WhatsApp Lead Generation: How to Get More Sales with the Messenger

Exploring the benefits of WhatsApp for lead gen and how to use it effectively.

Over the late 2010s, WhatsApp has become more than just a messaging app. Media sharing, groups, shops — all of these features open extensive possibilities for content creators and brands. From small business owners to global corporations, companies of all sizes actively explore the possibilities of utilizing the messenger for the purposes of staying in touch with the audience, providing support, receiving orders, and attracting prospects.

Despite such an active incorporation of WhatsApp into the roster of digital communication tools, only a handful of brands are fully utilizing the app’s capabilities for lead generation. In this article, we’ll review the benefits of attracting leads through WhatsApp and the proven tactics for doing this.

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What is WhatsApp lead generation?

WhatsApp lead generation is the activity focused on attracting potential consumers via WhatsApp. By allowing to be contacted via WhatsApp and reaching out first, a brand can establish strong and meaningful connections with individuals and convert them into customers.

This can be done either using WhatsApp Business App or WhatsApp API for sales, the former one is a free solution suitable for individuals and small businesses and the latter one is a paid platform for developed and large businesses. While utilizing WhatsApp to create leads may be quite a novel approach to sales, the practice brings several proven advantages to companies.

Benefits of lead generation through WhatsApp

Globally, WhatsApp is by far the most popular messaging platform. The number of its active users exceeds 2.2 billion. This fact alone makes it impossible for any company that is serious about connecting with a global audience and scaling its operations to disregard the app. However, there is more to WhatsApp than the sheer size of its user base.

• Free and accessible. While mobile carriers charge fees for sending SMS, which can get especially high for international roaming, WhatsApp is an OTT messaging platform that transmits texts and media via the internet and allows to connect with a person from any country for free. Also, WhatsApp messages can be received by any device with an internet connection and WhatsApp client installed, including desktops, laptops, and tablets. This increases the chances that a communication sent by a brand will be promptly opened and read by a prospect.
• High open rates. Studies show that WhatsApp communication has a 98% open rate and a 45-60% click-through rate, which is five times more than the average figures for email and SMS.
• Asynchronicity. Compared to calls, which can get troublesome across multiple time zones, WhatsApp comes as a perfect tool for sales teams — texts and voice messages don’t demand instant response and can be read and reacted to at the most convenient time for a prospect. At the same time, a company’s rep has time to prepare the most compelling offer as well.
• Pro-business features. With two types of solutions available for companies, WhatsApp has invested significant resources in making the messenger convenient for brands and supplying all the necessary functionality, from mass mailings and chatbot support to conversation labeling and extensive analytics. This makes WhatsApp an even more attractive tool for generating leads.

Best practices of WhatsApp lead generation

With WhatsApp advantages for business explained, it is time to take a look at some of the best ways to use the messenger to attract more clients to your company.

Set up WhatsApp chat on your website

Arguably the most optimal way for a business to generate more leads with WhatsApp is by allowing your website visitors to connect with your business through the messenger. This can be done by adding a WhatsApp icon in a live chat widget, usually located in the lower right corner of a web page. This way, you give prospects an option to interact with your company’s reps here and now by sending a live chat inquiry or sending them a WhatsApp message and receiving a reply on their smartphone, without the need to wait for it with the web page opened.

To take things a little further, we’d recommend integrating live chat with WhatsApp, so that a visitor can leave a live chat message and receive a reply to WhatsApp and continue the conversation with the sales rep there.

Create a WhatsApp QR code

With the growing popularity of QR codes as means for sharing a link to a website, social media profile, or payment page, it can be quite an effective tactic to put a QR code with the company’s WhatsApp number on both printed and digital media. Examples of such media include business cards, product catalogs, digital images, and videos. Placed strategically, WhatsApp QR codes can act as a perfect call to action and lead to new engagements with potential customers.

