How to Use Conversational Marketing 101

Conversational marketing is a strategy that focuses on real-time communication between brands and customers to foster personalized and engaging brand experiences.

Think of it as a heart-to-heart conversation with a close friend. You share your experiences, mistakes, and moments to gain insights into life.

Similarly, conversational messaging leverages chatbots, live chat, and AI-powered assistants to guide users through the marketing funnel, answer questions, seek their feedback, and provide support.

71% of customers expect brands to communicate with them through a marketing bot in real time. The need for instant gratification can be met by providing immediate responses and answering queries while the user is still around.

In 2025, it’s time to embrace more interactive and customer-centric marketing. Let’s learn the correct conversational marketing definition and build a solid strategy to empower your marketing campaigns.

What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational or chat marketing moves away from traditional one-way marketing and emphasizes two-way interactions. In essence, it’s dialog-driven where customers can share their opinions, pain points, and curiosity and get immediate solutions and answers to them.

Conversational marketing example - Cognism — A website pop-up on Cognism as part of conversational marketing

The ultimate goal of conversation marketing is to engage users in communication rather than only broadcast the message.

For example, Domino’s, a popular Pizza place, allows customers to order through Facebook Chat or voice assistants. This client-oriented approach allows brands to anticipate customer needs and expectations and manage them by creating exclusive experiences.

Conversational marketing hinges on a set of core principles that guide effective and engaging customer interactions.

Core Principles of Conversational Messaging

From a simple website pop-up to AI-driven ordering, conversational marketing is built on these key components:

Personalization: Customers expect their experiences to be tailored to their individual needs. Personalizing conversations is key to strengthening customer relationships.
Real-time engagement: Using chatbots and AI-based elements helps users express gratitude or share their thoughts about your product or brand immediately.
Active listening: Conversation marketing is about two-way communication — actively listening to customer needs and complaints is necessary to provide valuable solutions.
Omnichannel approach: Conversations happen across channels, such as SMS, chatbots, emails and social media to increase brand awareness and exposure.
Data-driven insights: Real-time conversations help brands build progressive data handling strategies to refine marketing campaigns.

Conversational messaging also enables brands to quickly adapt to the changing digital marketing trends and customer wants. The most successful marketers listen to their customers and adapt their marketing strategies.

If we take a closer look, conversational marketing is all about meeting customers where they are, making it the finest marketing tactic for business growth.

Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Building strong customer relationships forms the base for any business, whether you’re in the B2B or B2C space.

Implementing a robust conversational marketing strategy will enhance customer experience and conversion rates alongside:

Better lead generation and qualification: AI lead generation tools can read vast amounts of data to nitpick qualified leads.
Improved customer satisfaction: Instant responses reduce frustration and uncertainties for customers, making it easier for you to implement word of mouth marketing later on.
Increased sales and revenue: Guiding users through real-time support is helpful, especially if the customer is at an awareness stage in the buyer’s journey.
Cost-effective marketing support: Automating customer interactions reduces the need for support teams, reducing operational costs.
Personalized interactions: AI chatbots analyze customer data to provide tailored insights and solutions.
Increased brand loyalty and trust: Human-like connections tap into marketing psychology and bring customers closer to the brand.
Competitive advantage: Businesses adopting conversational marketing are well ahead in the game, making it easier for users to recognize and engage with the brand.

Depending on your industry, you can encourage customer interactions through a multi-channel strategy.

Let’s learn to evaluate and choose the best channel for your conversation marketing.

Choosing the Right Channels for Conversational Marketing

Chat marketing is more about reaching the right audience than reaching the maximum number of people. You want to pick the most effective channel to maximize engagement.

Here are common conversational marketing channels.

Marketing Channel	Use Case
Live chat	To provide real-time support on your website.To address customer questions and guide them through the sales funnel.To capture leads and improve customer satisfaction.
Messaging apps (Facebook, Whatsapp, etc)	Popular for personal communication.To offer a more personalized interaction.To send notifications, updates, and personalized offers.
Social media platforms	Enables direct communication through messages and comments.Useful for providing social support and building brand awareness.Useful to address public concerns.
SMS/Text messaging	To offer quick updates and personalized offers.Useful to send time-sensitive communication.
Voice Assistants (Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri)	To provide hands-free support and information.To support e-commerce applications for quicker purchases.
In-app chat	Provides direct support within the company application.

Types of conversational marketing channels

These channels help you send customized content for better response rates. But there’s no golden rule for what type of content must be used for conversational marketing.

Besides promotional messages, you can also use conversational marketing to send transactional references, such as one-time codes or password resets.

Now you might be thinking conversational marketing is like any other marketing approach. In reality, traditional marketing is different from conversation marketing, here’s how.

