Mediaboss Marketing

The following is the second article in a three-part series from IBM. Click here to read part 1.

Step 2: Integrate.

The lessons learned from our early days of social media marketing couldn't be more relevant: treat chat and messaging as you would any strategic channel for engaging with your customers. That integration can mean many things, of course, but it should start with two integrations in particular:

Journey integration: More than ever, customers demand consistent brand experiences that are personalized to their specific needs. That means taking their specific channels (and their behaviors on those channels) into consideration when designing great customer experiences for them.

Data integration: However, journey integration isn't enough. You have to connect chat to your social interaction data strategy: collecting, cleansing, and analyzing, ideally in real- or near-real-time, in order to continuously learn and improve. A siloed channel will only interfere with creating coherent omni-channel customer experiences.

Furthermore, youd want to integrate the chat content with everything else you know about the customer, and their micro segment: their preferences, behavior, and what triggers spur them into the right action. That will allow you to personalize and optimize the chat to better support your customer objectives.

A great example of both is what 1-800-Flowers is doing to integrate a Facebook Messenger chatbot experience with your order management process. You can see the chatbot in more detail below:

For both journey and data integration, your marketing stack matters. Look for campaign automation and other marketing technology that make social engagement -- including chat and messaging -- an easy addition to your multi-touch, multi-channel marketing efforts. Download this whitepaper to learn more.

Originally posted here:
Chat: the gaping hole in your social media strategy (Part 2) - Marketing Dive