As more consumers use their mobile device to make purchase decisions, more and more mobile messaging apps are starting to cater new features and functionalities that caters to the changing need of businesses.
One of such is WhatsApp, which has introduced a second app that is specifically designed to help small and medium business to communicate with their market more effectively – called WhatsApp Business. According to their press release, the new standalone app aims to solve some of the pressing challenges that businesses and customers are facing using their app, such as keeping in touch with clients and verifying the authenticity of a business.
The enterprise solution will allow global companies “to provide customers with useful notifications like flight times, delivery confirmations, and other updates”.
Here are some key features of WhatsApp Business as posted on the website First Post.
- Business Profiles
- Chat Migration
- Multiple Accounts
- Away Messages
- Analytics
On the other hand, WhatsApp is also gearing up to finally monetize its existing app by charging large enterprise for new tools to better communicate with customers. The new features include the closed pilot of a new WhatsApp verification program, which tags corporate accounts with green check marks just like Facebook’s verified business Pages, and a whole new WhatsApp Business app.
WhatsApp Business: Should You Use It?
Despite these new initiatives from WhatsApp, many companies looking for a reliable and efficient enterprise messaging platform are still in doubt about the capability of the new messaging solution to reach as many customers in the right time.
For most business owners, it’s critical to interact with their clients in a personal manner as possible, and at the same time, remain prompt and professional. With the rise of new messaging solutions such as WhatsApp Business, companies are given the opportunity to send messages directly to the mobile device of their customers.
This can be enticing but for one reason: you need to have an Internet connection to send messages using this app. If you’re not connected to the internet, you can no longer use WhatsApp. Furthermore, WhatsApp hasn’t even confirmed yet if the new app will have bulk messaging feature, which is one of the most sought-after marketing tools today.
And this is where am enterprise bulk messaging solution comes in. Using mass messaging as a primary tool for marketing and customer service is still widespread in many companies these days. Compared to instant messaging, which has the internet as its transfer mechanism, enterprise mass messaging platforms use the GSM/EDGE network, which means that you can still send bulk messages without an internet connection, and your intended recipients can still read your message even when they are not connected to the internet.
Furthermore, SMS is still the preferred medium for most consumers. According to statistics, 64% of consumers believe that businesses should use SMS messages to interact with customers more often than they currently do. Also, 70% of respondents agree that using SMS text messaging is a good way for an organization to get their attention.
Currently, 89% of marketers employing SMS marketing find it from somewhat to very effective, or more effective than corporate websites (64%) and display/banner ads (59%). This means that despite the rise of new instant messaging apps, SMS messaging is still one of the most reliable digital channels that a business can use to interact with their customers.
So, should you use WhatsApp Business in your marketing and other business functions? It depends on your goal. But if you are aiming to reach your customers, employees, and other important people in your business in a timely manner, then bulk SMS messaging would be the best option to use.
TeleMessage’s Mass Messaging platform is one of the leading bulk messaging solution in the market that will allow you to send any combination of messages including SMS, MMS, Push Notifications, Voice & Fax from the Web, Outlook Plug-In, or via our Messaging APIs. We also provide a variety of manual and automated messaging tools that will help you create and schedule messages whenever you want.
Contact us today to learn how our mass messaging platform can help improve your business.
WhatsApp Archiving Compliance
TeleMessage’s WhatsApp Archiver is a unique platform tailor-made to solve compliance and regulation issues by allowing firms to capture and archive WhatsApp messages.
This platform works exactly like the standard WhatsApp application, ensuring that your employees will still be able to send work-related communications easily and quickly.
The benefits of using WhatsApp Archiver in your business include:
- Archive all WhatsApp communications
- Use WhatsApp to communicate with customers, employees, and stakeholders
- Search, track and retrieve WhatsApp messages in the corporate archive
- Deposit WhatsApp messages with any email archiving vendor
- Full administration and reporting
The TeleMessage WhatsApp Archiver is the latest addition to our mobile archiving products that securely capture content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for a variety of ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving methods, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text & calls archiving for corporate and BYOD phones. Contact us today to try our mobile archiving products.
