By Priya Iyer, Chairman & CEO, Vee24 

With nearly 2.62 billion people having active social media accounts[1],the finance industry has long realised that targeted advertising and social media campaigns are powerful tools for driving brand awareness and sales. However, despite the fact that social media drives more traffic to a website than organic search, conversion rates for social are still extremely low.According to AdWeek[2], social media traffic has in fact an average conversion rate of 0.71 percent, with organic search converting at 1.95 percent and email at 3.19 percent.

Priya Iyer

Some companies offering financial services are very successful in creating communities and developing a strong following on their social media accounts, and this is definitely the first step to increasing conversion. But how do you use these communities to build customer loyalty and increase sales conversion rates?

Live Engagement with customers is helping banks, asset managers and insurance companies to do just that. Companies who offer some form of live engagement from their websites are seeing that live chat facilities are significantly increasing conversions and helping to build strong relationships with customers.

Here are just three simple ways in which live customer engagement can help you achieve higher conversions across your social media platforms:

1. Engage timely with consumers: Social media is providing the perfect vehicle for unhappy customers to voice their complaints. Proactively managing the response to unhappy customers in a timely manner is a great way to build a great relationship.  Use text chat to respond to the individual’s post but rather than continuing this conversation publicly, take the conversation private. An empathetic response with an invitation to a private conversation through a live link, which will expire in a specific time period, shows that you are attentive and responsive.

If your customer engages, you have an opportunity to solve their issue and immediately improve the relationship they have with your brand. At the end of the engagement, ask for a post back to the same social channel with their positive feedback. We all think more positively about a brand that is seen to deal quickly and respectfully with negative feedback.

Your engagements with consumers on social media should also be with customers that are reacting positively to your content or asking questions about your products. The most important thing is timing. Social media is all ‘in the moment’, and you don’t want to lose the opportunity to build a relationship with a consumer.

2. Ward off those abandonments: Get more out of your social media ads and paid search with live engagement links. Most web banner ads and paid search results drive customers to a landing page, which then leads to your website and conversion pages. At each of these stages, there’s a chance that your customer will drop off the page or abandon their purchasing decision. You can prevent this by engaging live directly from paid search or your social media ads.

For highly targeted search keywords or social ads, use an embedded live engagement deep link to immediately start a text or video conversation with the prospective customer, before they even get to your website. Your customers will have the opportunity to engage about specific products that they see advertised on your social media ads without needing to close out of the social media account and search your website for the same product.

3. Yes, do the BOT: Build a market place on Facebook using ChatBOTs. This can be the same ChatBOT that you deploy on your website. Your ChatBOT can engage in a conversation with your customer on Facebook Messenger or any other social media account. Based on the customers’ interests, it can suggest relevant products to purchase. With built-in integrations to your order processing system, your ChatBOT can conveniently enable the completion of a purchase right within your social media site. That’s a win-win experience for both your customer and your business!

Research shows that more than a third of online consumers already prefer social media to telephone use for customer support[3]. ChatBOTs provide 24/7 engagement opportunities to customers on social media, which will expand your company’s geographic reach and enable international shoppers to learn about your product. Once your ChatBOT is designed and deployed on your website and social media accounts, you can rest assured that your customers will be receiving consistent, timely service. This not only improves their experience with your brand but also reduces your cost of deployment and average handle time.

Live customer engagement allows you to add a human element to your brand and create a personalized and timely experience for the customer, which is the key to driving conversion rate. Get more out of your marketing spend by providing text or video chat opportunities with 24/7 ChatBOTs on every highly targeted marketing touch point, whether it be email campaigns, paid search, web and social media ads, or social media communities.

Live engagement features have been proven to increase online conversion rate by 10x or more. It’s a good time to investigate what it could do for your own business.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/

[2] http://www.adweek.com/digital/john-stevens-hostingfacts-reviews-guest-post-4-tips-for-building-a-social-media-conversion-strategy/

[3] https://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-and-why-chatbots-will-dominate-social-media-marketing-daf927319c4

About Author

Priya Iyer, Chairman & CEO, Vee24, Inc.

With over 25 years of diverse international experience in nearly every facet of software, Priya is a proven, high-growth entrepreneurial CEO with a leadership philosophy centered on engaging clients and employees to build industry leading SaaS software platforms and delivering exceptional stakeholder value to achieve sustainable competitive differentiation. Demonstrated success in developing and scaling a strong entrepreneurial and innovative culture, attracting and retaining top talent, cultivating a sense of ownership throughout the organization, and leading successful teams. Priya was awarded New England Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and ranked on the 2015 top 100 Entrepreneur list by the Boston Globe.

Prior to Vee24, Priya was most recently Chairman & CEO of Anaqua, Inc. which she founded in October 2004 and grew into a global SaaS solutions provider for Intellectual Asset Management. Prior to Anaqua, Priya headed Operations at Steelpoint Technologies, a legal software provider for Fortune 500 companies and global law firms, where she drove the company from the red to profitable quarter-after-quarter growth. Prior to Steelpoint, Priya was Managing Partner at AGENCY.COM where she founded and grew a financial services practice to $250 million in less than 5 years. Priya has also held senior positions at Bell Labs and Foxboro Systems.

Priya holds a bachelors and masters in Computer Science and an MBA from the Sloan Fellows program at MIT Sloan School of Management. She serves on several boards, women executive panels, and is a regular guest speaker at various business schools in the Greater Boston area.