MOONOVA Q&A: your WhatsApp marketing questions answered [with full video]

Missed our talk, "WhatsApp, the journey of a conversation," at MOONOVA? No worries, here it is again, with all your questions about WhatsApp marketing answered.

We were delighted to speak about WhatsApp marketing at MOONOVA in March. MOONOVA is an online conference that explores the latest trends in commerce.

This year, it was titled: "Marketing and Commerce, What's Next?" and included talks by companies like PayPal, Salesforce and charles ☺️

Sales Director, Christopher Schubert, spoke about WhatsApp marketing in his talk, "WhatsApp, the journey of a conversation."

He covered the benefits of WhatsApp marketing and its use cases. He then showed how our clients are using it – zooming in on SNOCKS and PURELEI, two clients who have already earned over €1 million in revenue with WhatsApp.

Watch the full talk here

If you'd like to see if WhatsApp marketing is a fit for your business, and if charles could help you enter this channel, check out Christopher's full talk here. (It's in German, but you can turn on English captions on YouTube):

Can I use my standard checkout?

(Or is there a PSP [payment service provider] in between?)

There's no PSP. You use your classic checkout, whether through Shopify, WooCommerce, or whatever it is you use. With our Commerce tool, you create a "Chatout" link through the charles platform and send it to your customer in a WhatsApp message. This will lead to your standard payment page, but will already contain products and/or discounts. Like a pre-filled cart. If they're already logged in, they can buy in as little as 1 click.

By the end of the year, it should get even easier, with an added feature to open a window within WhatsApp – so you don't have to leave the app to buy. This will create an even smoother purchasing experience for customers.

How long does onboarding take?

It's possible in as little as a few hours. But it depends on how fast the customer wants to go live. And it's faster if the business is already Facebook verified – as the mother platform in the background, you need to be authorized here first. Essentially, the customer is always in the driver's seat.

Are there conversion benchmarks?

We do measure conversion rate, yes. But above all, we measure revenue per recipient (RPR). For example, in 2022, SNOCKS made €1.58 RPR on average. And this increased from quarter to quarter as we discovered new possibilities to boost results. We also use cost per customer (CPC) and ROCS (revenue on campaign spend).

What companies use WhatsApp newsletters?

Our experience is that WhatsApp works especially well for B2C and D2C businesses, like ecommerce and retail stores. However, more and more B2B companies are coming to us. At the end of the day, it's about having a customer base with a demand for this channel. WhatsApp is excellent for engaging people with marketing campaigns, segmenting customers finely and boosting revenue with marketing automation. These are particularly powerful when you have a physical product. And there's there's no "rule" that you have to have an average order value [AOV] €30 or €300... it varies a lot. There are many different use cases. [See our client success stories.]

How important is content vs offers?

It's important, but it's hard to say exactly what works, or give exact figures, because It depends on brands and types of customers. Just like in email marketing. But testing and segmentation are very important to learn what works. We recommend that the first newsletter you send is interesting content. Then you can send a second one, with offers, to people who are engaged with the first campaign – because you know who's interested in your brand. Learning what type of content is best is an ongoing learning for brands. 

Do you integrate with Klaviyo?

Yes, we integrate with Klaviyo, so you can use event-based triggers to send WhatsApp messages – like abandoned cart and back in stock notifications. For these, we find that WhatsApp leads to far higher conversion rates. [See more on charles integrations.]

How many newsletters can you send someone?

It's hard to give a concrete answer here – like you should send exactly 3 or 5 per month. The brand needs to work out what the channel is for and what kind of content their customers want to receive. We can give people very good guidance here. What we can say is that companies are moving to WhatsApp fast, and those who don't do this now are missing out.

How do you get people to trust WhatsApp?

Trust is important in such a personal space. Hopefully they trust the brand already so want to join its WhatsApp channel. But there's also green tick verification, like the blue tick in Twitter. Then customers can see, ok, here's a company I can trust. In addition, brands need to respect the trust that someone's given them by opting in, and offer an easy way to opt out with a trigger word like "STOP" – though this rarely happens when brands do it right. Personalization and segmentation are also important. We strongly advise clients not to send out bulk sendouts to 100,000s of people, but to segment carefully. Only send relevant campaigns to the right audience.

 Which client has the biggest WhatsApp channel?

The top 5 would be SNOCKS, PURELEI, ABOUT YOU and MediaMarkt in Germany, and Baro Cosmetics in Italy.  

How many subscribers do they have?

6 figures.