Effective WhatsApp Marketing Strategies for the Festive Season
Effective WhatsApp Marketing Strategies for the Festive Season
Don’t just play peek-a-boo with your customers this festive season—stay visible and build lasting connections!
It’s no secret anymore that businesses leveraging WhatsApp API for marketing, sales and customer engagement are more relevant than ever. With a staggering open rate of 98%, businesses are now well-versed in reaching out to their customers on WhatsApp. With each update, WhatsApp has ensured a better and more personalised business engagement to provide improved customer experience.
We are here to help you shine brighter than your competition and be your customers’ favourite brand with effective WhatsApp marketing during the festive season. In this blog, we will be sharing some out-of-the-box strategies that you can use while engaging with your customers and boosting sales by efficiently using WhatsApp API.
Must read: Master WhatsApp Business API in 2024
Ways to Grow Your WhatsApp Audience With Opt-ins (Before Festivals Begin)
Before we give you some excellent WhatsApp marketing tips for your holiday season, let us look at some of the ways to increase your audience. As WhatsApp API is GDPR compliant, every business needs to get customer opt-ins before sending them any notifications. Below are a few ways you can grow your audience:
1. Opt-in Ideas
Encourage users to join your WhatsApp list by offering exclusive content such as sneak peeks, early access to products, and behind-the-scenes updates. Run festive-themed contests or giveaways where customers must opt in to participate, providing an exciting incentive to subscribe.
2. Influencer Collaborations
Work with influencers who align with your brand and audience. Have them promote your WhatsApp list by offering their followers exclusive deals or sneak peeks, along with a simple opt-in link or QR code to join.
3. Social Media & Website Promotion
Maximise your social media and website presence by regularly promoting your WhatsApp Business channel. Highlight the benefits of joining, like exclusive updates or special offers. Add clickable opt-in links or WhatsApp buttons to thank-you pages and key website spots to make signing up easy.
4. Exclusive Discounts
Drive sign-ups by offering limited-time, WhatsApp-only discounts and promotions. Emphasise the exclusivity of these deals to make subscribers feel valued, and create a sense of urgency to boost engagement before the festival season kicks off.
5. Festival-Themed Landing Pages
Create landing pages that tie into the festive season, showcasing special offers, curated gift guides, or countdowns. Encourage users to opt in to your WhatsApp updates for real-time notifications about new deals, gift ideas, or festival contests, increasing excitement and engagement.
P.S. Customers joining your WhatsApp list should also be given an option to opt-out whenever they want to. You wouldn’t want to spam your customers and end up getting blocked or reported. This might further impact your brand’s credibility.
Benefits Of Using WhatsApp Marketing For Festive Seasons
Only 5% of brands, globally, are using WhatsApp for customer engagement. This is a perfect opportunity for businesses to beat the competition by providing the best possible customer experience. Businesses can enable a WhatsApp chatbot to be there for their customers 24/7, irrespective of the size and capacity of the business.
Let’s discuss some other major benefits of running WhatsApp festive campaigns:
1. Direct Customer Interaction
WhatsApp allows you to connect with your target audience personally, delivering messages straight into their private chat window, bypassing the noise of crowded email inboxes and junk folders.
2. Exceptional Engagement Rates
With a huge customer base and high open rates, WhatsApp notifications grab instant attention, ensuring your festive promotions don’t go unnoticed. With WhatsApp marketing, you can be rest assured that your messages are being delivered and are being read by your customers.
3. Rich Media Options
From captivating images and dynamic videos to detailed PDFs, WhatsApp supports a variety of formats, giving you the freedom to present your festive offers creatively. You can easily showcase your products in the most attractive ways and boost your sales on WhatsApp itself.
4. Immediate Customer Assistance
WhatsApp enables real-time communication, allowing you to resolve issues, answer questions, or simply interact with customers instantly, building trust and enhancing satisfaction.
