We ? you DMEXCO! Here's what we learned about what you want.

We've just come back from DMEXCO 2022 in Cologne and are still buzzing. New people, new innovations, new conversations. Here are some things we learned about the market for conversational commerce and what brands are looking for.

The Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference, DMEXCO, is Europe's leading digital marketing and tech event. This year, 40,000 people showed up and 770 speakers shared their insights about the present and future of digital marketing. Including us.

charles founder, Addy, explained what we do in "Reach your customers where their friends are" and Sales Director, Chris, and Success Director, Damian, spoke about how to retain customers through WhatsApp.

We had a rubbish bin full of paper marketing our team has received in their postboxes to help brands show the benefits of paper-free WhatsApp marketing. We had stickers, coffee, condoms ("never had a safer chat" (highlighting our focus on GDPR and data privacy)) and loved the chance to speak with you in person. 

But enough about us

Here's what we learned from chatting with you:

? You loved our giant phone screen. It showed real WhatsApp conversations between our clients and their customers. People invariably stopped to look at it as they walked by, then came to chat with us to find out more.

?‍?To do now: sometimes what we do can be a bit intangible and this helped to bring it to life – and get closer to how it feels to chat with customers. To see how they respond to you as a brand and the different use cases. We want to show more real conversations more prominently in our comms. 

? You were aware of WhatsApp marketing but didn't have a huge amount of knowledge about it. This is still a new market in Europe and we realized we need to educate people more about the opportunities and benefits for their business.

?‍?To do now: we think the possibilities of WhatsApp are amazing and obvious to us, but we need to do more education about the basics: what it is and why it's good for businesses.

? You were excited about the ease of WhatsApp over email. Brands are still investing huge amounts of time and money into emails. Ecommerce managers and founders we spoke to were excited about the chance to be faster and more agile with WhatsApp. 

?‍?To do now: email can still be part of the mix, but we will want to do more to show the benefits in time and money savings of WhatsApp compared to email – as well as the benefits for the customer experience and revenue generation .  

? Many of you didn't realize you can sell in WhatsApp. While awareness of WhatsApp as a marketing and support channel is growing, brands aren't aware they can sell products directly in WhatsApp. They didn't understand our online shop integration or "Chatout" function.

?‍?To do now: push the commerce features of our platform. Our integration with Shopify, WooCommerce and Shopware in particular as the most powerful tool. Educate people about how to convert conversations into sales. Minimize our use of "Chatout" until people understand what it is (it may be trademarked but that doesn't mean you know what it is!). Talk about Chatouts in simple terms instead: sending customers links to checkouts with an already filled cart.

Where next? 

We'll be at the New Commerce Summit on October 17 in Munich, speaking together with Meta, Jack Wolfskin, Mawave, DOUGLAS and more.

Get your ticket here for €199 (or join us online for free).