Cyril Puget gives his analysis of the evolution of messaging

Cyril Puget, the co-founder of myElefant, analyses the new uses of mobile messaging and the challenges for companies. Video interview conducted by Mobile Marketing Association France.

Cyril Puget – Usage has changed: the use of email to communicate with family and friends has decreased significantly in favor of messaging applications. It started with SMS, then Facebook Messenger & WhatsApp. Even my mother uses WhatsApp.

The challenge now for companies is to catch up with their consumers’ habits to talk to them in the same way and through the same channels as these consumers.

WhatsApp has recently been made available to companies, and RCS technology will be available soon. So messaging offers a very large range of possibilities for companies, and they have now started taking advantage of this new channel.

CP – Companies have begun to focus on messaging applications through the lens of customer relationship management. What you have to understand is that messaging applications offer a huge range of features that include customer service, communication, and promotional or relationship marketing. Any conversations that companies had with their customers through channels such as email, a call center, or SMS can now take place through mobile messaging.

For retailers, the first point of contact is the physical shop; the second is the website or applications. And we can consider messaging apps as a third point of contact. It is a customer service communication channel, but it will also allow complete transactions to be undertaken. Taking a sales scenario, as an example, we will be able to go as far as buying a product in the messaging app without necessarily having to go back to the website.

CP – What we notice at myElefant is that we have an extremely high level of user engagement, with an average of 20 interactions with the brand for each campaign sent out, and an attention span of around two minutes.

The major advantage of messaging apps is that we are living in a social world and so we will benefit from things going viral. We have seen that the users share 15 to 20% of campaigns.

The figures are quite impressive compared to other digital channels, and that’s why we’re pushing companies to take an interest in this channel.

CP – Well, yes, in any case, they must take a very serious interest in it. The good news is that they hold all the winning cards. Channels are open with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and RCS. There are solutions in place for orchestrating these campaigns, myElefant, for instance, which allows you to design scenarios, send out campaigns and track them.

The final step is for the marketing and CRM teams to understand this new language. We don’t address a customer in the same way in a messaging app as we do in an email. Email is relatively monolithic, static, but in messaging, it doesn’t work exactly the same way, and you have to learn these new rules. myElefant works with marketing teams, training them and helping them to understand this new language.

Article originally published on the myElefant blog site – July 2019