The Power of Unified Communications in eCommerce: SMS, Email, & WhatsApp

In layman's terms, unified communications refers to the integration of multiple communications tools and platforms in a single, cohesive system that allows online businesses to manage and streamline all customer interactions and marketing campaigns seamlessly. In the eCommerce context, this includes channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp, social media, and more.

By unifying these communication methods, eCommerce businesses can offer a more seamless, consistent and responsive customer experience. It also ensures that no matter how a customer chooses to interact — whether it's through a support chat on WhatsApp or replying to an email — the communication is handled effectively and efficiently.

Every aspect of your eCommerce store is important and so is communication. By combining your communication channels and efforts, you can benefit in many ways. Here are some of the advantages.

Providing multi-channel communication leads to a better customer experience in many ways. A study shows that….

Integrating multiple communication channels into one unified system can help increase customer engagement as it streamlines communication and brings cohesiveness.

Unified communication in eCommerce helps streamline all communication, centralizes information, helps teams coordinate easily, among other benefits. These factors improve the efficiency of your business. Here’s how:

With a 98% open rate, SMS is still one of the most preferred communication modes for brands. SMS has many obvious benefits. For instance, it is a personalized channel, it is instant, short and cost-effective. Let’s look at how eCommerce brands are using SMS and how it is benefiting brands.

In today’s fast-paced digital age, customers expect everything instantly. Studies show that 90% of people read SMS messages within 30 minutes of receiving it. Brands can use SMS to send many quick, instant notifications. For instance,

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SMS is a direct communication channel. eCommerce brands can send messages to individuals directly. Brands can collect data from customers’ past interactions, purchase history, browsing behaviour, demographic information, and engagement patterns. This data can then be used for personalized SMS marketing, such as,

SMS can be used to share just about any kind of update or message to increase customer engagement. As it is a direct, one-to-one channel, it is ideal to encourage customers to take actions and increase engagement.

81% of companies use email as part of their marketing strategy. The number is high because email is a sticky channel. Every $1 spent on email generates $36 ROI. Here’s how brands can use email in their unified eCommerce communication strategy.

Email is one of the best channels to share informational and educational content. For instance, share product how-to guides, product recommendations, newsletters, etc. Email works best because it is also a channel where customers can easily search old messages or go back to such useful content. With email easily accessible on mobile, eCommerce brands can also combine email and SMS or WhatsApp communication strategies, offering a multi-channel experience.

With advanced email marketing tools that can be integrated into eCommerce websites, it’s easy to automate email campaigns. Brands can send automated welcome emails, thank you emails, abandoned cart recovery emails, re-engagement, retargeting, remarketing emails, among others. Brands can also automate transactional emails, for instance, subscription renewal reminders, etc. Moreover, unified communication eCommerce strategies can also use tools to collect and analyse data, personalise emails, and send them in a timely manner.

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Email campaigns provide opportunities to collect data and gather insights to optimize campaigns for better results. For instance, brands can monitor and assess click-through rate, open rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, and churn rate, among other performance parameters. This data can be used for customer segmentation, trend identification, optimizing existing content, customer journey mapping, etc. Here are some ways in which email insights can be utilized:

According to Forrester, WhatsApp brings $72,000 ROI for medium-sized businesses and $723000 for large businesses over three years. The platform, when incorporated into unified communication strategies in eCommerce, has many benefits, such as:

Today’s customers expect a good customer support experience from eCommerce brands. For instance, they expect immediate response, prefer a two-way conversational experience, and also expect the agents to know the context.

WhatsApp enables all these aspects. eCommerce brands can use WhatsApp to chat with customers, reply to them via automated bots or human interventions, have in-depth interactions with customers to understand their issues and provide quick resolutions. All these factors make WhatsApp a key component in omnichannel communication strategies in eCommerce.

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WhatsApp’s rich media-sharing capabilities allow brands to share images, videos, gifs, attachments of various formats, audio, etc. within messages. With these, brands can provide a more appealing and delightful experience to customers. Here’s how:

eCommerce businesses tend to have a lot of promotional message requirements. For example, when you launch new products, to announce sales, etc. This is where eCommerce businesses have been using WhatsApp broadcast messages. It allows brands to send a message to a large number of customers with just one click.

Here are some ways you can use WhatsApp broadcast messages:

A customer journey is a representation of the various touch points and interactions of your customers throughout their journey with your brand. By understanding the customer journey, you can get insights into the different stages where customers are and accordingly create and implement your unified communication for your eCommerce brand.

For instance, you would be able to find out approximate moments when customers typically tend to reach out for your customer support service. If you know this beforehand, you can provide proactive customer service via SMS, WhatsApp, or other channels.

Another important factor for successful omni-channel communication for your eCommerce brand is to maintain consistency in your messaging. Let’s look at what consistency means in unified and omnichannel communication systems.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for eCommerce marketing. Your customer base includes different segments with specific preferences and needs. This is a factor you must keep in mind when designing communication campaigns. Here’s what you must do:

With multiple channels running simultaneously, you will need to automate your communication workflows. Use tools and apps to do so. For instance, automated thank you messages, abandoned cart recovery messages, etc. By automating communication workflows, you can maintain consistency across all channels, provide better campaign relevance, and increase conversions and retention rates.

To automate communication workflows, do this:

One of the most critical stages in eCommerce journeys is the checkout stage. This stage sees the maximum number of drop offs and hence, you must ensure you create a seamless checkout process, no matter the channel. Whether customers are making purchases via WhatsApp, through a link in an SMS or in an email, follow the best practices to ensure more conversions and sales.

When you implement unified communication on your eCommerce site, it’s important to monitor as well as analyze the performance and results from each channel. However, analyzing data of individual channels in silos will not give you the correct overview. Hence, it’s important to analyze everything in a unified way. Here are some important factors to consider:

We’ve shared many strategies that you can incorporate in your omnichannel communication plan for your eCommerce business. You can choose and apply these strategies based on your goals.

However, what you also need is a seamless checkout system. A unified communication process is futile if it doesn’t lead to conversions. And, the most important step and factor in conversion is the checkout stage

To ensure a seamless and efficient checkout process, explore GoKwik's Kwik Engage for your eCommerce site.