We conversed with Gautaum Shelley, Founder of AiSensy. Gautam is passionate about using AI marketing to help customers connect seamlessly with businesses.
He discusses how rising customer demands inspired him to build a custom WhatsApp marketing product that integrates quickly with enterprise platforms. Gautam's offering has been equally effective with B2C and B2B eCommerce brands, generating up to 60% revenue.
With WhatsApp the third most used social media platform in 2022, there's vast potential to boost eCommerce conversions via the platform.
Four to five years ago, Gautam started building AI chatbots for the web and Facebook, primarily for educational institutions. 2020 changed things when the team started receiving queries for a WhatsApp business marketing product.
AiSensy initially set out to build a WhatsApp module. However, taking note of the immense market potential, they decided to build an AI marketing solution for eCommerce.
Unlike an SMS application, users open WhatsApp frequently to chat with friends, family, and co-workers. They may not chat with businesses. But once they're online and a branded message comes through, they'll engage with it if the content interests them.
The future of WhatsApp could be similar to WeChat in China and Line in Japan, where audiences use the applications for all their transactional needs. These messaging applications double up as social networking, food ordering, shopping, payment, and ride-hailing platforms and are ubiquitous in everyday life.
India has the largest WhatsApp audience, with over 480 million users, making it the most lucrative choice for a similar model.
Before Facebook (now Meta) launched WhatsApp Business in 2018, it had already noticed several small business owners in India using the messaging app to sell their products. By 2020, 15 million of the total 50 million WhatsApp Business monthly users were Indians.
WhatsApp Business is enabling businesses to scale further today. And with so many Indians on the app, it's the perfect time for eCommerce companies to use WhatsApp for conversion.
There’s a huge difference, and data shows us how much.
How did WhatsApp achieve such high engagement rates?
WhatsApp Business uses AI marketing and maximizes its easy-to-use UI with quick response buttons and product catalogs. Users can respond to brands without typing anything, enticing them further to engage.
WhatsApp helps bring in new consumers as well as retain existing ones. Five main ways that AiSensy helps eCommerce brands drive revenue include:
Brands can send a cart recovery notification if a consumer leaves their filled-up cart before completing the purchase. AiSensy has seen an abandoned cart recovery rate of up to 30% for its customers.
Businesses can share ongoing promotions to increase sales during the offer period.
Once a buyer places an order, the brand can send order updates. It establishes trust and is also easier to check than email and SMS.
In a recent webinar, AiSensy found that COD orders make up 60-90% of total orders for most businesses. Since there are many drop-offs here, WhatsApp can help brands recover them.
Businesses can send automated reorder reminders. For instance, if a consumer purchases sunscreen, the brand identifies that they may need a refill in a month. And sends a reorder notification with a discount offer a few days prior.
It's generally assumed that AI in marketing mainly involves chatbots. AiSensy is changing that narrative. The AI in their brand name represents intelligent products for marketing.
Taking this one step further, AiSensy launched a retargeting campaign feature. For instance, a brand broadcasts a message. When setting up the retargeting campaign, it wants to reach out with different messages to those who read the first message and those who didn't. AiSensy makes that possible.
10 minutes is all it takes!
AiSensy provides the WhatsApp Business API for free. All brands need is a mobile number. Businesses can take a 14-day free trial, all features included. From there on, they can start using the platform and launch campaigns in ten minutes.
Gautam is highly focused on WhatsApp. Even then, AiSensy can seamlessly integrate with other emails, SMS, push notifications, and other platforms.
AiSensy works with some of the most popular brands, such as Vivo and Skullcandy. What stands out is the platform's revenue-driving capability, a fundamental proposition for businesses.
B2B eCommerce brands use AiSensy to send smart notifications for payment, reminders, event updates, and bulk offers, among other campaigns. Not only that. Businesses use various content formats, too.
Currently, the WhatsApp Business app and API don't support payments since WhatsApp Payments allows an upper limit of only 100 million users at a time. But businesses cater to a lot more consumers.
When WhatsApp does allow this integration, it'll be a huge step forward for eCommerce brands. For now, brands have found alternatives through other payment links like Razorpay and PayTM.
