Before it could send WhatsApp marketing campaigns in Italy, Bears with Benefits needed one crucial thing: an audience.
To build a WhatsApp subscriber base it used 2 charles "Chat-ins" (website widgets that lead customers into a business's WhatsApp channel).
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Website chat bubble bringing 1,000s of visitors into WhatsApp
The website “Chat-in” is a permanent bubble on the Bears with Benefits site that can take any shape or image, and be animated (you can see ours, in the form of "Typie," at the bottom right of this page 👉👇). This offered customers a 30% off discount code when they joined the WhatsApp channel.
Bears with Benefits also ran an iPhone raffle through this Chat-in to boost WhatsApp opt-ins.
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This opt-in flow segments customers and suggests products
To get to know customers while they opted in, Bears with Benefits set up an automated conversational flow with charles Journeys that was triggered when someone entered the WhatsApp chat.
This asked questions about their preferences, with buttons (automatically adding tags to customer profiles for future campaigns), then led them to the perfect product – leading to more sales.
The thank you page “Chat-in” is a box on the thank you page shown after someone's made a purchase. It offered 30% off for joining the WhatsApp channel.
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The thank you page opt-in, bringing people into WhatsApp at a time when they're happy after making a purchase
Customers joining the WhatsApp channel on the thank you page also went into a conversational WhatsApp flow. This time, they received an order confirmation and questions to get to know them.
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This WhatsApp flow confirms the order and asks questions to learn customer preferences
In just 3 months, Bears with Benefits gathered 20,000 people into its Italian WhatsApp channel. Annika says, "This is a high number of opt-ins considering it was a very efficient opt-in strategy – just 2 website opt-ins, with no complementary email or social media campaigns. It was also a small test, to see how if we could build significant opt-in numbers in a streamlined way."
Now, with an established subscriber base, identifiable by tags and custom properties, Bears with Benefits was ready to send targeted WhatsApp marketing campaigns. It knew it would further boost opt-ins when the prelaunch campaign went live – through a "pre-access" Chat-in.