Sanjay Krishna Goyal, CEO of ACL Mobile, suggests why Enterprise Messaging is a key driver for Indian e-Commerce.|
Bangalore, October 16, 2016: With major chunk of the India populace on the internet, the country is experiencing a swift upsurge in the number of internet ready consumers and online shoppers. Subsequently, the Indian e-commerce segment is anticipated to grow at a sky rocketing speed and touch $ 16 billion by the end of the year 2016. The segment has completely transformed the way people shop, simultaneously giving a makeover to the consumer’s buying behavior. The sector has been thriving on technology, which is constantly evolving, making it more reachable and efficient. A latest report from eMarketer, projects that the worldwide B2C e-commerce sales will touch $1.5 trillion, with India massively contributing to the numbers.
E-tailers believe that technology today is undeniably the spine of their businesses. The evolution of e-commerce revolves around technologies like personal computers and internet. However, with the current and explosive popularity of cell phones fueled heavy investment into boosting data-transfer speeds, allowing faster, more-efficient and wireless business-to-business and business-to-customer connections.
Talking about cell phones, technology like enterprise messaging has gained immense popularity amongst businesses to scale their profits. SMS marketing in the recent years has been recognized as the most comprehensive and pervasive tool. It has empowered the marketers to develop and deploy campaigns, harnessing the power of one-to-one communication with an SMS that has the capability of evoking instant response from a customer. It allows businesses to meritoriously gauge the performance of a campaign using ‘call-to-action’ from the customers. It also brings in the flexibility to test different campaigns, which greatly reduces the cost and the turnaround time parallel to other forms of marketing. To give a better perspective of things, an A/B testing on SMS is more viable than on TV or E-mail.
Similarly, with the advent of platforms like WhatsAPP, Push Notifications, Facebook, Twitter etc. people across the globe were convinced that these platforms were going to be the major and the most comprehensive marketing tools for all businesses. However, sooner than later, the business landscape has realized that these platforms have major limitations and constrains. One identified downside of using these platforms is that, the messages do not reach the consumers unless they are logged in to the internet from their phones. This drawback limits businesses only to the 15% of mobile population in India. Adding to the strain; most popular internet systems don’t allow businesses to mass broadcast to users, thereby significantly limiting the reach of such businesses. On the other hand, SMS ensures businesses 100% customer reach to the mobile population.
With such advantages, Mobile messaging enables e-commerce players to boost their brand productivity and efficiency. It also paves ways for new channels to generate revenue giving them a competitive edge over others. Merchants can resort to digital scratch coupons for their smartphone using customers to cross-sell and up-sell additional products and services and enhances their profit margins. Another significant advantage of using enterprise messaging is that it assists in developing a one-to-one relationship with consumers, it also helps in creating and rising brand awareness, Extending special offers, Increasing sales and in-store traffic, Acquiring and retaining customers, Enhancing multichannel campaign efforts and Streamlining or automating of overall operations. Many e-commerce players employ the medium of enterprise messaging to stay connected with their customers and update them on the deals and offers that could be of their interest. In addition to that, SMS marketing can increase sale, and can immensely contribute towards reducing the cost of hiring a call center agent. Moreover, the post-sales services of any e-commerce brand define its ability to retain a customer. Thus, updating customers on every step of dispatch and transfer status of the order, to sending confirmation about the receipt of the order, aids in creating a positive brand image. Enterprise SMS also simplifies the registration and feedback process. The online portals can simply send registration forms or feedback forms with any SMS campaign that helps them get a real time feedback from their customers.
As per a survey conducted by Shopify, more than 50% of e-commerce brand traffic is directed through mobile phones. With the advent of enterprise messaging, businesses are equipped to send promotional alerts and keep their customer updated and hooked on to the brand. Furthermore, the e-commerce landscape is reckoning new ways of making enterprise messages more meaningful and contextual for their consumers as it heads towards the greener vistas of evolution.