This guide digs into how the best marketers integrate WhatsApp with their email marketing efforts to supercharge their funnels and elevate customer engagement.
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Marketing professionals: if you want to delight and grow your audience, it’s time to align your email and WhatsApp efforts.
Single-channel marketing strategies are severely limited. They often take the shape of a one-way conversation between a brand and its prospects. But today’s consumers seek personal, conversational channels of communication that don’t feel like marketing.
Modern technology has caused the lines to blur between our personal and professional lives. ǞǞǞ customer journey is no longer linear or 100% predictable. Numerous social platforms and digital experiences have created a network of consumer touchpoints that are forcing brands to adapt or fail.
A multi-channel approach to generating consistent awareness and conversion is now a table-stakes initiative. And while marketers have a lot of different tools at their disposal, this guide is about two proven options that can yield fruitful results.
Integrating email and WhatsApp will not only help you elevate consumer interest, but you’ll generate more trust, awareness, engagement, and best of all—ROI.
电子邮件和WhatsApp marketing
If effective marketing is all about reaching your customers where they are, then there’s no digital real estate more valuable than consumer inboxes and text threads.
数十亿人仍在发送电子邮件
每年，各种思想领袖和出版物都会宣布email marketing 已死。但从数据来看，这与事实相去甚远。
42.5 亿人口—more than half of the planet’s population—used email daily in 2022. That figure is expected to top 4.7 billion active daily users by 2026, translating into more than 392 billion daily 电子邮件 sent. 电子邮件 is far from dead.
It’s not just about volume. 投资回报率email marketing is also predicted to rise steadily for the foreseeable future. In 2020, global email marketing efforts were worth a collective $7.5 billion. In 2027, due to an expected compound annual growth of 13.3%, its valuation is estimated to hit nearly $18 billion.
WhatsApp 已成为一种全球通信现象
After 全球用户突破 20 亿大关 in 2020, WhatsApp has continued to sustain an unpredictable explosion of growth. Its parent company, Meta, has quickly turned it into a premier marketing channel with WhatsApp业务. ǞǞǞ app has rapidly shifted from a purely conversational platform to an enterprise-level growth channel, and consumers are embracing it with open arms.
超过 12.6 亿用户 interacted via WhatsApp Business accounts
预计收入超过 3.3 亿美元 was generated by WhatsApp Business
电子邮件和 WhatsApp 的发展给人留下了深刻印象，而将二者整合到您的营销策略中所释放出的客户参与可能性则更加令人印象深刻。在启动这一过程之前，您需要了解两者各自的独特优势和局限性。
单通道的优势和局限性
Email has remained a constant channel in the business world for the better part of three decades. One of the main reasons is due to its versatility. Marketers have the freedom to craft detailed messages, including images, links, and attachments, using an easily adaptable structure.
Other Go-to-Market teams, such as product marketing, customer success, and sales take full advantage of email’s reach and familiarity. Newsletters, promotions, discounts, and product updates are commonplace pieces of content.
Even in the midst of newer trends like ChatGPT and TikTok, email continues to stay ingrained in our daily lives. As 第三方cookies evaporate, email remains one of the best ways for businesses to convert and retain, and curated email lists still represent a priceless trove of data.
2022 年调查 of 254 retailers sheds some light. 51% of respondents said social media drives customer acquisition, but 81% say that email marketing drives acquisition.
However, 电子邮件 can get lost in crowded inboxes or get flagged as spam, reducing effectiveness. Email does skew more professional than personal, but folks still demand personalized subject lines, images, and messaging. If one of these elements feels too generic or misplaced, your email will likely remain unopened.
WhatsApp offers a direct, more conversational approach to customer communication. It’s centered around real-time interactions and encourages a sense of personal connection with individual consumers. WhatsApp messages boast 惊人的 98% 打开率, a benchmark that puts it in a league of its own compared to other communication channels.
These one-on-one conversations often lead to better customer assistance and quicker answers to questions, which is critical. 77% 的消费者 expect a response within the first 24 hours.
WhatsApp also offers better multimedia sharing capabilities than email for formats like GIFs, video, and voice messages. As a result, marketers can lean into a more creative and authentic-sounding communication style, which enhances the overall customer experience (CX).
