Carrefour is testing Whatsapp as a new sales service in France for the Christmas campaign. Between December 5th and 21st, customers can buy around a hundred Christmas products via WhatsApp's instant messaging application.
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To launch this initiative, the company has installed a Carrefour Santa Claus bot on the platform. For the first time, it allows customers to make Christmas purchases in four non-food product categories (toys, high-tech, gaming, and small appliances) from a selection of the 100 most requested references.
After finalizing the basket on WhatsApp, users will be directed to Carrefour's online store to make the payment. After this, the products will be delivered to the home. The company's goal is to offer in the future an experience that integrates payment in the WhatsApp application.
“As you know, at Carrefour, we don't want to miss any innovation. With this Social Commerce expertise, we want to understand the new uses and expectations of our customers. We are also adapting our technical capabilities to manage order flows from external social media platforms to our e-commerce site.”
Elodie Perthuisot, executive director of e-commerce, data, and digital transformation, Carrefour Group.
Carrefour's bet on Whatsapp is one of many attempts by well-known brands to channel the selling power of popular social media. Among them, we want to highlight three examples:
1. Estée Lauder was the first large cosmetics company to give customers customized skincare advice via WhatsApp. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, Liv, an AI chatbot, was created to take the role of the in-person consultations that clients had in department stores in the past.
Customers could learn how to use the brand's products through these online discussions, get advice on maintaining an efficient skincare routine, and place orders to buy these products via Whatsapp.
2. Absolut Vodka used WhatsApp to promote a live product launch event in Argentina. Customers were urged to message a chatbot doorman named Sven to persuade "him" that they deserved one of the two tickets that were still available. Over the course of three days, this campaign generated more than 1,000 messages from 600 people.
In this case, Absolute went for a ‘live-shopping’ approach to selling with Whatsapp.
3. Hellman’s Mayonnaise assisted customers in preparing a meal. The concept was simple: open their website and enter your phone number. An online chef contacts you via WhatsApp and gives you cooking lessons depending on the ingredients you have in your refrigerator. The clever part of the campaign was that it encouraged consumers to use Hellman's mayo in novel ways while also capitalizing on the one-on-one feel of WhatsApp to foster brand loyalty.
13K signups and a 99.5% approval rating speak for themselves regarding the results. After the campaign's success in Brazil, where WhatsApp is the largest social media and communications platform, it was quickly introduced in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.
So, all in all, it seems Whatsapp keeps growing in popularity as a sales channel. And any brand that wishes to remain relevant and profitable, should keep tabs on this popular social media.
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