There are two significant limitations that AiSensy guides marketers with:
WhatsApp has four tiers that determine the number of messages brands can send in 24 hours. The first tier allows for a thousand, whereas the fourth allows unlimited messages. AiSensy helps brands choose a tier that suits their model.
WhatsApp was a personal messaging platform before businesses started using it. Keeping user experience in mind, WhatsApp assigns quality scores based on the campaigns. If too many people find a campaign spammy, WhatsApp will lower the brand's quality score.
Not at all. There are multiple ways to build an AI marketing chatbot without having to code. Google Dialogflow is a hands-on platform with ready, easy-to-use templates for chatbots. Brands can take this live in two to three days.
AiSensy also helps build chatbots for businesses. This is a one-time setup, integrated seamlessly with the platform. No coding required.
Gautam comes from prior, extensive experience in building AI chatbots. As such, he has built AiSensy for WhatsApp with three live chat segments.
With automation, this section handles queries that are pre-fed into the system.
If a user asks questions outside the purview of these pre-fed queries, they're directed to a customer service representative. This comes under the request segment.
Once an agent has taken the chat forward through intervention, the chat moves to the intervening section.
AI chatbots are an essential source of data since they interact directly with customers. Explaining this with the Pareto principle, 80% of questions come from 20% of consumers who interact with the brand regularly. Once the business identifies these frequent questions, it can integrate them into the chatbot's flow.
Despite users getting more familiar with AI marketing technology, they'd prefer having some human interaction when asking questions. Chatbots today cannot listen and understand in a human way. But in the future, this could change.
When it comes to human resources, it's easy to assume that machines replace people. But that's far from true. Companies are, instead, moving people from the department that deploys automation to other departments or job roles within the organization itself.
Recommendation engines are getting smarter by the day. Today, AiSensy has capabilities for sending recommendations based on previous purchases manually. Say a customer bought a mobile phone recently from Amazon. Amazon can send a WhatsApp message with recommendations for mobile phone covers and earphones.
AiSensy is also using AI in marketing to develop automated, intelligent recommendation capabilities.
Gautam sees AiSensy as a full-fledged, AI marketing communication suite in the next five years, helping businesses engage with consumers at scale and drive revenue through smart products.
There could also be multiple channels other than WhatsApp, including SMS, email, Telegram, and more.
The U.S. isn't a WhatsApp-focused market, so several WhatsApp solutions steer away from the region. However, Latin America (such as Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia), the Middle East (such as Dubai), and Southeast Asia have witnessed a growing demand for WhatsApp business marketing.
Gautam and his team worked end-to-end with a prominent brand to set up WhatsApp marketing for them. The business had an eCommerce store through Shopify and nothing more.
AiSensy came up with an extensive WhatsApp strategy. Besides integrating a WhatsApp button on the brand website, they set up abandoned cart recovery, payment notification, COD recovery, delivery update, reorder flow and offer broadcast campaigns. The team also came up with templates to simplify campaign launches.
The workforce? One person to develop and launch the whole setup.
The result? Up to 30% increase in revenue each week for the brand.
WhatsApp is quickly becoming one of the top marketing channels for businesses across industries. It's helping brands drive revenue and engage effectively with customers. This is one AI marketing platform marketers don't want to miss.
Looking to deploy AI in eCommerce, too? Reach out to us.
The inspiration behind AiSensyWhy AiSensy chose WhatsApp over other platformsWhatsApp’s significance for eCommerceWhatsApp versus other marketing channelsHow AiSensy drives revenue for eCommerce brandsWhat AI stands for in AiSensyHow quickly can a business get started with AiSensy?Use cases of AI marketing with AiSensy in B2BWhatsApp Payments in the eCommerce ecosystemTackling limitations in WhatsApp marketing through AiSensyShould you know how to code for automating decision trees?AiSensy chatbots: The 3 segmentsChatbots of the futureSending personalized recommendations via AiSensyThe vision for AiSensyWhatsApp’s reach in countries other than IndiaAiSensy’s real-world application Summing it up