Despite its overwhelming popularity, WhatsApp holds 高标准 over the heads of Business Accounts. The platform’s administrators go through great lengths to keep in-platform conversations personal and high-quality. As a result, businesses that rely solely on WhatsApp may face challenges breaking through to their audience, especially as they learn the platform’s requirements.
统一管理电子邮件和 WhatsApp
To extract the most value out of each channel, you’ll need to create an integrated ecosystem that unifies all your tasks, data, and automations in one place. Each marketing channel provides your team with an opportunity to collect valuable data about your prospects and customers. Their preferences, behaviors, and decisions all serve as indicators that help you design personalized experiences.
When the data for each of these channels is managed separately, it becomes difficult to gain a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not.
An omni-channel marketing platform like Bird gives you seamless integration with all of your most important data warehouses such as your CRM, e-commerce platform, and existing customer service tools. There’s no need for technical expertise or manual coding. Instead, everything happens seamlessly in one interface. This way, you spend less time troubleshooting and more time generating high-impact content.
Bird offers robust features for email marketing:
Sign-up forms to capture opt-ins and grow your list
创建自定义电子邮件模板
为订阅者设置自动journeys
根据以往行为向细分列表发送超定向电子邮件
开发多步骤campaigns ，旨在推动买家通过漏斗
With our WhatsApp integration you can:
以上所有，但也可使用 WhatsApp
将 WhatsApp 和电子邮件结合在一次营销活动中
与客户进行实时互动
根据买家活动创建自动回复
使用chatbots 提供个性化协助和支持
整合电子邮件和WhatsApp marketing
通过在不同设备上随时随地接触消费者，营销经理和战略家们可以扩大他们的覆盖范围并丰富他们的内容。让我们来介绍一下在设计营销策略时应牢记的几个要点，以便最大限度地利用电子邮件和 WhatsApp。
1.在每个渠道提供顶级个性化服务
Conversational marketing means creating 1:1 engagement with each customer. The challenge is to send the right message 到 right person 在 right time. With a multi-channel marketing platform, you have more tactics at your disposal to craft meaningful content across the entire customer journey.
受众细分： You can increase personalization by targeting a specific group of customers based on their preferences, behaviors, and purchase history. These pieces of data help you design content with precision. For example, you can create an email campaign that engages first-time buyers only, customers with filled carts, or checkouts with +X% value than the average value of checkouts.
丰富多样的内容变化： Customers expect more than simple text ads and emails. Regular WhatsApp users particularly look for interactive content experiences filled with videos, images, buttons, and audio. Boring, uninspired emails won’t get read either. High-performing emails have compelling layouts, personalized salutations, and mobile compatibility.
独一无二的优惠： Even if your content has the right message, it still needs a personalized offer to keep the conversation alive. Depending on your audience’s preferences, you can send bundle deals, one-time discounts, or product recommendations based on previous purchases.
2.适时发送信息
Often, when you deliver messages to your clients or prospects, timing matters just as much (if not more) than the content you’re transmitting.
Timing plays a crucial role in integrated marketing strategies that leverage multiple channels such as email and WhatsApp. Keep in mind the time of day, days of the week, and holidays to optimize performance. For example, emails sent between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. tend to receive the highest engagement from recipients.
Using email and WhatsApp together presents a variety of timing options, especially for integrated campaigns. After sending an email blast about a discount sale, you can bake in a targeted WhatsApp notification targeting users with items currently in their cart.
研究表明 that consumers typically respond to WhatsApp messages in less than a minute, far quicker than your typical email engagement timeframe. As a result, sending WhatsApp notifications a few hours after a campaign email is highly effective.
Over time, you can start developing insights with user data gained from email and WhatsApp. Listen to your target audience and their communication preferences, conduct A/B testing, and don’t be afraid of marketing’s oldest friend, trial and error.
3.保持内容和信息的一致性
品牌一致性是高绩效整合营销campaigns 的标志。世界上最知名的品牌，从苹果到耐克再到亚马逊，都是以无可争议的品牌方式在channels 上亮相的高手。一致性越好，消费者的信任度和熟悉度就越高，从而提高了受众参与度和转化率。
保持一致的品牌准则： Logos, images, colors, and messaging make up the core of your brand. When multiple teams start creating content across various channels, things can get out of hand. Instead of drafting a list of guidelines for creators, use a platform like MessageBird to build guidelines directly into the process. Our email and WhatsApp templates offer beautiful customization parameters that keep all your teams consistent.
