One of the best ways to expand and build your contact list is by using WhatsApp. To date, there are close to 2 billion active WhatsApp users and you only need a fraction of this to opt-in to your marketing campaign. to do this, the WhatsApp Business API (Application Programming Interface) would be your best tool which would see you adopting the use of bots.
WhatsApp Contests – why are they so effective?
One thing is for sure, users love contests as they have the prospect of getting something for free without needing to pay. If you have a business that relies on WhatsApp, not using contests will diminish your business opportunities tremendously. This is no coincidence because statistics have shown that:
- More than 99% of contest participants will share the promotion if they are incentivized.
- About 33% of contest participants are open to receiving brand promotions.
Why should you use WhatsApp for contests?
This platform makes perfect sense because it works for small and medium businesses without needing high expenses. There are several main reasons for this where the main ones are:
- To grow your contact list
- Learning more about your customers – Those who participate are most likely the customers in your target segment
- Better engagement
- Cost-effective
What types of WhatsApp Chatbot Ideas work?
Below are some of the most effective bot-driven contest campaigns that are practical and result-oriented for your digital marketing campaign.
Share and Win – When your users do something that shares to other users (with a chance of winning something), they automatically opt-in to your list. Since more than 90% of users have no problem sharing promotions to win something, this is an extremely effective platform.
- Opt-in form in the landing page – Make the users chat up the bot through the landing page managed by WhatsApp. This is a great way to start a conversation and engage the customer.
- Outcome guessing – A bot can be used to create a conversation that constitutes the contest entry on WhatsApp. By letting them guess the outcome of a certain question, they will dig further for information like visiting your website.
- Launching a new product – This is a great platform to get new users and to enhance your customer relationship. Start with a ‘name the new product’ campaign. Then use the bot to launch a follow-up event by letting users vote for the best name.
- Captions-related contests – This is a fun and entertaining activity. Use a strange picture and let users caption it. The bot can be used for the collection of entries.
- Complete the sentence/phrase – This is similar to the caption idea where you provide a sentence or statement and let users complete it. It is easy to run and very engaging too. Make the participants visit your website to get the right answer like ‘Product XYZ is made of 50% ______ and 50% ____”
- Fun games – Your chatbot can drive this with fun riddles and puzzles for the users. They keep the users engaged for long periods of time and you can modify them too.
- Test your knowledge – This can be a general knowledge quiz or one that is related to your brand/company where they stand a chance to win a prize if they get the right answers.
- User-generated content – Let the users be creative with this. The bot can be used to collect information like suggestions and fun answers.
How do I use a WhatsApp Bot to run a contest?
- First, you need to have an objective. This should take into consideration what you want to achieve with the contest whether it is to increase your brand’s visibility or awareness, to get more customers on your list or to launch a new product.
- Then, decide who your audience is where you will need to determine your customer demographic and other factors.
- Next, you can decide on which type of contest to launch. This will lead you to issues like duration of contest and the rules.
- Now, you can create the conversation for your bot. You can choose between a rule-based chatbot or an intelligent NLP (Natural Language Processing) chatbot. The former is easy to build which is quite straightforward. The latter is designed to understand natural human input better.
- You can then launch the contest where you need to monitor and track the participation. The data you collected must then be used for analysis and record-keeping which can be done hands-on for small startups and simpler business operations.
Read more about the Whatsapp Business features here
