Conversational marketing is a customer-centric approach that leverages real-time, personalized interactions between companies and customers and mimics human dialogue for the vendor at scale. These technologies employ AI chatbots and automation to design session-based, cross-channel exchanges in the form of natural language dialogue, using a blend of text and audio. Unlike traditional marketing methods that often rely on one-way communication, conversational marketing employs session-based two-way dialogues which foster meaningful relationships and enhance the customer journey and experience. Conversations occur across various channels — primarily live chat, SMS, email and voice. Integrations across the revenue tech stack facilitate personalized interactions. Conversational marketing strategy is used by digital marketers as well as sales and customer service teams to improve engagement, increase conversion and increase seller capacity.
Gartner defines email marketing as the use of the email channel to deliver and optimize marketing messages — such as brand newsletters or contextually relevant, real-time and personalized communications — in support of engagement across the customer journey. Email service providers often bolster their technology platforms with supplementary managed services to improve the value and scalability of the email channel. Email marketing helps marketers deliver information to their audiences after obtaining an email address. This can take the form of product or service updates, new promotions, transaction updates and more. As a relatively inexpensive method for communicating at scale with contacts, email provides value for different use cases across the full customer-engagement life span. Email is the most effective channel for several marketing objectives, including demand generation, conversion to sales, and customer loyalty and advocacy.