While chatbots don’t have the best reputation today (looking at you Tay…), the potential for future use is undeniable.
What does Automated Messaging have to offer?
Automated messaging is starting to gain traction in the digital advertising industry. What sets it apart from other messaging is that it offers the ability for the consumer to chat with AI (artificial intelligence) instead of a live person. The chatbot might communicate about upcoming offers or promotions to the consumer. It can also learn the buying tendencies of consumers. ReplyYes has been successful implementing Chatbots by offering a text-to-buy service for retailers. This service has been a major success in its short run time.
How ReplyYes Works
ReplyYes has partnered with a record store called The Edit and has helped the business make $1 million in eight months. ReplyYes works through an “algorithm that recommends records based on purchase behavior and other interest-level signals” (Ad Week, 2016). The way it works is people sign up to receive text messages from The Edit. The subscriber gets an album recommendation every day. Consumers have three choices when replying to the message: “yes”, “like”, or “dislike”. Replying with “like” or “dislike” will affect personalization of future texts. If a user likes the album, future recommendations will be based on the album they liked. So for example, if the consumer likes a Taylor Swift album, the next recommendation could be another Taylor Swift album. Disliking an album will result in future recommendations going away from that artist or genre of music. The more days you respond to these recommendations the better understanding ReplyYes has on what your preferences are. If the user replies “yes” a link will appear that will direct them to purchasing the album. If a subscriber has a question that requires a human to answer it, a customer service representative will respond. The implementation of this Chatbot has been wildly successful. The Edit has already sold over 50,000 records using this Chatbot. Sixty-eight of the subscribers have purchased using this text based system. The even more impressive number is that 28% of subscribers have purchased six or more albums in their first 180 days of using the Chatbot.
Future of Digital Advertising
The success of ReplyYes and its Chatbot shows what the future of digital advertising could look like. Every year more and more companies are moving away from traditional desktop advertising. Mobile is becoming a bigger player in the digital advertising sphere every day. One problem with mobile advertising is the inability to track users. Cookies are very hard to track on mobile devices. With Chatbots and text-to-buy services, advertisers get direct feedback from the user and can retarget the users based on this feedback. The customization of messaging to the user is endless.
More companies will begin to use Chatbots in the coming years. In fact, Facebook and Microsoft have already rolled out their own Chatbots. Expect more companies to follow suit.
James Abers
Just Media, Inc.
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