集中营销要素： Without a designated home for your team’s marketing assets, it’s difficult to maintain consistency. Out-of-date versions of logos, color palettes, and fonts can easily leak into your content and confuse your customers. MessageBird provides easy-to-use asset management across all your channels. That means better efficiency, collaboration, and content quality.
重新利用内容： Once you find a theme or conversation that your audience loves, you can double down by repurposing specific content formats and variations. Break webinars up into mini clips and blast them via WhatsApp or turn popular eBooks into a weekly email campaign. With an omni-channel platform like MessageBird, you can create, distribute, and repurpose content across channels all in one place.
跟踪电子邮件和 WhatsApp 的最佳 KPIcampaigns
With more marketing channels comes a greater intake of data. It can become challenging to understand which KPIs to measure, especially with a combined channel approach. If you’re new to multi-channel marketing, start with these essential metrics for each channel.
电子邮件：打开率、点击率和转换率
跟踪电子邮件关键绩效指标的目的是发现能与您的品牌产生共鸣的偏好和信息主题。要衡量email marketing campaigns 的成功与否，有三个关键指标：
开放率 indicate the percentage of recipients who open a message. A high open rate suggests the subject line’s initial hook resonated with the audience enough for them to stop scrolling and read.
点击率（CTR） take it a step further, measuring the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link, button, or other CTA. They were intrigued by the offer and wanted to know more.
转换率 measure the percentage of recipients who ultimately completed the campaign’s desired action. Depending on the funnel stage of the customer or prospect, this can mean they filled out a form, signed up for a newsletter, or made a purchase on your website.
WhatsApp：跟踪消息和对话
On its own, The WhatsApp Business Account Platform gives you an inside look at basic measurements and data points. The primary metrics you can follow in the WhatsApp 平台 include:
收到的信息 The number of WhatsApp messages your company successfully receives from users.
发送信息： The number of WhatsApp messages your organization has sent to users. This includes messages en route, not effectively delivered.
传递信息： The number of WhatsApp messages your organization sends that have been definitively delivered.
对话总数 Conversations are messages sent during a specific window after an initial message was already sent. Conversation windows are usually 24 or 72 hours.
MessageBird 中的跨渠道测量
While email and WhatsApp metrics are insightful on their own, understanding big-picture performance gives you the ability to make better decisions across the entire customer experience. MessageBird’s platform lets you track and measure KPIs with two primary reporting views: Channel Performance and Campaign Performance.
渠道性能： This report aggregates data across channels such as WhatsApp, email, and SMS. This report is perfect for comparing and analyzing the individual channel metrics listed above. You can easily navigate between each channel and measure performance over time by breaking down reports on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
活动绩效： Measuring KPIs 在 campaign level offers a holistic view of how your key messaging is performing across all your channels. Track reach, recipients, delivery rate, open rate, clicks and more to uncover your top-performing campaigns. With all your data in one dashboard, you can compare the performance of each channel within one campaign.
Managing email and WhatsApp in one platform gives you the ability to conduct A/B testing. This helps you determine which messages, content, and offers are best suited to any given channel. Select your channels, determine which metrics you want to measure, segment your audience, and then launch your campaign. Everything should stay the same except the channel so you can uncover the differences in results.
电子邮件与 WhatsApp 相得益彰
With the majority of adults owning and 在移动设备上花费大量时间, it's crucial to meet consumers where they are and how they want to be meant.
利用这两个channels 的优势，您可以创建一个全面的营销传播战略，同时满足不同客户的偏好。在此过程中，您还可能节省时间和金钱。
To successfully integrate email and WhatsApp, it’s imperative to synchronize your customer data, obtain proper consent for data processing and usage, and prepare content for both channels.
Thankfully, there’s Bird. We’d love to take those challenges off of your plate so you can personalize every touchpoint with your customers across email and WhatsApp. 立即联系我们 if you’re interested in learning more.