Click-to-WhatsApp ads

As we all know, WhatsApp is kept under the same roof as two major social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, and this roof is called Meta Inc. The corporation’s ecosystem provides business users with multiple tools for promoting their brands across all of these three platforms, including sophisticated advertising options.

Click-to-WhatsApp ads are available to WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API users and allow them to create targeted campaigns shown to Facebook and Instagram users with a CTA button linked to a WhatsApp chat. Such ads provide user journey shortcuts for prospects — instead of clicking on an ad to visit a company’s website, they are redirected to a conversation with a brand’s representative right away, which is quite similar to the experience of one walking into a physical store and being greeted by the store’s assistant.

WhatsApp chatbot for generating leads

‘Chatbot’ can surely be called the word of the moment and for all good reasons. AI and automation have made significant progress recently in their understanding and processing of personalized replies to human inquiries. Lead generation through WhatsApp can benefit from using the capabilities of artificial intelligence as well. Here are the reasons for a business to use chatbots to communicate with prospects.

• 24/7 availability. Making sales consultants available round the clock every day of the week requires solid investment in Human Resources, which not every company can afford. However, high competition dictates the importance of a prompt reply to a customer inquiry at any time to prevent them from defecting to competitors. WhatsApp chatbots make it possible to provide quick replies to frequent questions even in the middle of the night and ensure to collect lead data for future contacts.
• Initial contact. Even during working hours, chatbots can be of great help to company’s representatives and handle incoming inquiries initially. By analyzing keywords in customer messages, a chatbot can categorize the contact and determine whether it’s a qualified lead, or, for example, an existing client. When the inquiry ends in the hands of a human agent, they instantly have all key characteristics of the request and its sender highlighted by the chatbot.

Multilingual support. A chatbot can easily understand messages and create replies in hundreds of languages, a feat quite impossible for a human agent. By providing support to a potential lead in their native language, a chatbot improves the chances of them converting into actual customers.

How Umnico enhances WhatsApp usage for sales

Umnico Inbox is an omnichannel platform that provides secure official integrations with all major social media and messengers, including WhatsApp. The platform supplies businesses with several ways to attract leads through WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp integration with CRM systems and WhatsApp API for business apps. Among notable capabilities of Umnico for WhatsApp are the following.

Reaching out first through WhatsApp is a great way to start a conversation and convert leads into customers. With Umnico, there’s no need to add a client’s phone number to a contact list, while the message delivery status shows whether the message has been sent and read in real time.

Multiple WhatsApp accounts can be connected to Umnico and managed via a single interface. This eliminates the risk associated with having agents chatting with leads from their personal devices and provides a comprehensive overview and analytics of all customer interactions.

Customizable notifications for WhatsApp ensure that not a single lead is missed. Umnico can notify about incoming WhatsApp messages not only with sound and pop-up notifications in the desktop app but also send emails or Telegram messages to an agent.

Quote and reply to WhatsApp messages via convenient Umnico desktop and mobile apps. Fully-featured integration makes conversations with leads via Umnico as easy as chatting through a personal WhatsApp app, sans any corporate risks.

CRM integration provided by Umnico can automatically generate client cards for new leads and transfer their details into the CRM system of your choice. The integration also provides statistics, such as sales, conversion rate, and staff reaction time directly to CRM.

Summing things up

Among emerging ways to generate leads, WhatsApp can be certainly called one of the most cost-effective ones. Being not as popular as other lead generation techniques, WhatsApp lead generation possesses huge potential for the companies that decide to pioneer it. From a global audience of immense size to a higher-than-average engagement rate, all of this makes the messenger a worthy tool for lead generation.

WhatsApp integration by Umnico provides all the necessary features for streamlining and optimizing lead generation through WhatsApp. With Umnico, you can process incoming WhatsApp inquiries along with messages from other social media and messengers in a single app, reach out to prospects first, and track & analyze the effectiveness of your sales and support departments. All of Umnico’s features can be evaluated for free during the trial period available to every new user.