Groups and Broadcasts, uses and limitations
WhatsApp Groups
Groups are best suited for creating and nurturing communities. Some people make a group and then add lots of people into it and then they think that they will send a message to them daily.
Over and above this, they make these groups admin-only. So no one can post anything, only admins can post.
What happens next? Many of the people who have been added to the group, leave immediately. Complete waste of time and reputation.
Just think for a moment, Is it going to give results? No. In fact, this ruins the reputation of the one who created a group.
How can we use WhatsApp Groups for growing Business?
Groups can give excellent results if done correctly. Building a community of our customers can get us a lot of customer confidence, and of course lots of references.
Best tips for managing business groups.
- Create a group with a very clear purpose.
- Write an accurate description so that everybody knows what the group is about.
- Before adding people to that group, have a word with them, explain the purpose of the group and then add them.
- Make sure the group members have explained the rules and they follow the group rules.
- Share the message that is useful for the audience, not just your promotion material.
Why do we create WhatsApp Groups for our Partners and Customers?
- Putting customers in one group can look risky, but it is highly effective if done correctly.
- This gives lots of confidence to our existing customers.
- Also, when we tell this to our prospective customers, their confidence in our product and team increases significantly.
- Plus, we get lots of inputs and ideas from our customer groups.
WhatsApp Broadcast
Broadcast is typically useful when your recipients follow up and they want to hear from you. It feels that the Broadcast feature is designed more for the leaders and artists.
Before we understand the features of WhatsApp Broadcast, let us understand the limitations of the same.
- Only those people who have saved your contact in their phone will receive your broadcast message.
- You can only put 256 people in a broadcast list. However, you can make as many broadcast lists as you want.
Use cases and tips for the Broadcast list:
- Do not add people who don’t know you, to your broadcast list.
- Before adding people to the broadcast list, make sure that they get a chance to know you and also save your contact file.
- One of the uses can be sending Product Updates to your customers or dealers/partners.
- Sending regular price-list for your trader community, Only if they would like it.
- Social Broadcast list: A friend sends melodious songs every night, with lots of interesting trivia, and people love it.
- PRO-TIP: Create multiple broadcast lists by selecting contacts in alphabetical order. This way it becomes much easier to create and manage lists.
Broadcast Lists for announcements and not marketing
Leaders make announcements, not the marketers unless you are a market leader.
Suppose you create a broadcast list of 50 people and then send them the first broadcast message on 1st October.
Now, on 15th October, you are sending the Second message to all those people.
However, during these 15 days, you also added another 12 people. The problem is that these 12 people will not receive the first message. They will receive the second message only.
The broadcast list is ok for announcements and news, but not Ok for campaign-based marketing.
WhatsApp Groups are for community building and discussions. WhatsApp Broadcast lists are great for sharing news or announcements. Both of these are not ideal for marketing purposes.
WhatsApp Campaign is better than Bulk WhatsApp.
What we need for an effective marketing campaign is not bulk whatsapp, but a proper mechanism to categorise our contacts and then be able to send Multiple related messages as a campaign.
Also, we need to take maximum advantage of our own address book. Because those are the people who already know us.
Furthermore, it is great if the tool allows us to create campaigns using not only WhatsApp, but also SMS, Emails and Scheduled Calls.
WhatsApp Campaign usage scenarios
- Generating More Leads
- Your address book can be the biggest source of leads for your business. Use multiple campaigns to send for multiple products.
- Create a prospecting campaign and then add relevant contacts from your mobile address book to that campaign.
- Customer Onboarding
- Send Product usage instructions, tips and tricks in a non-intrusive way to your customers. Increase adoption easily and effectively.
- When the sale (or installation) is complete, then immediately add them to a campaign to send a series of messages, which help them use the product or service.
- Sales Lead Management
- When you get a lead, just save the contact and add it to the relevant campaign. Lead nurturing at its best.
- When you receive a call or an enquiry, add them to the campaign with a single swipe action.
- Renewals / Subscriptions
- Keep in touch with your customers for AMC, Renewals, Subscriptions or any recurring business. Increase Customer Stickiness.
- Create a campaign spread over the duration of the contract, to keep in touch, ask for the feedback and also educate the customer.
- Support and Feedback.
- When someone sends you a complaint, assign a tag to them and add it to the campaign. Send a feedback link once resolved.
- Create small campaigns which explain the solution to common problems and FAQ. When you receive any complaint for support, just add them to these small campaigns.
- Cross-Selling Upselling
- Sell more to your existing customers, by informing them about your other offerings via email, SMS, and WhatsApp.
- Enjay also provides a free cross selling tool. Use that tool to identify the cross selling and upselling prospects and then add them to the campaign created specifically for upselling.
- Dealers Relationships
- Improve your Distribution Business with continuous and effective communication with your Dealer Network.
- When a new dealer joins, add them to the onboarding and welcome campaign. Create monthly campaigns for the regular dealers.
- Scheduled Messages
- Send custom scheduled messages for a future date, to single or multiple contacts. A great way to remind someone.
- When you receive a call or SMS, just swipe the entry to create a scheduled call or message back.
- Events and Exhibitions
- When someone comes to your stall, just scan the card, add to the address book, Add a Tag and select Campaign. Never miss the lead.
- Create campaign(s) to be sent to the visitors before the event starts.
- When a visitor visits a stall and shows the interest in your offering, just add them to the relevant campaign.
- Great way to connect with them, immediately after they leave your stall.
- Employee Onboarding
- Make your new employees aware of your organisation in a slow but steady way, with scheduled messages and useful resources.
- Birthdays and Anniversaries
- Greet your professional contacts with warm greetings using email, SMS, WhatsApp or even calls. Never miss any date.
- Families, Friends and Relatives
- Often we miss to keep in touch with our friends, because we don’t meet them on a regular basis. Use the Sampark Setu Campaign to stay in touch.
- Create a campaign with simple wishes, something good to share, some jokes, some useful material, requests to meet etc.
What is Sampark Setu
Sampark Setu, is an android mobile app. A big marketing app for small business owners. List of Major features of Sampark Setu App.
- Contact organiser (with labels and tags)
- Messaging templates for WhatsApp, email, and SMS.
- Create Multi channel campaigns
- Send scheduled SMS, Email and WhatsApp.
- It does not send WhatsApp messages on its own, it just creates and manages the campaign and facilitates and schedules the messages for you to send.
One last thing
Practical tips on creating & Sending WhatsApp Messages
- What to send
- Don’t send pricing, unless your customers are asking for it.
- Send information that will be useful for them.
- Occasionally, take feedback from them, whether they like your messages or not.
- Sharing use cases and success stories about your solution can be useful.
- When creating a prospecting or relationship building campaign create a healthy mixture of useful things and promotion.
- Don’t overdose the promotional messages.
- Write messages which people would like to respond to.
- When to send
- Do not send messages too frequently.
- Keep at least 10-15 days gap between two messages.