5. Low-Cost, High ROI Marketing
Without the need for expensive advertising, WhatsApp campaigns provide a high return on investment, making it an affordable marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. By adopting WhatsApp marketing in the holiday season, businesses can send bulk messages at low costs and expect an increase in sales.
6. Multi-Purpose Tool
From festive offers and discounts to customer feedback and product launches, WhatsApp API for business is an all-in-one platform that adapts to different marketing objectives effortlessly.
7. Confidential Conversations
With end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp Business ensures secure, private communication, giving both businesses and customers peace of mind.
8. Broad Global Audience
WhatsApp’s massive user base, especially in regions like India, Middle East and South East Asia countires like UAE, South Africa and more, gives businesses the ability to reach a diverse audience, bridging geographical gaps with ease. The ease of implementing a multilingual chatbot on WhatsApp API also makes it a great choice for businesses running globally.
WhatsApp is more than just a messaging app; it’s an essential tool for running successful festive campaigns. With these benefits, you’re well-equipped to explore the next steps in optimising your marketing strategies!
Suggested read: Unlocking Growth: The Ultimate Guide to Implementing WhatsApp Chatbots for eCommerce
Top WhatsApp Marketing Strategies for the Festive Season
WhatsApp Marketing is certainly a creative yet strategic task. With new guidelines and changing customer preferences, you need to make sure that your marketing strategies are not outdated and yet uphold the guidelines. We are here to make your work easier by listing down a few most-practical WhatsApp marketing strategies for this festive season:
Before The Holiday Season
1. Create a Holiday Season Catalogue
Prepare early by launching a dedicated holiday season catalogue on WhatsApp. Showcase your products, special deals, and offers, making it easy for customers to browse and make their selections before the holiday rush begins. A clickable catalogue link in WhatsApp ensures customers can seamlessly access your offerings.
2. Run Click-to-WhatsApp Ads
Maximise your outreach by integrating click-to-WhatsApp ads into your holiday marketing campaigns. Combine these ads with other marketing channels like email, SMS, or social media, directing customers straight to your WhatsApp for personalised interactions and instant engagement with your festive deals.
3. Engage Customers with Polls and Quizzes
Spark engagement by running interactive polls and quizzes on WhatsApp API. These fun, interactive elements can help build buzz around your holiday products and offers. Quizzes can be linked to your WhatsApp Business profile, giving customers a way to participate and get instant results, driving further engagement leading to sales.
4. Tease Your Offers
Create a sense of excitement by sharing sneak peeks of your holiday collections with attractive carousels or deals via WhatsApp teasers. Keep your audience intrigued without revealing too much, creating anticipation that will have them coming back for more once the sale starts.
5. Offer Pre-orders
Allow your customers to secure products before the festival sale starts by offering pre-orders via WhatsApp Business API. Create a separate pre-order catalogue, giving early access and a pre-order incentive to high-demand items and ensuring your audience is ready to buy as soon as the sale kicks off.
During The Holiday Season
1. Launch Real-time Campaigns
Stay on top of customer behavior during the festive season with real-time WhatsApp marketing campaigns. Track activities like abandoned carts and send immediate follow-up messages to nudge customers toward completing their purchases, increasing your chances of conversions. Send regular updates about the products of their choice to keep the FOMO alive.
2. Announce Live Deals
Run live holiday deals and make sure to keep reminding your customers about them via your WhatsApp business. Repeated exposure to special offers creates urgency and encourages customers to take action, especially when deals are time-sensitive.
3. Create Urgency-Driven Campaigns
Capitalise on the festive shopping frenzy by creating WhatsApp festive campaigns that build a sense of urgency. Inform customers when products are running low or when popular items are being viewed by others. This can drive quicker decision-making and boost sales.
4. Personalise Festive Messages
Even with mass campaigns, personalisation remains key. Segment your audience based on factors like previous purchases, demographics, or engagement levels, and tailor your WhatsApp messages to resonate with each segment. Personalised messages can increase engagement and make customers feel valued.