Related reading: WhatsApp Business vs. WhatsApp: From Chats to Contracts helps you send relevant and targeted messages for each audience type for business and personal use cases.

The Difference Between Traditional and Conversational Marketing

Traditional marketing is centered around product-focused messaging and conversational marketing revolves around dialogues between customers and the brand.

The table below summarizes the key differences between both marketing forms.

Feature	Traditional Marketing	Conversational Marketing
Communication type	One-way (Brand to customer).	Two-way, real-time conversations.
Engagement style	It’s broadcasted to a mass audience.	It delivers personalized interactions.
Response time	Delayed (Ads and promotions)	Instant (Chatbots, live chat, messaging apps).
Customer involvement	Passive (Receives information).	Active (Engages in the conversation).
Main channels	TV, print, ads, emails, social media ads.	Live chat, chat bots, voice assistants.
Customer support	May have long wait times through calls or emails.	It’s instant support via chatbots and live agents.
Data collection	Limited insights from surveys and analytics.	Real-time customer feedback and behavioral insights.

Traditional marketing vs. Conversational marketing

Both types of marketing establish a strong connection with the users, but conversational marketing enhances the overall user experience.

How Conversational Marketing Works

Customers land on your website for various reasons; to learn more about your brand, explore products, or get support. Conversational marketing helps you identify the right customers, learn their intent, and serve the right content to nurture them down the funnel.

Here are ways to use conversational marketing.

Decide How to Engage the Customer in Real-time

Interested website visitors might interact with the chatbot or live chat on your website or social media. This is a prime opportunity to greet users, answer common questions, and direct them to the right product or service.

Before you do that, determine which channel will be the most appropriate for your audience. Is it SMS, web chat, or in-app messages? Customers have varying preferences and it’s important to identify channels that produce better results.

The more you know about your potential and existing customers, the better it is to lead them to the conversion stage. Analyze previous data from chatbots and ask structured questions like “What are you looking for today?” or “Do you need help choosing the right product?”

Provide a Seamless Transition Between a Chatbot and a Live Agent

Chatbots likely are not built to handle complex questions and concerns. When customers need to speak to an agent, the chatbot must transfer the conversation immediately.

Besides speaking to the customer, the conversation can expand to other channels like social media or emails. For example, a customer may initiate a social media chatbot conversation that moves to an email thread and then a phone call. Ensure to stay consistent across channels and provide the right type of content.

Continue the Conversation After the Chat

Conversational marketing does not end after a customer receives support through live chat. You’ll typically follow up with order updates, surveys, and retarget with personalized offers.

Your follow-up email strategy can be through any marketing channel that yields maximum customer engagement. For instance, sending an exclusive discount via email after a customer expresses dissatisfaction through chat can improve retention rates.

A proper conversational marketing strategy opens doors to higher conversion rates.

In the next section, we’ll learn how to do it right!

Conversational Marketing Strategy in 5 steps

At any point, buyers may have differing needs, which makes their journey non-linear. This means they could be on different channels and have varied preferences at the same time.

Implementing a comprehensive conversational marketing strategy is paramount to understanding them and delivering valuable content.

The following action plan will help you implement compelling conversational marketing campaigns.

1. Define Your Goals and Objectives

The first step is to understand your audience’s needs and tailor your responses accordingly. Learn their pain points, preferences, and opinions about your brand. Even if you don’t have enough information, you can use available data to customize conversations.

Analyzing where your audience spends the most time will guide your conversational marketing in the right direction. Implement segmentation strategies to send relevant content to each audience group.

Campaign Refinery audience segments — Segmenting the audience in the Campaign Refinery dashboard

2. Choose the Right Marketing Channel

The best place to start conversational marketing is your website and social media. Since these digital channels are already up and running, it’s easier to reach the audience. For example, adding a live chat widget on your website will prompt customers to learn more about your products or services.

But before you go all in on a channel, understand your customer demographics and which device they are the most active on (Mobile or Desktop). Additionally, consider the type of engagement; is it for customer support, lead generation, or to sell products.

Facebook livechat example — Example of Facebook Live Chat with bots – Source

3. Identify the Key Messages You Want to Share

Good communication is key to making your conversation marketing work. Identify the key points you want to share. Create simple and straightforward campaigns that address specific customer problems.

Use these ideas as a starting point:

Personalized product recommendations: Suggest products based on customers’ past actions or purchases. Use AI chatbots to refine recommendations.
Exclusive offers and discounts: Send coupons and special incentives for first time buyers and loyal customers.
Customer support and FAQ: Provide assisted guidance on pricing, shipping, or product details.
Interactive content: Share quizzes, polls, and giveaways to build brand loyalty.
Order updates: Provide real-time order tracking and delivery timelines. Follow-up with a thank you message and re-engagement offers.
Brand storytelling: Share exclusive updates and behind-the-scenes content to make customers a part of your brand journey.

