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Use Live Chat to Build an Email Marketing List: Here’s How to Do It

by | May 15, 2020 | Marketing | 0 comments

Email marketing continues to be one of the most effective ways to drive conversions. An effective email marketing campaign ushers customers through every stage of their journey; from awareness to consideration and up to conversion. Even as email marketing becomes more competitive with lower barriers to entry, companies across the world are using unique strategies to gain a competitive edge. Incorporating live chat to take email marketing to the next level is one such unique tactic.

Importance of Live Chat in Email Marketing Activity

Given that every $1 spent on email marketing can result in an ROI (Return on Investment) of $38, it’s no surprise that marketers are constantly looking to up their game when it comes to this particular channel. To stand out from the competition today, you need to be innovative and distinct from the rest to gain an edge over them. And this is where live chat comes in.

While several companies use live chat as a means to personalize their website and enhance customer engagement, not many use it as a tool to improve their email marketing strategy. Yet live chat is a great tool to actually incorporate into email marketing and take it to the next level.

One of the most effective uses of live chat is to build your email marketing list and increase subscribers. While most people use a prominent CTA on the right or left side of their website homepage to build their email list, live chat can actually be a more effective option. In fact, live chat is a multi-faceted tool that can be used to build your email list in a number of interesting ways. Given below are five ways to use live chat to build an email marketing list.

1. Offer Proactive Chat Option with Asking for the Email Address

Proactive chat allows you to convert website visitors into leads by engaging them with your website from the get-go. According to a Forrester survey, online stores that use proactive chat have a 105% ROI, while those that don’t have an ROI of just 15%.

There are a number of ways you can use the proactive chat. The primary way is to send an automated message reaching out to anyone who visits your website and spends a certain amount of time on it. You can start by giving them a few options that will guide them through the customer journey.

These days, a proactive live chat tool helps you to personalize your chat even further. For instance, if a visitor goes to your blog posts or case study pages, you can set up a message that suggests them to enter their email id in order to receive your newsletter. This can help you target the most relevant people to build your email list— those who are already perusing your content.

2. Provide ‘Traditional Form’ Support to Reduce Bounce Rate

This is a great technique that kills two birds with one stone. When your support agents are busy and a user is waiting for their turn, simply use the live chat to present a form for them to fill as they wait.

This serves three purposes. Firstly, it helps provide a distraction for visitors while they wait to chat with your support team. This momentary distraction means visitors don’t give up on waiting and it can actually reduce your bounce rate dramatically.

Secondly, if the form has some details about the nature of the problem, it can help you route the query to the right support team or simply give the agent a heads-up before they actually start chatting with the customer.

Most importantly, this is a great way for you to get leads and build your email list. As long as you have the name and email ID fields in the form, the visitor will be forwarded to your contact base, and your email list will increase effortlessly.

contact form

3. Integrate CRM with Live Chat Software

Integrating your live chat software with CRM will help you improve your email marketing efficiency in a big way. Most chat software do save your contacts, but if you integrate the software with your CRM, every email ID that is captured is automatically sent to the CRM. This means that you don’t have to waste time and energy updating your CRM manually and you can spend that time focusing on improving your marketing campaign.

4. Initiate Customer Support Training Program as a Backup

While setting up a pre-chat form, proactive invitations will help you generate a lot of organic leads. These tools are only triggered when the visitor takes certain actions. Since this isn’t always the case, it’s good to have a backup plan in place so that you don’t miss out any leads.

A good way of doing this is to train your support agents to always request the email id. In fact, they should be trained to conduct the conversation in a way that asks for the user’s email id and becomes a natural part of the process. It shouldn’t feel forced or intrusive in any way or it can prove to be counter-productive.

5. Work on ‘Offline Forms’ with a Live Chat Interface

Offline forms are a great tool to collect email ids from website visitors even when support agents are not online. This offline form will ask for the email id and other crucial information that will then be passed on to the concerned support agent through a live chat interface. Your support team will receive the message as soon as they’re online again.

Final Thoughts

Live chat and email marketing are both highly effective customer engagement tools. Unfortunately, most companies end up using these tools in isolation, without leveraging the benefits of synchronization. Once you incorporate live chat as an integral part of your email marketing strategy, the numbers will speak for themselves.

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