Conversation with a brand through a messenger is less formal than via email (users chat with brands like with friends), this brings a user and a brand closer, provides faster responses and increases a level of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. And once more, providing valuable advice via a messaging app enhances customer support capability, helps to show customers that you care, cementing a positive brand image.
Viber’s data also confirms the trend: due to the pandemic, in 2020 more brands started building conversations with their customers rather than just sending 1-way messages. Businesses see the value of building discussions between brands and customers. In order to help businesses to serve their customers even better, Viber supports conversational messages with several sub-features, such as file sharing, message reply gestures, the option for users to send pictures and videos to brands, etc.
Latest feature updates
Last but not least came the Viber feature updates designed to support a smooth user experience while interacting with brands via Viber:
- Pin-to-top: in order not to miss key information included in a message, users can pin a selected message inside a business conversation, or pin the whole thread at the top of their chats list (flight details, tickets, delivery status, etc);
- File Sharing: an option for users and businesses to share different file types (warranties, invoices, confirmations, tickets, etc.);
- Photo & Video Sharing: an option for users to send pictures and videos to brands (ID card certification, post-sales support, screenshots, etc);
- Message reply gesture: possibility for users to reply to a specific message inside a business conversation, allowing users and brands to better maintain and follow the conversation.
The latter two options are expected to bring the quality of support and customer satisfaction to a new level by quickly solving the ongoing issues via meaningful conversations.
If you are willing to learn more about Viber and bring your customer communication to the next level, please do not hesitate to reach out to our GMS experts today!
*Please follow our updates for more details on the deployment dates.