Sending key messages in conversational marketing example — Example of a website live chat from Tidio

4. Utilize Chatbots and Livechat Tools

Integrating chatbots in your conversational marketing strategy increases conversions and reduces customer support time.

Using chatbots can accelerate your campaigns by:

Automating lead generation: Using pre-set questions allows you to collect visitor information and valid email addresses.
Personalizing customer journey: AI chatbots read vast amounts of customer data to make connections between the past and present purchase behavior.
Recovering abandoned carts: Abandoned cart emails and instant notification reminders encourage people to revisit their carts and complete the purchase.
Driving engagement: Implementing chat based polls, quizzes, and interactive content makes the experience more engaging.

Chatbot example for conversational marketing — Example of an AI chatbot explaining product details

5. Collect and Analyze Feedback

Train your teams to identify gaps in your conversation marketing strategy. Using honest customer feedback can repair common issues in the marketing plan. Use chatbots and livechat to ask the right questions and gather customer feedback.

Analyzing customer feedback for conversational marketing — Example of using chatbots to collect customer feedback – Source

By viewing the results for each chat node, you can optimize future campaigns.

Now, let’s take these strategies and learn how to implement them in real life situations.

Conversational Content Examples to Boost Open Rates

Most people assume conversational marketing is tied to specific platforms like Facebook or website chat. However, there are many ways to implement conversational selling, such as SMS marketing, email marketing, and Rich Communication Services via mobile.

The following conversational style examples showcase the advantages of implementing two-way communication to foster long-term relationships.

1. Email Marketing With Neville Medhora

Emails are a powerful two-way communication channel to foster loyalty and engagement. Email marketing allows you to share a wide range of content formats, such as interactive messages, email gamification, and similar.

Brands implement unique email marketing ideas to initiate replies from customers. Here’s one such example from a famous brand – Neville Medhora.

Conversational email marketing example 1 — Conversational email marketing example

2. Casper’s Website Quiz Funnel

Casper, a mattress company, embeds a quiz on their website to enable people to pick the best for their needs. From identifying their sleep styles to choosing the right mattress, Casper’s conversational marketing techniques improve user engagement.

The brand implements a multi-channel marketing strategy to attract and nurture leads. For instance, as soon as the user takes the first step in the quiz funnel, the brand asks for their email address to share results.

Casper then uses this email address to send regular updates, discounts, and other interactive emails to keep the spark alive.

Conversational email marketing example — Casper’s quiz funnel example

3. ClassPass’s Twitter Engagement

ClassPass, a fitness app, addresses customer pain points through conversational marketing. The brand uses social media and app notifications to engage customers. The result is a lot of happy customers willing to go the extra mile to share positive word of mouth.

Classpass twitter conversational marketing — Example of app notification from Classpass

4. Nike’s Facebook Comments

Nike knows to use conversational marketing social media to its full advantage. The brand expands its marketing to different platforms, such as sharing innovation processes via emails, responding to brand mentions on

X (Twitter), and using augmented reality on the app.

In the example below, the popular shoe brand tags players to get more people to talk about the situation and the brand. The strategic use of hashtags helps reach more users as well as maximize engagement through meaningful conversations.

Nike facebook conversational marketing — Nike’s Facebook post as part of its conversational marketing strategy

In all the examples above, there’s a common theme: genuine conversations. The brands do not share random content to elicit a reaction from customers but craft thoughtful campaigns that solve a problem.

You can implement similar strategies using email marketing to nurture and convert leads to long-term customers. Email marketing is simple at its core if you ensure the messages reach your intended recipients.

Whether you’re an email marketing pro or testing the waters, Campaign Refinery can help build solid engagement and conversions by ensuring inbox placement.

Become a Part of the Best Conversational Marketing Software

Campaign Refinery’s highly functional audience engagement tools provide the perfect multi-channel experience for your conversational marketing.

Our 1000+ integration tools can help you streamline conversations in a single place. The email tags and audience groups segmentation features allow you to target the right audience, enhancing customer conversations.

Beyond robust features and tools, Campaign Refinery believes in authentic human conversations that spark interest and drive conversions.

We ensure your emails reach the primary inboxes, so your interactions matter. Through our strict authentication protocols and high-speed sending engine, we deliver the highest inbox placement rate (as high as 600%) on the market.

Make your brand conversations matter and enjoy the best deliverability rates in the industry — Apply to become a Campaign Refinery user now!