5. Send Cart Abandonment Reminders
Many customers will be shopping on multiple sites, adding items to carts but not completing purchases. Use WhatsApp API to send gentle cart abandonment reminders, and sweeten the deal with personalised incentives, such as additional discounts or limited-time offers.
After The Holiday Season
1. Gather Feedback and Reviews
Post-holiday is a perfect time to collect valuable feedback from customers. Send out WhatsApp notifications asking for reviews and feedback while the shopping experience is still fresh in their minds. This not only helps improve your services but also shows customers you value their input.
2. Extend the Sale
Keep the excitement going by running a sale extension campaign on WhatsApp. Some customers may have missed the initial sale, so offering a short extension with added discounts can help clear leftover stock and satisfy late shoppers.
3. Retarget Customers
Target those who browsed but didn’t buy with WhatsApp retargeting campaigns. You can also run cross-selling campaigns to upsell products to recent buyers. This ensures continued engagement with your audience and drives additional revenue after the festive rush.
4. Refresh Your Inventory
Once the sale ends, refresh your inventory and promote new products or collections via WhatsApp Business API. Inform customers of new arrivals, especially seasonal items, and encourage them to return and check out your latest offerings.
5. Run Cross-channel Campaigns
As you gain new WhatsApp contacts during the holiday season, it’s important to integrate these new leads into your wider marketing ecosystem. Use WhatsApp to invite customers to follow your brand on other channels like social media, SMS, or email for ongoing engagement.
Suggested read: WhatsApp Business Features You Should Try to Improve CX
Measuring the Success of Your WhatsApp Festive Campaign
Tracking the metrics is as important as running a marketing campaign. A marketing campaign is only as successful as your customers perceive it to be. We are listing down a few important metrics that you should keep in mind when running your WhatsApp festive campaign:
- Engagement Metrics: For marketing campaigns, A/B tests work wonders. Use different creatives, offers, coupon codes or content to check which of your campaigns are getting maximum engagement from customers. If your customers like an image of your product being used or simply showcased highlighting the features.
- Conversion Rate: No two campaigns are the same, neither do they convert customers equally. Keep a keen eye on what is working the best for your brand and improvise. Even the timings of WhatsApp notifications bring out a difference in the conversion rates.
- Customer opt-outs: To understand which of your marketing campaigns is not at all working, check the number of people opting out from receiving messages and notifications from your business. This is really helpful in segregating the content that works and that does not.
Let us Join in Your Festivities and Sell-ebrate Together
The upcoming festivals such as Dhanteras, Diwali for India, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Christmas are the best – professionally as well as personally. For most businesses, it is the time of the year when customer engagement and sales are maximum. Getting the most out of your festive campaigns is not so difficult as customers are willing to pay.
Verloop.io is one of the renowned BSP (Business Solution Provider) with META. We help businesses completely understand the functionality of WhatsApp Business API and use it to its full potential. If you’re looking to set foot in your industry and beat the competition, reach out to us. Our team will get in touch with you to help you set up the WhatsApp API for your business.
Happy Holidays!
FAQs
1. How effective is WhatsApp marketing during the festive season?
WhatsApp marketing has proved to be very successful during the festive season. With a huge customer base and high open rates, WhatsApp campaigns have helped businesses boost their sales upto 10x.
2. What types of businesses can benefit from WhatsApp marketing during festivals?
Typically, B2C and D2C brands see a higher success rate from WhatsApp Marketing. When it comes to B2B sales, the process is quite tedious and time consuming, and WhatsApp should be used along with other marketing channels.
3. How does Verloop.io’s Free DEMO benefit businesses unfamiliar with the platform?
The Free DEMO offers a visual experience, enabling businesses to familiarise themselves with the platform’s features and benefits. This can be instrumental in decision-making, helping businesses gauge the potential impact of integrating Verloop.io into their WhatsApp marketing strategy for the festive season.
