Business Messaging

How Online Conversations Can Spark In-Person Commerce with WhatsApp

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October 30, 2024

A man and a woman in a store together, smiling and laughing

The majority of holiday shoppers say they spend more time online during the holidays compared to the rest of the year—especially Gen Z and Millennial consumers.1 That increased digital activity can mean more opportunities to discover products or services and make purchases across a wider range of categories, which is great news for ecommerce businesses. But brands with a physical retail presence can get in on the action too, helping get those digital shoppers through the door using WhatsApp.

Seasonal sales periods are key opportunities to get discovered by online shoppers and increase engagement, foot traffic, and revenue for brick-and-mortar stores and service providers. When shopping activity spikes, business messaging on WhatsApp can help you meet customers where they already spend their time and where they prefer to hear from businesses. Here are some ways you can get the conversation started, deepen customer relationships, and grow offline sales around holidays and Mega Sales Days.

4 ways to help bring customers in-store using WhatsApp

From salons and sushi restaurants to theme parks and theaters, in-person businesses can use WhatsApp to reach customers online and guide them through your door for seasonal shopping, services, and experiences.

Try these four ways to connect online conversations to offline commerce:

  1. Find local shoppers online on Instagram and Facebook with ads that click to WhatsApp. You can grow your opted-in audience to share in-person promotions and drive traffic to your physical business.
  2. Create personalized campaigns with marketing messages that promote in-store deals, events, or activations. When customers have opted in to receive marketing messages from your business, you can make product recommendations, announce in-person exclusives, or offer assisted selling for in-store items.
  3. Build custom experiences with WhatsApp Flows to make it easier for customers to book in-person appointments and take other actions that bring them through your door, all right within WhatsApp.
  4. Use utility messages to share important account updates or order reminders to bring customers into store locations for in-person conversion or fulfillment, like with buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) purchases.
WhatsApp conversation between a user named Annisa and Jasper's Market

For these tactics and more, your Meta Business Messaging Partner can help you create engaging in-thread experiences on WhatsApp that encourage offline engagement, including using chatbots or human agents over WhatsApp to answer product questions and bring consumers closer to offline conversion.

How they did it: Improving efficiency and booking rates with WhatsApp for appointment management

Benefit Cosmetics built a versatile channel through the WhatsApp Business Platform that lets customers self-manage their appointment scheduling for in-store services and enables more creative customer outreach, increasing bookings and sales while reducing call volumes to stores.

A WhatsApp conversation between a customer and Benefit Cosmetics

Especially around times of peak service demand from Benefit Cosmetics’ customers, a strategic approach to WhatsApp has made all the difference, resulting in:

  • 30% increase in brow and lip wax bookings attributable to WhatsApp
  • 200% growth in year-over-year sales partially attributable to WhatsApp
  • 60% faster agent response time with WhatsApp vs email

When sales surge, engage with customers both online and offline

For turning online traffic into in-store revenue around peak sales holidays, WhatsApp can help drive the business results you care about most.

From responding promptly to customer inquiries to supporting order tracking and returns during peak periods, business messaging strategies across the customer lifecycle can help create experiences that strengthen relationships and generate ROI, online and off.

Discover more holiday and Mega Sales Day resources to level up your strategy, or if you’re new to WhatsApp for Business, take the first step today.

1Source: “Seasonal Holidays Study” by YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 17,906 holiday shoppers aged 18-64 in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, UK, USA, Vietnam), Dec 2023.

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