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To the untrained eye, chatbots and email marketing might seem to be completely unrelated marketing avenues that coexist without any meaningful connection. Unfortunately, though, missing out on the synergy of chatbots and email marketing is quite deadly.
Why? Mostly because then your marketing remains uncoherent, with a suboptimal customer journey in which you don’t use all available data and which you cannot adapt in real-time as the new data arrives. Think of sending a welcome email instantly after the AI chatbot interaction, or pulling data to your lead distribution software to sell the lead at the highest price.
So today, I’m going to unlock the full power of email marketing and chatbots for you. I’m not saying you’ll become a god-tier marketer overnight, but you’ll at least be able to coordinate your email and on-site customer data for the greater good – the best possible shopping experience of your customers and your exhaustive knowledge of them.
Before We Start: The Importance of Having the Right Lead Management Software
First things first: for data-driven lead generation and omnichannel marketing to even be possible, you need more than just email marketing software or software that runs your chatbot – you need a comprehensive lead generation ecosystem that would cover your marketing through and through, including free data exchange between campaigns and touchpoints.
And such suites do exist, so please make sure you have the right tech at hand for everything you need, from email segmentation to lead distribution to real-time and historical reports. Remember, it’s absolutely crucial to collect and process every bit of consumer data you can collect without breaching industry standards and privacy regulations like TCPA, CAN-SPAM, etc.
Now, without any further ado, let’s dig right into it.
Are Email Marketing and Chatbots Good Enough Alone?
Of course, email marketing existed decades before chatbots, and quite effectively. Emails are good throughout the sales funnel, from the top of the funnel (for example, welcome emails) to the middle (newsletters and other nurturing emails) to the bottom (sales emails).
Numbers-wise, it’s no secret marketing emails get around 2% to 5% clicks, depending on the industry and how well these emails are crafted.
And you can do even better with your emails if you personalize them:
- An overwhelming 92% of consumers prefer a consistent user experience regardless of where they interact with the brand, including personalized recommendations based on previously provided data.
And this is exactly what chatbots can help you achieve with respect to email marketing (and vice versa). A well-coordinated marketing campaign where emails use chatbot data and chatbots factor in the consumer’s previous email experience is obviously more effective.
Moreover, email marketing turns out to be the most automated marketing dimension, with 58% of marketers having fully automated their email outreach. So it shouldn’t be hard to integrate one more element into the already smooth system.
And now to chatbots.
As people get used to chatbots, their influence increases, and not only when it comes to automating customer service. In fact, a whopping 36% of consumers claim chatbots always influence their purchasing decisions, with only 17% being rarely impacted by chatbots. Even B2B companies expensively use chatbots in lead generation and nurturing.
Conclusion: Well-timed, personalized emails and well-designed chatbots are powerful tools even on their own, but you can take it to the next level by combining them into a single comprehensive lead generation strategy.
How Can Chatbots Boost Your Email Lead Generation
#1 Real-Time Data Enrichment
Whether you’re using chatbots on your website, application, or even social media, you can pre-design them to collect any user insights, from age, location, and job title to niche-specific data like, for example, their current auto insurance and the type of insurance they’re looking for.
Then you can use this data in your email marketing campaigns. For example, for users interested in collision insurance, you can start your email with something like “Looking for the best collision insurance?” or “Still looking for collision insurance.”
#2 Email Content Personalization
In a similar fashion, you can personalize the entire email, hitting the right subscriber at the right time with the right content. Moreover, having a comprehensive lead management system in place, you can identify the data missing for every email subscriber and then try to get this data when the subscriber interacts with your chatbot.
Long story short, well-coordinated email and chatbot marketing enable behavioral segmentation, especially if you’re also connecting them to your other user data channels, like referral & affiliate campaigns, offline marketing, etc.
#3 Well-Time Follow-Ups
Post-conversation emails are extremely powerful because of their timing and personalization. One of the best chatbot-email marketing strategies would be to customize your email sequences for popular chatbot journeys so you can send an email that matches the recent conversation.
You can add as many layers on top of it as you want. For example, you can exclude the most clogged hours from sending emails. More often than not, the best emailing algorithm is a multi-factor one, and every piece of data you collect with chatbots can help.
#4 Around-the-Clock Support and Engagement
One of the most obvious advantages of running chatbots is they operate around the clock, unlike your live operators. A well-developed chatbot can solve a fair share of requests on its own, including informational queries, regular payments, basic questions, etc.
Imagine having a shopping assistant like Mira AI. With it, you could solve up to 80% of requests on the spot without making customers wait a mere second. And the other 20% can be routed to the best-fitting sales or customer service rep based on the provided data.
#5 Lead Qualification
Last but not least, chatbots can qualify users for emails so you only spend resources on relevant leads. Sending one email to void might not seem like a big waste, but for bigger companies, this piles up over time into thousands of dollars spent on nothing.
How Can Email Marketing Boost Your Chatbot Lead Generation
Driving Traffic to Chatbots
Just like chatbots can enrich your email marketing data, emails can collect valuable insights for chatbot conversations. For some emails, you can embed a link to the chatbot so users can get more details about the topic and possibly initiate a live call.
Here’s an example:
- You send a marketing email with a tracking link that contains UTM parameters; for example, utm_source=email&utm_campaign=sale
- The subscriber clicks on the link and lands on your website
- The website chatbot detects the UTM parameters, connects the user to the email, and sends them a message like, “Hey! I see you’re checking out our sale. Want me to help you find the best deal?"
Advanced chatbots can be integrated with email marketing platforms and CRMs, including MailChimp, HubSpot, Phonexa, and more, so you can easily enliven this type of synergy.
Re-engaging Inactive Users
For dormant users that were once considered high-intent, you can try and send re-engagement emails that link to your chatbot while explaining that the subscriber will get personalized assistance and, if they want, can instantly connect to a live operator.
Re-engaging users is not easy, but you can do it with well-crafted chatbot funnels that personalize conversations based on the user’s engagement history, how long they were dormant, and other demographic and psychographic factors.
Keep Your Chatbot and Email Marketing in Sync at All Times to Generate Leads
Last but not least, it’s paramount to employ a system that keeps your email marketing and chatbot marketing in sync at all times so that consumers don’t have to provide the same data over and over again or ask the same questions.
At the same time, make sure to notify consumers how you’re going to use their data. Almost 40% of consumers believe that providing clear information on how consumer data is used would help the company build trust.